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possible, Espadero's horizon. He would not go out, did not accept invitations, and would not frequent the promenades. He spent his days reading, drawing, and composing. At twilight, he would go to a music store close to his house to play the piano until eight o'clock at night. He could not tolerate a presence at his side at those moments. His adolescent neurosis became more pronounced with the passing of time, making him appear unsociable, sullen or weird.
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but not a musician. Although proud of his wife's musical talents and flattered by his son's nascent artistic abilities, Espadero's father would only permit half an hour's piano lesson every day. But young
Espadero's talent proved too strong. From an early age he showed exceptional ability at the piano. With his mother's complicity young Espadero would play the piano several hours every day.
143:, gave a series of concerts and recitals in Havana playing works by Liszt, Chopin, Thalberg and himself. This was the first time that music by Chopin was played in Cuba. Fontana stayed a year and a half (until November 1845) in Havana giving concerts, composing and teaching. Espadero was among Fontana's piano students.
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Even his sudden and tragic death had its cause in
Espadero's neurotic behaviour. For a long time he had had the habit of taking baths in alcohol. On August 22, 1890, he again took an alcohol bath. After the bath, however, he did not rub himself completely dry. When he tried to extinguish a gas light,
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after him. He had numerous pupils, and some of them became prominent musicians themselves. Nothing of
Espadero's music has remained in the repertoire, yet his later pieces – allegedly his best output, albeit never printed - remain to be investigated. A CD with a selection of his piano music came out
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who distinguished herself in the Havana salons around 1810 performing Haydn and Mozart. His father, Don Nicolás Ruiz, was a civil servant in the colonial administration. As is often the case in well-to-do families, the father wanted his only son to become a lawyer, an officer or an administrator –
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Yet of all the Cuban composers of the 19th and early 20th century he was the most parochial and idiosyncratic one. Without schooling and formal musical training, he grew into a chronically shy person, emotionally dependent on his mother. He composed and continually practised, but gave few concerts
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Espadero never went to school and thus never enjoyed a structured formal education. What education he had received came from pieces and fragments from
European, especially Spanish, culture, from selected and very mixed readings and from the surroundings of Cuban upper-class society. Havana had an
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This rejection of his more serious efforts may have contributed his state of mind. The death of his mother in 1885 came as an almost devastating blow to him. Although he was now free to travel and leave Cuba, he did exactly the opposite – he became a total recluse. During his last years
Espadero
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he was suddenly engulfed by flames and suffered horrifying burns. He died eight days later. Considering the mental state of
Espadero prior to his death and his long years of neurotic and increasingly bizarre behaviour, some of his biographers speculated that his death was actually a suicide.
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He did not have friends his own age, living exclusively with his family, under the constant vigilance of his mother. (...) He was sixteen when his father, without previous warning, dropped dead in his presence. This blow, the widowhood, the long mourning period, further reduced, if that were
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This anti-social behaviour may have been aggravated by obsessive-compulsive disorder. The most recent of
Espadero's biographers writes that Espadero could not enter a house without having to rearrange the furniture to suit his orderliness.
102:. Cuba's society was sharply divided into a privileged class of landowners and Spanish colonial administrators – and black and mulatto slaves. Virtually no middle class existed. Of more than two millions blacks, less than 35,000 were free.
312:(Carpentier 2001), pp. 194-203. The work by Alejo Carpentier is indispensable for the study of Cuban music. Although written in the early 1940s and never revised, it is by far the best monograph on Cuban music available today.
58:, indeed he seldom ever left his own house, where he lived with seventeen cats, surrounded by stacks of European music scores. Universally described as a recluse, he died from accidental burns after his usual bath in alcohol.
46:. In his time, he was the most famous Cuban composer, the only one published abroad, the only one who, at least in the eyes of his Cuban contemporaries, could compete with composers from
329:, est né en 1835 à la Havane ; élève d'Arizti, ses œuvres pour piano ont toute la saveur de la musique de Gottschalk , avec quelque chose de plus puissant et de plus profond.
188:, and various longer études. None of it he saw in print. As soon as Espadero started to eschew the bravura pieces of the day, publishers were no longer interested in his music.
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Pupil of Arizti. His piano works have all the taste of the music of Louis Moreau
Gottschalk, but they are more powerful and more profound (Fetis 1878), p. 307. Italics added.
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opera house, the Teatro Colón, but the only operas, sung and acted by imported itinerant opera troupes, were mostly by
Bellini, Donizetti and later Verdi.
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Carpentier postulates that
Espadero came to believe that in his youth he had been overly influenced by bravura piano music by composers such as
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He distanced himself from his colleagues, gruffly reproaching them for not having created a serious institution for the teaching of music.
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By the time he was twenty, he had already traces of the withdrawn and unsociable character that would grow into in middle and later life.
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Since Espadero died childless, his estate was scattered. Much of it, among them many unprinted manuscripts, is considered lost.
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was then still a Spanish colony and in all matters of administration, economy and interior and exterior policy dependent on
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389:. Edited by Timothy Brennan. Translated by Alan West-Durán. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
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Havana had 119.000 inhabitants in 1856, not counting the slaves, as Morelet writes. (Morelet 1857), p. 63
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isolated himself almost totally from society, living only for his cats and his piano. Carpentier writes:
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176:, among others. He then turned to composing according to classical European musical forms. He wrote a
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65:, he was the one Cuban composer who adopted but little of the local music tradition that inspired
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10.Armando Linares,Cameraman,Producer and Director:Domador de Notas (documentary-2002,Tarragona)
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410:. Reprint of 1964 edition. Ed. Jeanne Behrend. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
396:Édité par M. Arthur Pougin. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didot Et Cie., 1878.
223:, Haitian pianist and founder of the Carlos Alfredo Peyrellade Conservatories in Cuba.
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See, for instance, the article in Fetis’ famous dictionary on musicians:
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Although brought up in a cosmopolitan atmosphere and surrounded by black
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List of music students by teacher: C to F § Nicolás Ruiz Espadero
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instrumentalist of the first rank and a musician full of talent.
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9. La Sacerdotisa (The Woman Priest). Contradanza (1859). 1.41
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and had little contact with other people. Espadero never left
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Voyage dans L'Amerique Centrale L'Ile de Cuba et le Yucatan
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instrumentiste de premier ordre et musicien plein de talent
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Site of Cuban Pianist and Musicologist Cecilio Tieles
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of the posthumous works of American composer-pianist
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French dedicated page on a website about Gottschalk
94:. The island was a colonial backwater, infested by
19:(February 15, 1832 – August 30, 1890) was a Cuban
417:. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Paris: Gide et J. Baudry, 1857.
403:. Barcelona: Imprenta Agil Offset, S. A., 1994.
237:Espadero - Obras para piano (Works for Piano)
135:On July 8, 1844, Polish pianist and composer
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263:Un Chubasco a Tiempo (A Downpour in Time).
245:La Reina de Chipre (The Queen of Cyprus)
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401:Espadero, lo hispánico musical en Cuba
394:Biographie Universelle des Musiciens.
212:For Espadero's notable students, see
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270:La Rosalía Bustamante. Contradanza.
285:7. 2da Balada. Op. 57 (1874) 13.19
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508:19th-century Cuban male musicians
458:19th-century classical composers
333:Espadero, pianist and composer,
288:8. Barcarola. Op. 18 (1867) 7.57
114:. His mother was a pianist from
463:19th-century classical pianists
160:Later life and death: 1870-1890
488:Cuban male classical composers
282:6. Scherzo, Op. 58 (1875) 8.04
42:Espadero was born and died in
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468:19th-century male musicians
325:, pianiste et compositeur,
127:Musical training: 1840–1853
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406:Gottschalk, Louis Moreau.
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364:(Carpentier 2001), p. 202
355:(Carpentier 2001), p. 195
221:Carlos Alfredo Peyrellade
219:Notable students include
483:Cuban classical pianists
265:Contradanza (1859). 1.34
150:characterizes him thus:
493:Male classical pianists
258:Contradanza (1858) 1.27
37:Louis Moreau Gottschalk
240:. EGREM CD 0787. 2006
233:Cecilio Tieles, Piano:
498:Cuban music educators
110:Espadero was born in
17:Nicolás Ruiz Espadero
301:Notes and references
139:, a close friend of
385:Carpentier, Alejo.
279:(1869) Op. 20. 8.08
106:Descent and parents
83:Culture and society
473:Romantic composers
408:Notes of a Pianist
166:Sigismond Thalberg
413:Morelet, Arthur.
399:Tieles, Cecilio.
71:Ignacio Cervantes
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277:Balada (Ballad).
208:Notable students
148:Alejo Carpentier
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503:Contradanza
453:1890 deaths
448:1832 births
256:La Erminia.
251:(1859) 1.34
249:Contradanza
227:Discography
69:before and
63:Cuban music
442:Categories
178:piano trio
78:Biography
74:in 2006.
323:Espadero
25:composer
380:Sources
182:scherzo
96:malaria
21:pianist
186:sonata
172:, and
112:Havana
92:Madrid
48:Europe
44:Havana
33:editor
120:Spain
116:Cadiz
184:, a
180:, a
98:and
88:Cuba
56:Cuba
31:and
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