Ignacio Cervantes Danzas

Cuban Contradanzas by Ignacio Cervantes

Ignacio Cervantes Aficionados of nineteenth-century piano music would be—or should be—aware of the danzas by Cuban composer Ignacio Cervantes (1847-1905). These are sublime gems of Romantic-era piano literature, which deserve much greater dissemination and recognition than they have received. In recent years, pianists have issued a few CDs of these and earlier contradanzas by Manuel Saumell (1817-70), but actual scores remain difficult to locate, whether in Cuba or elsewhere. In the interest of making these available to pianists everywhere, I am posting on this site an edition that is no longer under copyright. (Interested pianists may also purchase sheet music for twenty Cervantes pieces from Masters Music Publications in Boca Raton, Florida.) Information regarding Cervantes and Cuban and Puerto Rican danzas can be found in my edited volume, Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009), which remains the only in-depth English-language publication on contradance forms that flourished in the Spanish, French, and Anglophone Caribbean. (The volume also contains a CD with performances—both recent and historical—of 28 contradanzas, danzas, and quadrilles, from Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Curaçao, and the West Indies.) I have also discussed mid-19th-century Cuban contradanzas, and their seminal role in the evolution of Cuban popular music (especially son), in my article “From Contradanza to Son: New Perspectives on the Prehistory of Cuban Popular Music” (Latin American Music Review 30/2, 2009), which is also posted here on my academia.edu site. Peter Manuel Professor, John Jay College, and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York