Theme: Alejo Carpentier Sets the Stage

Abstract

Carpentier wrote about music in periodical essays, newspaper articles, and a book, La m ú sica en Cuba. “As we all know,” writes Leonardo Acosta, “music was always Alejo’s second trade, his ‘violon d’Ingres’” ¹ (222). Carpentier not only wrote librettos for Edgar Var è se during the 1930s, but also introduced the French creator of “organized sound” to the Cuban composers Alejandro Garci a Caturla and Amadeo Rold á n (Birkenmaier 182). Before working with Var è se, Carpentier had collaborated with Garci a Caturla on the one-act opera Manita en el suelo and Rold á n on two Afro-Cuban ballets La Rebambaramba and El milagro de Anaquill é. Writing in French, Carpentier developed these themes in another story from that period, “Histoire de lunes.” Further proof of the author’s enduring devotion to music can be found in his prolific essays, now collected in two volumes titled Ese m ú sico que llevo dentro. Music appears in his novels, as well; almost all mention music and, taken in aggregate, provide a means of following the development of his thoughts on the subject. His didactic pieces serve as sketches of ideas later developed in novels, lending his fictional depictions of music and musicians a verisimilitude more compelling than that found in his nonfictional observations. Searching for music in the Americas, Carpentier travels from the Minorista project of positing Afro-Cuban culture as an alternative national mode, evident in É cue -Yamba- Ó, through the inner conflicts displayed in Los pasos perdidos, and eventually arrives at an assured American view based on satisfyingly interstitial relationships presented in Concierto barroco.