It’s amazing the clear dominance José Martí always evinced when writing about the most diverse topics, such is the case of his chronicles on concerts, which show his deep knowledge and impel us to admire the genius of his intelligence and the great dimension of his erudition.

Another permanent and detailed researcher about Cuban music and its exponents, Alejo Carpentier, discovered that Martí devoted great part of his time to study musical theory.

The finding happened when Carpentier was checking didactic texts about musical authors from XIX century. One of them was a small book entitled Tratado Teórico de música (Theoretical Treaty of Music) by Narciso Téllez y Arcos. The printer’s mark dated of Havana, 1868.

This little book had a great surprise for the further writer of El Siglo de las Luces, because one of its pages boasted the José Marti’s signing in a very dark black ink.

The fact was that this volume belonged to him and the specialists of the library didn’t notice such remarkable detail.

Despite it was carefully preserved, the book showed noble signs of study. Diverse written words and quotations plus handwritten corrections for printing mistakes were present here, which evinced a very detailed reading of Martí.

This interesting discovering was announced by Alejo Carpentier in his section Letra y Solfa in El Nacional, Caracas, on March 4, 1953, a scarce month later of the Cuban Apostle`s centennial birthday.

In section Músicos from Universal Magazine in Mexico, corresponding to May 25, 1875, Martí expresses a bunch of concepts that netted him the fair recognition as musicologist in his chronicle devoted to Cuban violinist and composer José White:

’’There’s an splendid language beating on the melody’s chords, which speaks with the heart beats: it`s like a promise of fortune, a glimpse of certainty, a pledge of clarity and plenitude. Color has limits, word has lips; misery has heaven; what is real never ends; and music is perpetually beating on the space…’’

In other chronicle, on its following issue from June 1st, he devoted this space to ‘’The second concert of White’’, in which he resumed his opinion about the creator:

"White was playing: It was not a powerful arch sliding over a defeated and obedient violin; is the man fighting against the art difficulties…’’

A third chronicle referring also to White is featuring the Marti’s viewpoint with great expertise about Bach’s Ciacona and Mozart’s Quintetto.

About the first one, he states that nothing must be listened before that titanic music, and he adds that nothing should be listened after it and he concurrently exposes the excellence in the execution of the Cuban musician.

For Martí, music was part of his life due to the delight he found in it and its significance for the human being and all these ideas were expressed in that first chronicle devoted to White:

"Music is the man emerged from himself; is the yearning for the infinite coming from restriction and shortness; it’s the necessary harmony, announcement of the upcoming and permanent harmony’’.

Taken from Radio Cadena Agramonte en la Web. Penned by Ada Oramas.