Presentation by Cristina Bordas on Félix Máximo López

In the conference given by Cristina Bordas at the Prado Museum, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the composer's death, at minute 16:10 - she comments: "it is the only score of this work that we know of". Big mistake since my edition has been registered in the National Library of Spain for 20 years.

It should have said: the only source of the composer's manuscript that has been found. How can a professor in musicology give a lecture at the Prado Museum and ignore the unique and great work of recovering this work? Because she also talks about "researchers". But what have they "investigated"? Ah, who is a domestic composer, she comments, "with a theatrical score to make music at home," she continues. But did López have an Opera House in his house? Did he live in a Palace? No, he lived in an apartment on Calle de las Fuentes in Madrid. Where did you get this information that FML had performed that play in his house? I have been researching for more than 25 years and I could not find it ... Only, and as I explained on my website superopera.com 21 years ago, the newsletter of the Academa de San Fernando, where Barbieri thinks the following:

<< ... all three [the three acts] had to be executed previously, perhaps at the home of a solicitor, close friend and neighbor of D. Félix, who lived on Calle de las Fuentes, where they frequently met for social gatherings both families, our organist being the soul of fun with his music and poetry. >>

But it is one thing to say, to suppose, "they must have been executed" because he had a neighbor friend with whom the families used to meet, to "they were executed" and with evidence (posters, criticisms, comments in publications, etc.).

Also, the term "domestic", as a musician sounds like "domestic animal" to me (it could be a dog). To qualify as domestic a great work of lyrical musical art - let us remember that music is superior to all the arts, including painting, because it is the purest form of human expression - is to say that all the great geniuses of music were in reality nothing more than "domestic dogs". That FML had worked in the Royal Palace does not automatically make him a vassal dog for eternity, both he and his work. Ah, maybe that's why my discovery in 1999 dusted off a taboo that no one dared to consider for almost two centuries. If my website superopera.com published this work on the 7 seas, it was almost solely for its content, not because the musician earned his livelihood, to survive him and his family barely, thanks to the Court. Everybody knows that practically all the musicians of all the countries of that time and previous worked for the Court. But where does the line that marks the artistic freedom of the genius lie? If we compare him with Goya, his compadre, we will realize that he had two lives, that of courtly orders, and that of his personal point of view. Ms Bordas's presentation emphasizes, making a great effort, to highlight that a worker from the Royal Palace, who was supported by a very meager salary, although his position was "very important", never before and now can be elevated to a higher category that of "Disparate" (I sense the derogatory charge of the word), little musician, come on, to the pure and hard distinction of what has already been framed with his official position of first organist that was domestically promoted to first. Because if music has the mission of transcending and being worthy of crossing borders, in the case of López, this is forbidden (Google puts the Bordas video in the first place, to pigeonhole him as a domestic dog).

‌Remembering the famous anecdote when Liszt performed before the Tsar of Russia, stopping when he began to speak, because if the Tsar speaks, even Liszt has to shut up ... And another similar one that happened to Chopin as a young man. We see that history is one and nothing more than one. On the one hand the monarchy, and on the other, of inescapable force, the artistic freedom of geniuses.

At the time of giving a recital in the Russian court, Liszt became so annoyed by the Tsar speaking

during his performance he stopped playing. When asked, he said it was "because we must all be silent when his majesty speaks." Illustration by Camblery. FL, Hungarian pianist and composer, October 22, 1811 - July 31, 1886.

- Image ID: KF0HTC

But this is the fearful "vision" of Mrs. Bordas, who incidentally invented the chair of musical iconography precisely for this purpose, it seems, that of lowering the art of music through painting.