Born 200 years ago, the American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849) not only influenced generations of other writers around the world, but also reshaped literature by giving birth to new genres. His iconic detective Auguste Dupin for instance set the trend for all those rational, cerebral detectives that would appear later on (Sherlock Holmes is an obvious example). Among his “celebrity” fans you can count writers as diverse as the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and the French poet Charles Baudelaire (who actually translated many of Poe’s works).
I used to read Poe a lot as a kid, so I was pretty much thrilled to end up living in Baltimore just blocks away from the place he is buried, at the Westminster Church. Shown in the map below is the church; you can actually see his white tombstone at the left of the church (right at the corner).
Agustín Barrios Mangoré, image taken from Wikipedia
Agustín Barrios Mangoré (1885-1944) contributions to the classical guitar repertoire is remarkable. This Paraguayan (1) composer was able to skillfully combine most of South and Central America’s popular rhythms with traditional classical styles (Baroque for instance) to produce songs that sound folkloric and universal at the same time. Here is a rendition I found on YouTube of one of my favorite songs of his, “La Catedral”. This piece has three movements, but I will only post the third one (Allegro solemne) . The influence of Bach is obvious on this one, but you can still hear some of America’s rhythms and melodies coming and going during the piece. The name of the guitar player on the video is Denis Azabagic.
(1) San Juan Bautista seems to have been the birthplace of Agustín Barrios Mangoré. I pinned it here (I know it is pretty rough, but blame Virtual Earth, not me!)
