Emilio Agramonte Piña

Academic of Arts and Letters, and doctorate in laws from the Universidad de Madrid. In Spain, Italy and France he pursued musical studies.

He was one of the founders of the Sociedad Coral de Compositores. In New York he founded, in 1893, the Escuela de Ópera y Oratorio. In 1902, returning to the country with the republic already established, he founded, in La Habana, the Sociedad Coral Chaminade

He conducted his music studies in his native city. In 1865 he received his law degree in Spain, where he also pursued musical studies which he later perfected in Italy and France, completing them in New York. He was a singing professor, orchestra director and choir director. In New York he directed, for fifteen years, the Gounod Society.

In the United States, the country to which he emigrated and remained for some years, he carried out work in composition and musicography.

José Martí commissioned him to compile the combat songs that were transmitted clandestinely among generations of Cubans.

From the Escuela de Ópera y Oratorio de New York, José Martí said this about the institution:

"Today, overcoming the difficulties that oppose a pure art enterprise in a satiated and pleasure-seeking metropolis, Emilio Agramonte succeeds in establishing the 'Escuela de Ópera y Oratorio de New York', with the branches of languages, elocution and corresponding theater, on a vast and fruitful plan like the mind of its vigorous originator.

Agramonte knows universal music inside and out, and through intimate study:

His privileged eye sweeps across the page in one glance: his sure judgment burns away the student's defects at the root: his voice, truly astonishing, sings with equal flexibility in all registers: his hand, light at times and thunderous at others, now breeze or tempest, now affection or frown, is an entire orchestra: and his fame honors Cuba. He is assisted by the American C. B. Hawley, Henry Winter, an elegant maestro, who teaches the drama class. Luis Baralt, favored with languages, teaches Italian.

Nobility and abundance breathe through the logical prospectus, and superior to all others of its kind, of what can very soon be the first singing school in America, the 'Escuela de Ópera y Oratorio de New York', of a Cuban, of Emilio Agramonte."

In 1892, at the suggestion of José Martí, who wished to publish in his newspaper Patria the score of the piece that was still known as La bayamesa, the patriot and Camagüey composer Emilio Agramonte Piña prepared a version of the march. Agramonte knew its lyrics and music by reference and, like almost all Cuban independence fighters, knew them by heart. From that point on he made certain changes to give the piece more emphasis and martial character and eliminates the fragment of La marsellesa that was in Figueredo's original.