DEDICATION TO MUSIC

Thousands of symbols cross through the musicians´ minds while they are executing some piece. Several are the theoretical subjects they need to get or at least to approach to excellence in performing. Lieta Molinet García is just 19 years old, but she has the responsibility to settle these knowledge in the future instrumentalists

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By Isabelle

The lights go out and a silence precedes to the multiple chords of guitars, violins and metals. The concert has begun. The most delicious sounds cross all the theater under the accurate baton of the director of the orchestra. The right confluence of sounds and gestures is the result of years of training, in which the theoretical matters have a leading major character.
Lieta Molinet García, the most outstanding student in her course, approaches us to one of those specialties not very known by the public, even though they are indispensable to settle the musical knowledge in any person.


Theoretical Subjects is a specialty that form the future musicologists or of music scientists. It prepares you essentially for research and also for teaching. It is strong, because besides studying the piano to a full extent, it is necessary to know all that is related to the history of music and other specialties like solfa, choral direction, counterpoint, harmony, orquestration. In short, we are the base to be able to play in a perfection way. Behind a conductor or an instrumentalist, there is our hand.

In addition, we are the vehicle to know the most novel aspects regarding music. That´s why it is so hard, difficult and incredibly unknown. Almost when you speak about musical studies, people think about a piano or a violin, but they never think you can be some day an researcher or a professor.

A trip to the origins
Lieta Molinet García was very small when she did the tests to enter the Manuel Saumell Conservatory in Havana. Her dream would be delayed again and again, because some of her scores prevented her to enroll there. She dreamed about being a singer, but it wasn´t singing the focus of her activity and success.

I always was fond of music. Singing delighted me and, the same at school or even in the day care center, I always took part in whichever activity would appear. My grandmother tells me that with hardly 15 months of been born they turn on the radio and I laughed enjoying its sound. Of course, when they turn it off me my weeping was tremendous. So it seems that my taste by music was born with me.


Singing was my first favorite. No instrument had drawn my attention until I entered in school. There It´s then where the piano shows up, and it has become, as singing is also, in my means of expression.

Because of her academic results, this girl had to dedicate many hours to the study of solfa and harmony. Nevertheless, it was until she was a teenager when Lieta began her musical studies.
When I entered the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory, it was as if It had arrived at Paradise. Every year mean something wonderful. Whenever it entered to school or shared a new knowledge with a friend, I felt something special.

I remember that in the first years I asked about everything; those things my classmates have known for a long time then, were unknown to me. Some were surprised when listening questions about subjects on which, supposedly, I should have mastered. And that´s that while they had begun at seven years of age, I began at 15.


When I was 11, the Mnister of Economy and Development of Germany invited me to sing at the Hannover Fair. I believe that her interest and my family´s made me possible to fulfill my dream about singing, even though I had surpassed the right age to begin to. I had a special learning program of five years, instead the normal fourteen the three levels lasted. I´m deeply thankful to Professor Miriam Lay, the great Cuban musician Rafael Lay´s daughter, whose work was essential in that process.


The small school in Cerro: a group of raw diamonds
Lieta rewards everybody with her smile. It is difficult to see another expression on her face. However, when she talks about her present students, her face lights up like the one of a mother speaking about the her children´s virtues.

During all my life I´ve tried to always participate in contests and some other activities. I like a lot the idea of trying myself. But one of the things that demands the more from me and gives me more pleasure is the opportunity to give classes to children


I began in the Manuel Saumell School with high school students and others even smaller. Then I was transferred to the Paulita Concepción School, in the municipality of Cerro, because they needed Solfa professors.

Every day I gather the fruits of my work. To know they understand me, that there is a lot of chemistry and interaction between us, and feeling they love me as much as I love them, is wonderful. I have many plans for them. My present students prefer the strings, so I am thinking about playing a didactic piece where they can show all they have learned.


Next year we´ll have a Festival dedicated to José Martí (the National Cuban Hero ) and I want to encourage them to participate with some research works, novel things. I believe they can do many things, because they´re good people, very active and smart. So I hope to continue gathering fruits.

A new concert finishes. The last chords are sent to the ether. An ovation rewards the excellence of the sounds. Each member of the orchestra thanks for the applause and, of course, they´ll dedicate some thought to that one person who, taught them in their childhood hundreds of symbols and notions indispensable to learn music.