Laureano Fuentes Matons, Cuban composer, violinist, and conductor, was born on July 3, 1825, in the province of Santiago de Cuba. Descended from a family of musicians, he began his musical training with Baldomera Fuentes Matons. He was a student of pedagogues such as Juan París in harmony and composition; Carlos Miyares and Tomás Segura in violin; Juan Casamitjana; and the Italian violinist Camilo Sívori. He studied philosophy and Latin at the San Basilio El Magno Seminary in his hometown.

When Fuentes Matons was fifteen years old, he could be heard in the Music Chapel of the Cathedral of Santiago (Heredia between San Félix and Santo Tomás, Santiago de Cuba), and he obtained the position of first violinist, a position he won by competitive examination.

From an early date, Laureano’s great virtuosity became evident, as for him there were no insurmountable technical difficulties and he was capable of interpreting any passage.

In 1844, he organized an orchestra for the Teatro Principal, where he served as its conductor. He later founded the musical revue La Lira Cubana and the Santa Cecilia Academy.

In 1868, he won the prize at the floral festival held in Puerto Príncipe, Camagüey, with his work Galatea, dedicated to the Cienfuegos soprano Ana Aguado. That same year, he traveled to Jamaica, from where he returned the following year.

In May 1875, his opera, *Jefté’s Daughter*, premiered by Rosa Lloréns’s zarzuela company. It underwent several changes, expanding it to three acts under the title *Seila* and translating it into Italian. It was revived 19 years after his death at the National Theater in Havana (Paseo Street and 39th Street, Vedado, Plaza de la Revolución, Havana).

In 1890, another of his works, the Requiem in Memory of his Wife, premiered. It was performed by José Palou’s zarzuela company and conducted by Xiqués at the Teatro de la Reina in Santiago de Cuba.

He was present at other musical events of the time, such as the concerts offered in Santiago de Cuba by the American pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk and those by the Swedish soprano Adelina Patti.

His works enjoy a strong European influence. His operas followed Italian and French patterns. Some of his compositions premiered in Paris and Madrid.

He was not only a musician, but also worked as a historian. His work, entitled The Arts in Santiago de Cuba, was published in 1893. It offers a broad picture of music in the eastern capital during the 19th century.

His liturgical works include masses, hymns, responsories, psalms, antiphons, lessons, invitatories, sequences, benedictus, graduals, and other pieces. He also wrote orchestral overtures, chamber music (six sonatas, two trios for violin, flute, and piano, and trios for bows); works for piano and violin, including melodies, waltzes, songs, mazurkas, ballads, and boleros; dances and danzones, marches, and the zarzuelas entitled “The Midwife Told Me,” “The Old Lover,” “Two Masks,” and “Disgrace of a Tenor.”

Laureano Fuentes Matons was called the Cuban Paganini by his contemporaries. He was the first Cuban to compose an opera, as well as a symphonic poem, “América” ​​(1892).

Laureano Fuentes Matons, died on September 30, 1898.

8.5.2 José Silvestre White.

José Silvestre White, Cuban musician and violinist, along with Ignacio Cervantes, was one of the greatest precursors of 19th-century Cuban music, as well as of the Habanera genre.

The son of a French merchant and a Black Creole woman, he was a child prodigy and studied music from a very early age, composing his first works, usually for string instruments. In 1856, he won a scholarship to study at the Paris Conservatory, where he won first prize in violin composition.

He was praised in many salons and concert halls in cities such as Paris, Madrid, and New York. He played his Stradivarius for the French imperial family at the Tuileries Palace and for Queen Isabel II, who decorated him with the Order of Charles III.

He was appointed director of the Imperial Conservatory in Rio de Janeiro, a position he held until 1889, when, following the dissolution of the empire, he returned to Paris. He was expelled from Cuba in 1875, along with Cervantes, for dedicating several of his concerts to raising funds for the Cuban independence cause.

In 1879, White traveled to Venezuela, where he met fellow countryman Claudio José Domingo Brindis de Salas. He visited the republics of Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay before moving to the Empire of Brazil. In this country, he was welcomed by music lovers and the imperial family. Emperor Pedro II appointed him music professor to his daughter, Princess Isabel, and director of the Rio de Janeiro Conservatory. White remained in that country until 1889. In his concerts in Latin America and Brazil, as well as in the United States, his inclusion of works by composers such as Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Schumann attracted interest, given that most performers of Western classical music in the 19th century, both in Europe and America, filled their programs with medleys of operatic melodies and variations on popular themes, with technical effects and passages that were difficult to execute.

White returned to Paris in 1889, where he settled. There he dedicated himself to teaching and participated in the city’s musical life. He was the teacher of great European virtuosos such as Jacques Thibaud and Georges Enescu, and of the Cubans Rafael Díaz Alberti and Ignacio Sardiñas. Amidst a wealth of artistic activity, he died in 1918.

One of his best-known works is undoubtedly La Bella Cubana. Regarding his instrumental works and performances, José Martí wrote: “…Everything tenuous and soft, everything vague and tender, everything placid and tranquil, mingles and glides over those moaning strings, barely wounded as they pass, by a bow that has the secret of sighing and crying. …Nothing more: I am irritated by my powerless words, which in no way give an idea of ​​those moments of transported and moved wonder. …That divine music still resonates in my heart; the germ of infinite beauty has not yet slept in me, in ill-timed love and awakened!… Tomorrow, Saturday, White says goodbye to us: may glory honor him on his path as many tributes as he leaves unforgettable memories in Mexico, and very sweet and very dear memories in the spirit, suspended and agitated before him, of his most humble and enthusiastic admirer.”1

1 José Martí. Essays were published in “La Revista Universal” of Mexico on May 25, June 1, and June 12, 1875. In the “Bulletins” section, Martí also mentions White in two additional articles, corresponding to the dates of May 21 and June 4 of the same year, under the pseudonym Orestes.