Benjamín Castañeda
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Benjamín Castañeda Garrido (31 March 1846, Lima – 26 March 1913, Lima) was a Peruvian composer and teacher of music. His grammar of the Cantonese dialect may have been the first attempt published.
Castañeda was born in Lima, the son of José Domingo Castañeda Salcedo and Rosa Ramona Garrido. He was educated in Lima at the seminary of Santo Toribio and began his piano training with a Prof. Nussart, a Frenchman. He went on to Nice, France, to study under Czech pianist Josef Proksch and his son Theodor.[1] He is reputed to have been one of the first to introduce the music of Chopin to Lima, upon his return from France in 1865.[2]
Far East
Castañeda travelled to Japan and China in the late 1860s. His 137-page Cantonese grammar, the first ever such work published, appeared in Hong Kong in 1869,[3] followed the next year with a report on Japan-China trade published in Lima.[4] In 1877, his third work on the region, featuring Kwantung (Guangzhou) and Fukien (Fujian) Provinces, was published.[5]