Exposition: Literary and Musical Consonances

Abstract

In connection with El amor en los tiempos del c ôlera, I add here a few more numbers: the word m ú sica appears thirty-seven times, viol in seventeen, banda eleven, and orquesta, coro, and ó pera seven times apiece. The instruments and ensembles mentioned here perform music elaborated in 3/4 and 4/4 time, implying deliberate—and significant—shifts between triple and duple rhythms. Along with these technical references, the narration refers to the execution of these and other musical elements by well-known composers and performers who create and actuate established works from formal and demotic repertoires. Few critics have noticed this wealth of music, and fewer still have attributed much significance to it. As a corrective to this oversight, this chapter will consider music as a way of understanding the novel and also contextualizing this work in its author’s call for an understanding of Latin America’s “reality not made of paper.” Specifically, music provides a means of stepping into debates over the love in El amor en los tiempos del c ôlera and the relative merits of Fermina Daza’s two lovers. Beyond the place of music as an accompaniment to love, these comparisons of Florentino Ariza and Juvenal Urbino often encapsulate the competing interpretation of the numbers provided by Garci a M á rquez as either mysteriously coded views of passionate Latino reality or hard data enumerating human conditions in need of attention.