Cuban Composer Stamps

This post features a set of Cuban composer stamps from 1966. Sets of composer stamps date back a century to a first set made in Austria in 1922. You can find several articles on this sight featuring sets from France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. There are many more such sets from across the globe. Most of these sets (though certainly not all) feature composers that are native to the country issuing the stamp. The composers become symbols of pride for the population and these individuals become useful unifying figures for the country.

Cuba has a very long and rich musical history beginning with music of the indigenous populations on the island. It was literally the place where Columbus first landed in the western hemisphere, and as such even in the 1490s there were Spanish musicians on the island. Of course, it was also an early place where Africans were brought and enslaved for their labor. The island is full of music, much of it a blend of elements from these three cultural traditions. Learn more here. Many of the composers in this set also infused their compositions with sounds of traditional Cuban music.

The Stamps

The set of seven stamps was issued on November 18, 1966. The stamps were celebrating the second annual music festival, the Festival De La Cancion (words that appear at the bottom of each stamp in the set). The design is simple and effective. For example, each stamp features a black and white portrait of the composer it celebrates. In addition, this portrait sits in front of a musical score with a few measures of music from one of their compositions. The musical scores are each a different color, giving each stamp a simple monochromatic look.

Amadeo Roldán (1900-1939)

Amadeo Roldán was born in Paris to a Cuban mother and Spanish father. His mother taught her three children music. After graduating from the conservatory in Madrid, Roldán went to Cuba. In the 1920s, he became the concertmaster of the Orquesta Filarmónica of Havana and also was a founder of the Havana String Quartet. In addition to playing, Roldán was a composer and he incorporated the sounds of Cuban music, including Afro-Cuban rhythms and percussion instruments into his music. The stamp features a few measures from his orchestrao poem Fiesta Negra of 1926. Tragically, Roldán died of face cancer at the age of 38.

Eduardo Sanchez de Fuentes (1874-1944)

Fuentes was a composer and scholar who also wrote many books about the history of Cuban music. He wrote several large scale compositions including an opera, ballet, and oratorio. However, his most famous piece was the Habanera “Tu” he wrote when he was only sixteen. The opening of the piece appears as the background of this postage stamp.

Moisés Simons (1889-1945)

Moisés Simons was born in Havana and studied music with his father. At the age of nine, he was the organist and choirmaster at his local church. He studied composition, harmony, and counterpoint, as well as both piano and organ. After working in the popular music houses and founding a jazz band, Simons became a well known composer. Like other Cuban composers of the era, he incorporated elements of Cuban folk sounds, particularly Afro-Cuban music, into his compositions. He spent most of his later years in Paris and Madrid, where he died in 1945.

Many consider his piece El Manisero (The Peanut Vendor) to be the most famous piece of music ever written by a Cuban composer. It began a “rumba craze” in Europe and the United States. The stamp features a few measures of this famous piece.

Check out this famous song! Here is a favorite version of mine:

Jorge Anckermann (1877-1941)

Anckermann was also born in Havana and began studying music with his father at the age of eight. In 1892, at the age of 15, he went to Mexico as the musical director of the Nachos Lopez bufo company. This was a traveling group of light entertainers (probably similar to vaudeville shows in the United States). After touring, he stayed in Mexico City for many years where he performed and taught music.

Upon returning to Cuba, he became a composer of theatrical pieces, musical reviews, and other pieces of musical theater. One of his most famous pieces, El Arroyo Que Murmura, appears on this postage stamp.

Alejandro Caturla (1906-1940)

Caturla was born in the town of Remedios, Cuba. He studied music as a child and won a position in the second violin section in the Havana orchestra where Amadeo Roldán was concertmaster. In addition to playing violin, Caturla was composing music even as a teenager. To further his musical studies, he went to Paris and was a student of Nadio Boulanger between 1925 and 1927. Following many of the older composers then active in Cuba, he wrote orchestral compositions that incorporated folk sounds and instruments of Cuba. He became one of the leading Afro-Cubanist composers. Caturla was also a lawyer and then eventually a judge. He was killed at the age of 34 by a gambler who he was going to send to prison.

The stamp features several measures from Caturla’s Pastoral Lullaby: Berceuse Campesina for piano.

Eliseo Grenet (1893-1950)

Born in Havana, Eliseo Grenet was one of three musical brothers who all became performers and composers. Eliseo studied piano with the father of Moisés Simons and in 1905 (at the age of twelve) began playing piano to accompany silent films. He went on to play and direct theater orchestras. He started a jazz band in 1925 and wrote music for the ensemble. In the 1930s, Grenet worked in Europe, in Barcelona and Paris, before coming to New York in 1936. His music includes compositions for jazz band, musical theater, and film scores film scores. The stamp features a couple of bars from his famous song ¡Ay! Mama Inés.

Ernesto Lecuona (1896-1963)

Perhaps the most famous classical musician from Cuba was the pianist Ernesto Lecuona. Born in 1896 in Havana, he began taking piano at the age of five from his older sister, who also became a respected composer. Lecuona was a child prodigy, writing his first songs at the age of eleven. AFter winning a Gold Medal for his playing at the conservatory in Havana, he achieved international fame. In 1916, he made his New York debut at Aeolian hall.

Lecuona toured Europe and North and South America playing recitals he also wrote more than six hundred musical compositions, most for the piano. He left Cuba when Castro took power, establishing himself in Tampa, Florida. He died in 1963 while on tour in the Canary Islands. The stamp features a few bars of his composition La Comparsa Danza.

Take a listen to this fun Cuban composition!