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La Cumparsita
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Browse piano sheets by Gerardo Matos Rodríguez on Zen Virtual Piano. Gerardo Hernán Matos Rodríguez, known as Becho (Montevideo, 1897–1948), was a pianist and composer of tangos, milongas and canciones criollas. An amateur pianist, he composed his renowned tango La cumparsita in 1917 on the piano of the Federación de Estudiantes of Uruguay. UNESCO describes the young architecture student who wrote La Cumparsita with a cardboard keyboard and a melody that came to him like a vertigo. A tango composed by an amateur pianist on a student federation’s piano, and told by UNESCO as the story of a young architecture student, can be read as a tango whose beginnings are told in more than one way. He was born in Montevideo, the son of Emilio Matos, owner of the cabaret Moulin Rouge, and studied architecture at the Mathematics School of his home town. He soon left those studies, drawn by the intense and varied nightlife the capital then had. A father who owned a cabaret and a course in architecture can be read as two quite different worlds around one young composer. The tango orchestra led by Roberto Firpo premiered La Cumparsita at the café La Giralda, and its first recording was made for the Victor house the same year by the group led by the pianist Alberto Alonso and the bandoneonist Minotto Di Cicco. He sold the composition to the Breyer publishing house of Buenos Aires for thirty pesos and fifty paper copies, and in 1923 he recovered his copyrights with the help of friends and members of the Asociación Argentina de Autores y Compositores de Música. Later Pascual Contursi and Enrique P. Maroni modified the original music without the permission of its composer and added a lyric and a new title, Si supieras, which led to a long and difficult judicial proceeding. Between a sale to a publisher, a recovery of rights in 1923 and changes made without permission, the rights to one tango were in play at three separate moments. He later lived in Buenos Aires and in Paris and worked as Uruguayan consul to Germany, and in 1931 he collaborated in the music of the film Luces de Buenos Aires, shot in Joinville, France, and starring Carlos Gardel. He founded the Asociación General de Autores del Uruguay (AGADU) in 1929, and among his almost eighty registered works AGADU highlights Che papusa oí, Botija linda, La muchacha del circo, Mocosita, Adiós Argentina and La Cumparsita. A composer who founded an authors’ society, and who recovered his copyrights in 1923 with the help of friends, might well have cared about the rights to music.
Browse piano sheets by Gerardo Matos Rodríguez on Zen Virtual Piano.
Gerardo Hernán Matos Rodríguez, known as Becho (Montevideo, 1897–1948), was a pianist and composer of tangos, milongas and canciones criollas. An amateur pianist, he composed his renowned tango La cumparsita in 1917 on the piano of the Federación de Estudiantes of Uruguay. UNESCO describes the young architecture student who wrote La Cumparsita with a cardboard keyboard and a melody that came to him like a vertigo. A tango composed by an amateur pianist on a student federation’s piano, and told by UNESCO as the story of a young architecture student, can be read as a tango whose beginnings are told in more than one way.
He was born in Montevideo, the son of Emilio Matos, owner of the cabaret Moulin Rouge, and studied architecture at the Mathematics School of his home town. He soon left those studies, drawn by the intense and varied nightlife the capital then had. A father who owned a cabaret and a course in architecture can be read as two quite different worlds around one young composer.
The tango orchestra led by Roberto Firpo premiered La Cumparsita at the café La Giralda, and its first recording was made for the Victor house the same year by the group led by the pianist Alberto Alonso and the bandoneonist Minotto Di Cicco. He sold the composition to the Breyer publishing house of Buenos Aires for thirty pesos and fifty paper copies, and in 1923 he recovered his copyrights with the help of friends and members of the Asociación Argentina de Autores y Compositores de Música. Later Pascual Contursi and Enrique P. Maroni modified the original music without the permission of its composer and added a lyric and a new title, Si supieras, which led to a long and difficult judicial proceeding. Between a sale to a publisher, a recovery of rights in 1923 and changes made without permission, the rights to one tango were in play at three separate moments.
He later lived in Buenos Aires and in Paris and worked as Uruguayan consul to Germany, and in 1931 he collaborated in the music of the film Luces de Buenos Aires, shot in Joinville, France, and starring Carlos Gardel. He founded the Asociación General de Autores del Uruguay (AGADU) in 1929, and among his almost eighty registered works AGADU highlights Che papusa oí, Botija linda, La muchacha del circo, Mocosita, Adiós Argentina and La Cumparsita. A composer who founded an authors’ society, and who recovered his copyrights in 1923 with the help of friends, might well have cared about the rights to music.
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Common questions
Gerardo Hernán Matos Rodríguez, known as Becho (1897–1948), was a Montevideo pianist and composer of tangos, milongas and canciones criollas.
He composed it in 1917 on the piano of the Federación de Estudiantes of Uruguay.
The Asociación General de Autores del Uruguay was founded by Matos Rodríguez in 1929.