I read in an Early Music magazine of new research by Musicologist Alejandro Vera (2006) that Murcia lived his later years and died in Madrid in later life ....i From updated Wiki . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Murcia

Some tablatures travelled to Mexico and Chile but he probably didn't

So he was not the first great Mexican composer

Alejandro Vera: Una nueva fuente para la música del siglo XVIII: el manuscrito Cifras Selectas de Guitarra de Santiago de Murcia (1722). Revista Resonancias Nº 18, mayo de 2006. Facultad de Artes. Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

You or he meant that Murcia never walked trought Mexico's landscape????

Hi Eric ....thats what Vera suggests. The evidence is that the manuscripts were there ... but who took them.? Maybe he went to Mexico and came back to Spain where he is (it seems ) buried. Or just that someone took his manuscripts over there (there is also one also in Chile)

I want to believe he did go there..........

I was reading that article too ( i suppose is the same), it seems that Murcia was not in Mexico or -a lot less probably- in Chile
(Chile means "confín" = "the far end" )

There were good communication between both continents, so his manuscripts are no real proof that he was here

I never knew Murcia had a connection to the New World. Does anybody know of the guitarist Huerta? I cannot recall if either Huerta or Ferranti was considered the first European guitarist to visit the Americas.

There seems to be influences from New World and also African music in some of Murcias music. But i guess like potatoes and tomatoes that music became available in Spain

I had never heard of Huerta but he seems to have been a big star and gave concerts in America in the 1820s . Baltimore Patriot in 1824: "In the hands of Mr. Huerta the guitar is as it were, multiplied. It becomes a bugle, a trumpet, a drum. The delicacy of his touch, the rapidity and at the same time the accuracy of his execution are truly wonderful" (1 July 1824). http://www.hernanmouro.com/the-sublime-barbarian

Ferranti seems to have gone to America in the 1830's