Juan Nepomucino Goetz - Goetz in Santiago de Cuba

Goetz in Santiago De Cuba

When Esteban Salas y Castro, choirmaster in the Cathedral of Santiago de Cuba, died in 1803, the election of the new Maestro de Capilla was an extraordinary event. It had been a foregone conclusion that Francisco José Hierrezuelo, long-time assistant of Salas, would be elected. Came the day, and Hierrezuelo spotted a certain well-qualified German priest in the choir. Blind with rage, and fearing the bishop had planned a conspiracy to thwart him, Hierrezuelo refused to take the examination, picked up his pen and wrote infuriated letters. The bishop persuaded the German, none other than Goetz, to renounce his candidacy, but Hierrezuelo had so offended the bishop and the town council by his irate letters that, despite grovelling apologies, he got only a minor position in the chapel. He was never to become maestro. The competent and hard-working Juan París was appointed, and Goetz moved on to Havana, where his arrival also had remarkable consequences.