Guillermo Manuel Tomás

To the musician, composer, and intellectual Guillermo Manuel Tomás belongs the merit of having been born on a glorious date in the historical annals of the Republic of Cuba, exactly on October 10, 1868, in Cienfuegos. This fact would not go unnoticed by him, as he honored it by later joining the struggle for the emancipation of the Homeland.

His father, founder, instructor, and director of the first Cienfuegos orchestra, introduced him to the paths of music.

Subsequently, other distinguished musicians taught him various specialties, such as Sebastián Wuell (music theory), Lasquetti (Flute), and Jiménez (harmony).

He was only 16 years old when he made his public debut performing a flute duet with another distinguished musician, Ramón Solís, who were accompanied on piano by the eminent Trinidadian José Manuel Jiménez.

Upon his father's death, he moved to New York, where he married the Cienfuegos diva, Anita Aguado. In the great American city, he made countless connections with some notable Cubans and foreigners, which made it possible for him to be appointed in 1886 director of the Clionian society in Brooklyn.

Both in New York and in Brooklyn, his wife organized functions for the benefit of separatist club funds. In 1895, José Martí, on the eve of departing for Cuba to resume the necessary war, would write to Anita an interesting letter in which he expressed to her: "to die it is necessary to first hear the voice of a woman…". On May 19 of that year, the apostle of Cuban independence fell in combat at Dos Ríos.

After the war ended, Guillermo Tomás returned to Cuba, where, at the request of the first Cuban mayor that the capital had, Perfecto Lacoste, he organized the police band, which years later became the Municipal Band of Havana, whose direction he exercised for several years.

This famous Cuban also distinguished himself by being a member of the Royal Galician Academy and President of the Music Section of the National Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as having achieved a doctorate from the Grand Conservatory of Music, incorporated into the University of the State of New York.

From the pen of Guillermo Tomás also came several important literary works, some of which were translated and praised by European and American authorities, among these The Great Stages of Tonal Art, The Great Tonal Poets, Orientations of Modern Tonal Art, Ricardo Wagner, Woman and Art, "Heroic France" in French and Spanish, and "Invincible America" in English and Spanish.

This prestigious intellectual died in the Cuban capital in 1937.