Jorge Ankermann Rafart

He was an illustrious Cuban pianist, composer, and orchestra conductor.

At eight years of age he began his musical studies with his father, the distinguished professor, composer, and violinist Carlos Anckermann. At ten years old he was able to substitute for orchestra conductor Antonio González in leading a trio.

At fifteen years old he went to Mexico as musical director of Narciso López's bufo theater company, visiting several Mexican states and extending the tour to California. He resided several years in Mexico City, dedicated to musical instruction. In Cuba he served as musical director of the principal theaters.

At seventeen years old he wrote the score for his first theatrical work, La gran rumba (a parody of the Spanish review La Gran Vía), which premiered at the Tacón theater in Havana. He introduced his compositions to the Havana public with a small orchestra he formed, with Luis Casas Romero on the flute, to accompany silent film projections.
Between cinema showings, Anckermann played some of his lively piano dances, and also danzones; thus he became known in Havana's musical circle and began to associate with theater people, such as the brothers Gustavo and Francisco Robreño, who commissioned him to compose the music for the review Ni loros, ni gallos, premiered in September 1899 at the Lara theater.
For Ni loros, ni gallos he composed a guajira that won him immediate public favor, and served as a credential for the future composer of El arroyo que murmura.

In November 1900 the Alhambra theater reopened its doors—closed since the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1895—with Manuel Mauri as musical director. In 1908 Napoleón premiered on that stage, with a libretto by the Robreño brothers and music by Jorge Anckermann. The following year, La segunda república was staged, also with his score, and a libretto by his brother Guillermo.

In 1909 Anckermann won first prize in a competition called by the City Council of Havana with his work Aires cubanos. In September 1911 maestro Manuel Mauri left his position at the Alhambra due to disagreements with the managers, and it was to "the son of old Anckermann" that they hastily turned to direct the orchestra and save the season of La revolución china (with a libretto by Federico Villoch). Jorge Anckermann remained as musical director of the theater until it closed its doors in 1935.

In July 1912 his work La casita criolla premiered, with a libretto by Villoch, which was a great success. The work parodied the reelection of President José Miguel Gómez, and at the same time, campaigned in favor of Mario García Menocal, the president who promised honesty and wielded his humble origins in his "little creole house". For this work, Anckermann created a new genre: the tango-congo, which became very popular in the interpretation by Blanca Becerra: Tumba la caña/ anda ligero/ que viene el mayoral/ sonando el cuero.

In the Alhambra theater, current events and matters found their reflection, both national and international. Every three or four months a major work was presented, whose libretto was invariably, from 1911 onwards, by Villoch or the Robreño brothers, and the music by Jorge Anckermann; between each premiere, social and political events were glossed through small sainetes or pleasant reviews presented every Friday. The score of those weekly presentations, which consisted of five or six musical numbers, was also composed by Anckermann.

His musical work by then already included almost all Cuban popular genres, rooted in "the creole," and inserted "choteo"—sympathetic mockery, spicy allusion, the intertextuality of popular speech—into "refined" musical or dramatic settings.

During the days of the First World War, a series of recordings of Anckermann's pieces from sainetes premiered at the Alhambra were carried out in a room at the Plaza Hotel in Havana, such as Aliados y Alemanes. To this series of recordings also belongs a clave by Anckermann (Oye mi clave, from El bombardeo de Amberes) that praised the skill demonstrated by French general Joseph Joffre—noted in the Turkish campaign—converted for the occasion into a sort of overseer of a sugar cane plantation –¡Huye, huye, que viene Joffré!–; and a comic dialogue, ending in an impassioned rumba, in which a mulata marches forward disguised as a "bere-bere", seeking her "negro" (Sergio Acebal), and surprises him, just on the day of the beginning of Ramadan, courting another young woman.

The Alhambra orchestra was generally composed of eight musicians, but according to Robreño, thanks to Anckermann's conducting it "sounded like a symphonic orchestra". The works of longer duration had an average of ten musical numbers, and the shorter ones, of five to six, most of which were original. From 1913 onwards some of the Alhambra artists began to record Anckermann's numbers on discs, with his own orchestral direction; among them, Adolfo Colombo, "El isleño"; Luz Gil, "La mexicana"; Hortensia Valerón, Blanca Vázquez, and Blanca Becerra.

For years Anckermann transcribed works by popular composers who did not know how to write music, especially from the trovadoresca tradition; or he orchestrated for the Alhambra stage, compositions by Alberto Villalón, Rosendo Ruíz, Manuel Corona, Graciano Gómez, Eusebio Delfín, and Sindo Garay. In several of his chronicles Alejo Carpentier refers to Anckermann's work as a musician, praises his vibrant danzones, which served as overtures to the performances, and assures "that he knew counterpoint and fugue, that he knew how to orchestrate".

The «Patria» in Spain (1913), Flor de té (1915), La danza de los millones (1916), El rico hacendado (1919), Delirio de automóvil (1921), La señorita de Maupin and Las enseñanzas de Liborio (both from 1922), are some of the works that the Alhambra premiered with music by Anckermann during that period. On February 28, 1923, one of the most successful works in the history of Cuban musical theater premiered, with a score by Anckermann and libretto by Federico Villoch: La isla de las cotorras, recreated much later, in 1989, in the film La bella del Alhambra, by Enrique Pineda Barnet. This work was revived in August 1962, with the direction of Francisco Morín, and Gilberto Valdés as orchestra conductor. Fragments of that revival appear in the documentary Cuentos del Alambra (1963), by Manuel Octavio Gómez, which includes a moving tribute to several figures of the famous theater still alive at that time.

Death

Jorge Ánckermann died in 1941. Six years earlier, on February 18, 1935, the portico of the Alhambra and part of the orchestra pit had collapsed after a performance ended.

Between 1923 and 1935 he premiered La verbena de los mantones (1924), La rumba en España (1925); La revista sin hilos (1926); Las bodas de plata (1927); Los grandes de Cuba (1928), La revista loca (1929), El bolero (1930) and Bocetos de Cuba (1931), among other reviews, sainetes and zarzuelas. In addition to conducting the Alhambra orchestra for more than three decades, Anckermann conducted orchestras in other Havana theaters: Molino Rojo, Albisu, Payret, and Tacón. According to the catalog of the Seminary of Popular Music, he was the author of more than five hundred scores, and of 1,159 musical numbers.

Most Remembered Numbers

Among his most remembered numbers are El arroyo que murmura, Flor de Yumurí, Un bolero en la noche, El quitrín and the rumba Galleguíbiri-Mancuntíbiri. His danzones El país de las botellas and La isla de las cotorras, which served as overtures to Alhambra works, were still used for that purpose by Cuban vernacular theater companies that toured the Island during the 1950s.

In his honor the theatrical company Jorge Anckermann was founded, which operated for several decades at the Martí theater directed by Rodrigo Prats, Eduardo Robreño, and Enrique Núñez Rodríguez, which revived numerous vernacular musical works and presented anthologies of Cuban lyric repertoire.

He composed scores for zarzuelas, reviews, and comic sketches that achieved great notoriety; he is also author of songs, creole songs, and boleros. A prolific author, he is considered the creator of the guajira genre.

The glorious Alhambra theater was the best stage for his successes, premiering La Isla de las cotorras there. Among his most popular works are "El arroyo que murmura", "El quitrín", "Flor de Yumurí", "Un Bolero en la noche".