Ignacio Cervantes

Cervantes studied with Gottschalk and Espadero and later at the Paris Conservatoire. Influenced by Gottschalk's compositional and piano ideas, he was one of the trailblazers in native Cuban concert music. In his compositions, Cervantes employs Cuban rhythms, melodies and cadences within a European Romantic harmonic structure. His Cuban sources are derived mainly from Spanish (Andalusian) folk music that includes the forms of zapateo, danza, cancion, punto guajiro and criolla, rather than the Afro-Cuban forms of the Rold n-Caturla style that became popular in the Cuban music of 1925-55. Cervantes is best remembered for his several Danzas cubanas for piano. ~ Lynn Vought