Héctor Tosar was a composer, pianist, director, and composition teacher in Uruguay, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and the United States. One of the best-known Uruguayan composers of his generation, his works have been presented in festivals worldwide. He started studying piano with Wilhelm Kolischer, harmony with Tomás Mujica, and composition with Lamberto Baldi, and completed his studies in the United States and France where he studied composition with Aaron Copland, Arthur Honegger, Jean Rivier, and Darius Milhaud, and orchestral direction with Serge Koussevitzky, Eugène Bigot, and Jean Fournet.

The defining characteristics of his works are his use of a compositive principle based on “groups of sounds” and his search for musical communication by means of expressiveness and lyricism. His catalogue includes soloist works, mainly for piano, as well as symphonic, chamber, and vocal works, and, in his last period, compositions with new instruments, such as the synthesizer.