Nicolás Ruiz Espadero
Encyclopedia
Nicolás Ruiz Espadero was a Cuban pianist
, composer
, piano teacher and editor
of the posthumous works of American composer-pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk
.
At his time Espadero 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 Europe
.
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 practised a lot, but gave few concerts and had little contact with other (normal) people. Espadero never left Cuba
, indeed he seldom ever left Havana
or for that sense his own house, where he lived with seventeen cats, surrounded by stacks of European music scores, mostly mediocre ones. Universally described as a recluse, he died from accidental burns after his usual bath in alcohol - one of several musicians to die of rather unnatural causes (Jean-Baptiste Lully
and Charles-Valentin Alkan
would be among some of the other ones).
Although brought up in a cosmopolitan atmosphere and surrounded by black Cuban music, he was the one Cuban composer who adopted but little of the local music tradition that so abundantly inspired Manuel Saumell
before and Ignacio Cervantes
after him. He had quite a few pupils, and he must have taught them well, because some of them became fine musicians themselves. Nothing of Espadero’s music has remained in the repertoire, some of it perhaps deservedly so, yet some of his later pieces – allegedly his best output, albeit never printed - would certainly warrant a closer look. A CD with a selection of his piano music came out in 2006.
, Cuba
. Cuba was then still a Spanish colony and in all matters of administration, economy and interior and exterior policy dependent on Madrid
. The island was a colonial backwater, infested by Malaria
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 backs less than 35.000 were free.
On July 8, 1844 Polish pianist and composer Julian Fontana
, a close friend of Frédéris Chopin, gives a series of concerts and recitals in Havana playing works by Liszt, Chopin, Thalberg and himself. This is the first time that music by Chopin is played in Cuba. Fontana stayed a year and a half (until November 1845) in Havana giving concerts, composing and teaching. Espadero is among Fontana’s piano students.
It is a commonplace saying that childhood and youth form a person for the rest of his or her life, but seldom was it truer than in the case of Espadero. By the time he was twenty, he had already traces of the withdrawn, unsociable, even bizarre character that would grow into in middle and later life. Carpentier characterizes him thus:
, Émile Prudent
, Ascher, etc. In an effort to rid himself of these hitherto overbearing influences, he turned to composing according to the classical forms established by European composers. He wrote a piano trio
, a scherzo
, a sonata
, and various longer etudes. 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 to an already disquieting 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.
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, must be considered lost.
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, piano teacher and editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
of the posthumous works of American composer-pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works...
.
At his time Espadero 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 Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
.
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 practised a lot, but gave few concerts and had little contact with other (normal) people. Espadero never left Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, indeed he seldom ever left Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
or for that sense his own house, where he lived with seventeen cats, surrounded by stacks of European music scores, mostly mediocre ones. Universally described as a recluse, he died from accidental burns after his usual bath in alcohol - one of several musicians to die of rather unnatural causes (Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...
and Charles-Valentin Alkan
Charles-Valentin Alkan
Charles-Valentin Alkan was a French composer and one of the greatest virtuoso pianists of his day. His attachment to his Jewish origins is displayed both in his life and his work. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of six, earning many awards, and as an adult became a famous virtuoso...
would be among some of the other ones).
Although brought up in a cosmopolitan atmosphere and surrounded by black Cuban music, he was the one Cuban composer who adopted but little of the local music tradition that so abundantly inspired Manuel Saumell
Manuel Saumell
Manuel Saumell Robredo , was a Cuban composer of the highest importance for his invention and development of genuinely creolized forms of music...
before and Ignacio Cervantes
Ignacio Cervantes
Ignacio Cervantes Kawanagh was a Cuban virtuoso pianist and composer. He was influential in the creolization of Cuban music....
after him. He had quite a few pupils, and he must have taught them well, because some of them became fine musicians themselves. Nothing of Espadero’s music has remained in the repertoire, some of it perhaps deservedly so, yet some of his later pieces – allegedly his best output, albeit never printed - would certainly warrant a closer look. A CD with a selection of his piano music came out in 2006.
Culture and society
Espadero was born in HavanaHavana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
, Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
. Cuba was then still a Spanish colony and in all matters of administration, economy and interior and exterior policy dependent on Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
. The island was a colonial backwater, infested by Malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
and Yellow fever
Yellow fever
Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....
. 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 backs less than 35.000 were free.
Descent and Parents
Espadero was born in Havana, Cuba. Espadero’s mother was a pianist from Cadiz 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 sons’ 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 on 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 he education he had 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. True enough, Havana had an opera house, the Teatro Colón, but the only operas, sung and acted by imported itinerant opera troupes, were Italian potboilers by Bellini, Donizetti and later Verdi.On July 8, 1844 Polish pianist and composer Julian Fontana
Julian Fontana
Julian Fontana was a Polish pianist, composer, lawyer, author, translator, and entrepreneur, best remembered as a close friend and musical executor of Frédéric Chopin.-Biography:...
, a close friend of Frédéris Chopin, gives a series of concerts and recitals in Havana playing works by Liszt, Chopin, Thalberg and himself. This is the first time that music by Chopin is played in Cuba. Fontana stayed a year and a half (until November 1845) in Havana giving concerts, composing and teaching. Espadero is among Fontana’s piano students.
It is a commonplace saying that childhood and youth form a person for the rest of his or her life, but seldom was it truer than in the case of Espadero. By the time he was twenty, he had already traces of the withdrawn, unsociable, even bizarre character that would grow into in middle and later life. Carpentier 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: 1880-1890
Carpentier emphasizes that Espadero, in his final years, realized that he had been influenced by bad examples, i.e. bravura fantasies by composers such as Sigismond ThalbergSigismond Thalberg
Sigismond Thalberg was a composer and one of the most distinguished virtuoso pianists of the 19th century.- Descent and family background :...
, Émile Prudent
Émile Prudent
Émile Racine Gauthier Prudent was a French pianist and composer.Born at Angoulême, he never knew his parents and was adopted at an early age by a piano tuner, who gave him his first musical instruction. At ten, he entered the Paris Conservatoire, winning a first prize in piano in 1833, and a...
, Ascher, etc. In an effort to rid himself of these hitherto overbearing influences, he turned to composing according to the classical forms established by European composers. He wrote a piano trio
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 classical chamber music...
, a scherzo
Scherzo
A scherzo is a piece of music, often a movement from a larger piece such as a symphony or a sonata. The scherzo's precise definition has varied over the years, but it often refers to a movement which replaces the minuet as the third movement in a four-movement work, such as a symphony, sonata, or...
, a sonata
Sonata
Sonata , in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata , a piece sung. The term, being vague, naturally evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms prior to the Classical era...
, and various longer etudes. 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 to an already disquieting 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.
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, must be considered lost.
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.
Discography
- Cecilio Tieles, Piano: Espadero - Obras para piano (Works for Piano). EGREM CD 0787. 2006
- 1. La Reina de Chipre (The Queen of Cyprus), ContradanzaContradanzaThe Cuban contradanza was a popular dance music genre of the 19th century.- Origins and Early Development:...
(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)
- 1. La Reina de Chipre (The Queen of Cyprus), Contradanza