Nicolás Ruiz Espadero (February 15, 1832 – August 30, 1890) was a Cuban

pianist A pianist ( , ) is a musician who plays the piano. A pianist's repertoire may include music from a diverse variety of styles, such as traditional classical music, jazz piano, jazz, blues piano, blues, and popular music, including rock music, ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

piano teacher Piano pedagogy is the study of the teaching of piano playing. Whereas the professional field of music education pertains to the teaching of music in school classrooms or group settings, piano pedagogy focuses on the teaching of musical skills t ...

and

editor Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, organization, a ...

of the posthumous works of American composer-pianist

Louis Moreau Gottschalk Louis Moreau Gottschalk (May 8, 1829 – December 18, 1869) was an American composer, pianist, and virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works. He spent most of his working career outside the United States. Life and career Gottschalk ...

. Espadero was born and died in

Havana Havana (; ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

. 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 and had little contact with other people. Espadero never left

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

, 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. Although brought up in a cosmopolitan atmosphere and surrounded by black

Cuban music The music of Cuba, including its instruments, performance, and dance, comprises a large set of unique traditions influenced mostly by west African and European (especially Spanish) music. Due to the syncretic nature of most of its genres, Cuban ...

, he was the one Cuban composer who adopted but little of the local music tradition that inspired

Manuel Saumell Manuel Saumell Robredo (19 April 1818 – 14 August 1870), was a Cuban composer known for his invention and development of genuinely Creolization, creolized forms of music. For this reason he gets the credit for being the first to cultivate Cuban ...

before and

Ignacio Cervantes Ignacio Cervantes Kawanag (Havana, 31 July 1847 – Havana, 29 April 1905) was a Cuban pianist and composer. He was influential in the creolization of Cuban music. A child prodigy, he was taught by pianist Juan Miguel Joval, later by composer ...

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 in 2006.

Biography

Culture and society

was then still a Spanish colony and in all matters of administration, economy and interior and exterior policy dependent on

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

. The island was a colonial backwater, infested by

malaria Malaria is a Mosquito-borne disease, mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects vertebrates and ''Anopheles'' mosquitoes. Human malaria causes Signs and symptoms, symptoms that typically include fever, Fatigue (medical), fatigue, vomitin ...

and yellow fever. 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.

Descent and parents

Espadero was born in

Havana Havana (; ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.Cadiz,

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

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 – 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.

Musical training: 1840–1853

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 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. On July 8, 1844, Polish pianist and composer

Julian Fontana Julian (or Jules) Fontana (31 July 1810 — 23 December 1869) was a Polish pianist, composer, lawyer, author, translator, and entrepreneur, best remembered as a close friend and musical executor of Polish people, Polish composer Frédéric Chopin ...

, a close friend of

Frédéric Chopin Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; 1 March 181017 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period who wrote primarily for Piano solo, solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown ...

, 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. 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.

Alejo Carpentier Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (, ; December 26, 1904 – April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, of French ...

characterizes him thus: :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 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.

Later life and death: 1870-1890

Carpentier postulates that Espadero came to believe that in his youth he had been overly influenced by bravura piano music by composers such as

Sigismond Thalberg Sigismond Thalberg (8 January 1812 – 27 April 1871) was an Austrian composer and one of the most distinguished virtuoso pianists of the 19th century. Family Thalberg was born in Pâquis near Geneva on 8 January 1812. Thalberg asserted that he ...

Émile Prudent Émile Racine Gauthier Prudent (3 February 181714 May 1863) was a French pianist and composer. His works number about seventy, and include a piano trio, a concerto-symphony, many character pieces, sets of variations, transcriptions and etudes, i ...

, and

Joseph Ascher Joseph Simon Ascher (3 June 1829 – 20 June 1869) was a Dutch-Jewish composer and pianist. He lived in Paris and London for most of his life. Life Ascher was born in Groningen, the son of the ''chazzan'' of the city, who went on to become a ca ...

, among others. He then turned to composing according to classical European musical forms. He wrote a

piano trio A piano trio is a group of piano and two other instruments, usually a violin and a cello, or a piece of music written for such a group. It is one of the most common forms found in European classical music, classical chamber music. The term can also ...

, a

scherzo A scherzo (, , ; plural scherzos or scherzi), in western classical music, is a short composition – sometimes a movement from a larger work such as a symphony or a sonata. The precise definition has varied over the years, but scherzo often r ...

, a

sonata In music a sonata (; pl. ''sonate'') literally means a piece ''played'' as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian ''cantare'', "to sing"), a piece ''sung''. The term evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms until th ...

, 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. 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 isolated himself almost totally from society, living only for his cats and his piano. Carpentier writes: ''He distanced himself from his colleagues, gruffly reproaching them for not having created a serious institution for the teaching of music.'' 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.(Ferrer 1994) 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, 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. Since Espadero died childless, his estate was scattered. Much of it, among them many unprinted manuscripts, is considered lost.

Notable students

Notable students include Carlos Alfredo Peyrellade, Haitian pianist and founder of the Carlos Alfredo Peyrellade Conservatories in Cuba.

Discography

* Cecilio Tieles, Piano: ''Espadero - Obras para piano (Works for Piano)''. EGREM CD 0787. 2006 ** 1. ''La Reina de Chipre (The Queen of Cyprus)'',

Contradanza ''Contradanza'' (also called ''contradanza criolla'', ''danza'', ''danza criolla'', or ''habanera'') is the Spanish and Spanish-American version of the contradanse, which was an internationally popular style of music and dance in the 18th cen ...

(1859) 1.34 ** 2. ''La Erminia.'' Contradanza (1858) 1.27 ** 3. ''Un Chubasco a Tiempo (A Downpour in Time).'' Contradanza (1859). 1.34 ** 4. ''La Rosalía Bustamante. Contradanza.'' (1859). 1.34 ** 5. ''Balada (Ballad).'' (1869) Op. 20. 8.08 ** 6. Scherzo, Op. 58 (1875) 8.04 ** 7. 2da Balada. Op. 57 (1874) 13.19 ** 8. Barcarola. Op. 18 (1867) 7.57 ** 9. La Sacerdotisa (The Woman Priest). Contradanza (1859). 1.41 ** 10. Armando Linares, Cameraman, Producer and Director: Domador de Notas (documentary-2002, Tarragona)

Notes and references

Sources

* Carpentier, Alejo. ''Music in Cuba''. Edited by Timothy Brennan. Translated by Alan West-Durán. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. * Fetis, F.J. ''Biographie Universelle des Musiciens.'' Édité par M. Arthur Pougin. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didot Et Cie., 1878. *Tieles, Cecilio. ''Espadero, lo hispánico musical en Cuba''. Barcelona: Imprenta Agil Offset, S. A., 1994. * Gottschalk, Louis Moreau. ''Notes of a Pianist''. Reprint of 1964 edition. Ed. Jeanne Behrend. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. * Morelet, Arthur. ''Voyage dans L'Amerique Centrale L'Ile de Cuba et le Yucatan''. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Paris: Gide et J. Baudry, 1857.

External links

Site of Cuban Pianist and Musicologist Cecilio Tieles
{{DEFAULTSORT:Espadero, Nicolas Ruiz 1832 births 1890 deaths 19th-century classical composers 19th-century classical pianists 19th-century male musicians Romantic composers Cuban composers Cuban classical pianists Cuban male classical composers Male classical pianists People with obsessive–compulsive disorder Cuban music educators Contradanza 19th-century Cuban male musicians