The musicologist Pablo Hernández Balaguer pioneered the studies of the Cuban musical heritage in the colonial period. Little or nothing is known about the activity of a man who came to be considered as the most careful scholar of Cuban music of the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1956, when he was only 28 years old, he started and developed a research model that included actions like locating, classifying, transcribing and diffusion of the most important and ancient heritage of music preserved in the Island. Balaguer achieved to disseminate internationally his publications and the musical work of Esteban Salas, that was first performed in a historical version by one of the pioneer ensembles in the early music movement in Latin America. However he did not have time to finish his work. He died
before reaching his 38th birthday. Thereafter a long interruption came about in the research pertaining the Cuban catholic religious musical heritage. His work has been a great assistance to many scholars. This paper is a tribute to his determination to live conscientiously as if he had known that he did not have enough time to generously transmit his knowledge to the younger generations. Its is also a tribute to the valuable effort of the Revista Musical Chilena to communicate the results of the research carried out by Latin American scholars.
Keywords:
patrimonio musical cubano, música antigua, Revista Musical Chilena
Escudero, M. (2013). Research and performance of colonial period Latin American music: Pablo Hernández Balaguer, early music and Revista Musical Chilena. Revista Musical Chilena, 67(220), 76–93. Retrieved from https://rchdt.uchile.cl/index.php/RMCH/article/view/30656
