Cuban musicologist, composer, music critic and lawyer.

Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes was born on April 3, 1874 in Havana (Cuba). He was the son of Eugenio Sánchez de Fuentes, a Spanish playwright and poet, and Josefa Peláez Cardiff, a pianist and singer from Puerto Rico; brother of Eugenio and María Sánchez de Fuentes; and maternal uncle of the Cuban poet Eugenio Florit.

Eduardo attended the conservatory founded by the pianist and composer Hubert de Blanck and received private lessons from the Cuban masters Carlos Anckermann and Ignacio Cervantes. In Spain, he obtained his high school diploma at the Instituto Cardenal Cisneros in Madrid and earned a university degree in civil law in 1895. In the 1890s he composed his first works, some of which became very popular, such as the habanera "Tú" (1892) and the zarzuela "Entre primos" (1896). Sánchez de Fuentes worked as a public prosecutor and land registrar in Havana, Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba in the first decade of the 1900s. He was a founding member of the Academia Nacional de Artes y Letras de Cuba and won the first composition prize awarded by this institution with the work "Cuarteto de cuerdas" (1910).Eduardo travelled back to Spain, received an award for his symphonic work "Serenata española" (1911) and gave lectures in Madrid and Avilés. He also visited the cities of Seville, Málaga, Santander and Granada. He interviewed Manuel de Falla during his stay in Granada, and the interview was published in "Revista Pro-Arte Musical" on November 15, 1929. He also corresponded for many years with Falla and other prominent figures like Joaquín Turina, Lucrecia Bori and Giovanni Martinelli.

Sánchez de Fuentes carried out significant musicological and educational work during the 1920s in Cuba. He created the Conciertos de Música Típica Cubana and the Festivales de Canciones Cubanas in Cienfuegos. He also published "El folklore en la música cubana" (1923), "Influencia de los ritmos africanos en nuestro cancionero" (1927) and "Las nuevas tendencias del arte sonoro" (1927). From 1930 to 1942, he was director of the Academia Nacional de Artes y Letras de Cuba, and in 1939 he represented his country at the International Music Congress organised by the American Musicological Society. Soon afterwards, he premiered the ballet "Dioné" (1940) with Alicia Alonso as principal dancer, founded the Corporación Nacional de Autores in 1941, and presented the opera "Kabelia" (1942). He worked as a music critic for the daily "El Mundo" and other Cuban periodicals.

Prestigious singers like Hipólito Lázaro and Enma Calvé included his songs in their recitals and concerts. Sánchez de Fuentes received numerous distinctions, including the Grand Badge of Honour and Merit of the Cuban Red Cross, the gold medal of Havana City Council; the Cross of the Royal Order of George I of Greece, and the Italian Gold Grand Cross. He married María Luisa Sell Mejías and had one child.

In addition to the works mentioned above, he composed music for the stage and symphonic, chamber and vocal pieces that often incorporate popular melodies and beats like the habanera or the bolero. Some of the most notable are the operas "Yumurí" (1898), "El náufrago" (1901), "Dolorosa" (1911), "Doreya" (1918) and "El caminante" (1921); the zarzuelas "Cuartel general" (1895), "Los líos de Perdiduelas" (1896), "La dulce caña" (1922) and "Cubita bella" (1923); the operettas "El caballero de plata" (1915) and "Después de un beso" (1916); the oratorio "Navidad" (1924); the symphonic poem "Anacaona" (1928); "Suite miniatura Enma Luisa" (1927) for chamber orchestra; the bolero "Ella puso un dolor en su mirada"; and the habaneras "A unos ojos" or "Íntima". He also authored the monographs "Viejos ritmos cubanos" (1937), "La música aborigen de América" (1938) and "Panorama actual de la música cubana" (1940). He passed away in the Cuban capital on September 6, 1944 at the age of seventy.