Alejo Carpentier - Concerto Barroco

Baroque Concerto (1974) is not a novel; it is a small gem in which Alejo Carpentier's virtuosity as a musicologist crystallizes and, according to some, as a precursor of magical realism.

A brief work of maturity, it narrates the curious eighteenth-century journey of a Mexican aristocrat and his servant Filomeno, who, crossing the Atlantic, head to refined Venice during Carnival. In this city, a prodigious concert will bring together Louis Armstrong, Scarlatti and Handel, Vivaldi and his orchestra of music-loving pupils, the ghosts of Wagner and Stravinsky. A genuine explosion of color and music, Baroque Concerto traverses times and sounds, the Old and New Worlds, their cultures and histories, and is, for the author himself, the "theological summa of his career".