SOURCE: Pennington, Eric. “The Role of Music in El concierto de San Ovidio.” Romance Notes XXVI, no. 1 (fall 1985): 18-21.

In the following essay, Pennington investigates the significance of music in El concierto de San Ovidio.

As El concierto de San Ovidio concludes, an actor playing the role of Valentín Haüy appears before the audience and relates the historical veracity of the events dramatized in the play. He mentions how the degrading spectacle of blind musicians being ridiculed for profit spurred him in his life's work to better the fate of the blind,¹ but as he comtemplates the death of the blind violinist David (the protagonist of the work), and the sorry circumstances surrounding his demise, Haüy rhetorically asks, “¿Quién asume ya esa muerte? ¿Quién la rescata?”² He then pauses to listen to the music which Donato, a former companion of David, plays in...