José White Lafitte
Cuban violinist and composer (1836–1918)
José Silvestre White Lafitte (17 January 1836 in Matanzas, Cuba – 12-15 March 1918 in Paris, France), also known as Joseph White, was a Cuban-French violinist and composer.
Biography
His father, Don Carlos White, was Spanish and his mother was Afro-Cuban.
After receiving early musical training from his father, who was an amateur violinist, José White gave his first concert in Matanzas on 21 March 1854. He was accompanied by the visiting American pianist-composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, "who encouraged him to pursue further violin studies in Paris and raised money for him to travel there."
José White studied at the Paris Conservatory, initially with Jean-Delphin Alard, between the years 1855 and 1871, winning the 1856 First Grand Prize. He became a French citizen in 1870.
In 1875, White went to Havana, then to Brazil, where he was director of the Imperial Conservatory in Rio de Janeiro and served as court musician for the Emperor Pedro II until 1889. He then returned to Paris and stayed there for the rest of his life. The 1737 "Swansong" Stradivarius was his instrument. He was highly praised by Rossini.
Compositions
Mainly written for the violin, White's output comprised some 30 works, including a virtuosic Violin Concerto in F♯ Minor, recorded in 1975 by Aaron Rosand and in 1997 by Rachel Barton Pine.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “José White Lafitte” as cuban violinist and composer (1836–1918). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as cuban violinist and composer (1836–1918). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1303307. VIAF identifies the subject as 59348355. The Library of Congress control number is no91026310. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1836, 1918, 1854 and 1855.
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This entry incorporates text from “José White Lafitte” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.