EL ARTE AL SERVICIO DE LA PATRIA

One of the greatest Peruvian poets is undoubtedly Mariano Melgar. His poems are the highest expression of romanticism in Peru and were written many years before the European Romantic movement had affected America. This is the reason it is said that he is the first romantic poet in all America and one of the precursore of that movement in the world. Moreover, his poems reflect the time Melgar lived and the role of artists during the process of the emancipation. In 1814, when he wrote his "Marcha Patriotica" (Patriotic March) the nationalistic movement against the Spanish was taking on a revolutionary fervor. Mariano Melgar was born in 1790 in Arequipa and studied at the San Jeronimo Seminario in order to be a Catholic priest. Later on, going to Lima he studied law at San Marcos University. After returning to Arequipa to visit his beloved Silvia, he became a revolutionary. When the Pumacahua revolution arose he began assisting the movement by writing its manifesto and some patriotic poems. Although he liked music very much, his early exposure to music was very simple; the only secular music he knew was that of the barrel organ and the military band. At that time, most of the Peruvian Criollos and Mestizos used to sing the popular yaravies. Melgar liked to sing this kind of folk song. One of his patriotic poems was "Marcha Patriotica". Melgar wrote the words but not the music, because although he was a poet he was not a musician as many persons until now have erroneously believed. Melgar's associate, Pedro Jimenez de Abril Tirado (Pedro Tirado), who was a musician, composed the music of the Patriotic March, which out of fear of the Spanish was not written in score but merely sung. That old song, a yaravi, was sung in the revolution like a patriotic chant. As the song has been passed down orally, it was possible for me to hear it many times from very old persons and to note it carefully. After checking the melody in various places with different persons, I have written it anew. It is a kind of a re-elaboration of the primitive version, and now we have the score of this very old and important patriotic chant.6KJ00004276237論文departmental bulletin pape