Following the footsteps of Eloísa: the artistic path of Eloísa D’Herbil before her arrival in Buenos Aires

Abstract

The pianist and composer Eloísa D’Herbil (Cádiz 1847, Buenos Aires 1943) has stirred up an increasing interest among the music community in the last decades, attracting attention of performers, historians and musicographers for being considered the first female composer of Tango. Despite this acknowledgement, the historiography of Eloisa is still in darkness and remains practically untouched ever since the information revealed by Vicente Gesualdo more than sixty years ago.

In this paper I intend to recover the artistic framework of this author throughout the period before her arrival in Buenos Aires, particularly focusing on the evolution of her repertoire, her compositions, her performance on stage and its media feedback. Shedding a light on these features will provide us better tools in order to position Eloísa D’Herbil in the porteña music scene during the late XIX and early XX centuries. Furthermore, it is my interest to amend certain errors and to fix, as far as possible, some inaccuracies that continue to be reproduced to the present day.