Classical music from Mexico

The classical music of Mexico refers to the musical styles that developed in the Mexican territory due to the influence of European academic music from the viceregal period until the XXI.

OFUNAM

Viceroyalty

During the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, music of the same splendor and color as the contemporary baroque music of Europe emerged in New Spain. The musical compositions were dedicated to the religious worship of the time, as well as, in some cases, to represent the deepest human feelings.

There is a large number of musical and documentary works that describe the musical activity around the Catholic Church during the viceregal period of Mexico. Among the cities with the greatest musical development are Mexico City, the city of Puebla, Oaxaca, Tepotzotlán and the old Valladolid (today Morelia).

• Pedro de Ghent (1480-1572). Founder of the first music school in New Spain.
• Juan Xuárez (1504 - 1539). First chapel master (1539) of the Cathedral of Mexico.
• Hernando Franco (1532- 1585). Master of chapel of the Cathedral of Mexico.
• Pedro Bermúdez. (1558 - 1605) Master of chapel of the Cathedral of Puebla during the early seventeenth century.
• Bernardo de Peralta y Escudero. (1575 - 1617) Composer of polyphonic works of the Cathedral of Puebla.
• Juan de Lienas. (fl.1617-1654) Novo-Hispanic composer of the sixteenth century.
• Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla. (1590 - 1664) (Maestro de Capilla between 1629 and 1664). Most Important Mexican Composer of the CenturyXVII.
• Juan García de Zéspedes (ca. 1619 - 1678). Master of chapel of the Cathedral of Puebla.
• Francisco López Capillas. (1608 - 1674) Puebla. Second half of the centuryXVII.
• Francisco de Vidales (1632-1702). Organist and composer of the Cathedral of Puebla.
• Miguel Matheo de Dallo and Lana. Puebla.
• Juan Navarro Gaditanus.(c.1550 - c.1610) Franciscan friar. Cathedral of Morelia, Convent of Santa Rosa de María. Valladolid.
• Antonio de Salazar. (1650 - 1715) Master of chapel of the Cathedral of Mexico between 1688 and 1715.
• Manuel de Sumaya (1678 - 1755). Composer of the second known opera of the New World.
• Santiago Billoni (1700-1763). Master of Chapel of Durango Cathedral.
• Ignatius of Jerusalem and Stella. (1707 - 1769) Italian composer. Master of chapel of the Cathedral of Mexico from 1749 to 1769.
• Matheo Tollis de la Roca. Successor of Ignatius of Jerusalem.
• José Manuel Delgado (1747-1819) Mexican musician and composer.
• José Aldana. (1758-1810). Most important composer of the second half of the eighteenth century in New Spain.
• Manuel Arenzana. (ca 1762 - 1821). Master of chapel of Puebla in the principles of the. Musical style with the new European trends of the time.
• José María Bustamante (1777 - 1861)
• José Mariano Elízaga (1786 - 1842). Master of chapel in Valladolid (Morelia) and Mexico City, and composer of classicism.

19th century

Mexican music during the XIX century was subjected to the same influences as in the rest of the Western world. Outstanding authors are José María Bustamante, Manuel Antonio Del Corral, Ignacio Ocadiz, Eduardo Gavira, Octavio Yáñez, Ángel J. Garrido and Tomás León. The composer Melesio Morales was a tireless promoter of culture and music in the country. Macedonio Alcalá was a violinist, pianist and composer remembered today especially for his waltz "God never dies".

During the Porfirian era, composers created pieces aimed primarily at meeting the needs of the well-to-do class, this was reflected in a taste for dance music, especially waltzes and polkas. The best-known exponent is Juventino Rosas and his best-known work, Sobre las olas, evokes the Viennese waltz to the point that authorship was denied to him because it was considered that a Mexican was not up to the task. European composers. Other Mexican composers from this period are Felipe Villanueva (1863-93), Ernesto Elorduy (1853-1912), author of exquisite mazurkas that mix the traditional Polish form with Spanish-Mexican type melodies, and Ricardo Castro (1864-1907), who composed the first symphonies and concertos (for piano and cello) of modern Mexico.

20th century

Nationalism and modernism

Younger composers, such as José Rolón (1876-1945) and Manuel M. Ponce (1882-1948), continued with a rather romantic style, but little by little they transitioned —also due to European influence— towards a modernist language that he was exploring polytonal and neomodal combinations for the first time, albeit with a traditional sense of instrument use. In particular, Ponce is responsible for part of the most representative Mexican repertoire of the time, for piano and guitar, an instrument to which he contributed in its modern development thanks to a direct collaboration with the Spanish soloist Andrés Segovia.

The first Mexican composer who undertook research aimed at tonal organization and the division of the scale into intervals smaller than the semitone, was Julián Carrillo (1875-1965), who wrote numerous musical treatises and published his theory under the name Sound 13. For him, sounds can be divided into semitone halves (fourths), semitone halves (eighths), etc., but also into any other rational fraction (sixths, ninths, thirteenths, etc.), and for this reason he also created his own musical instruments (pianos and harps, especially) and composed a wide repertoire. Likewise, he composed microtonal works for choir and four operas. Augusto Novaro was a composer and theoretician who also investigated the possibilities of microtonalism, although his work is much less widespread, studied and recognized.

At the same time, in a cultural environment that sought to find and exalt Mexican national roots, after the triumph of the Mexican revolution, a stream of nationalist composers was born who created based on folkloric and popular musical themes. Some of them combined these themes with modern techniques, such as polyrhythm, modalism, and atonalism. The most outstanding composers of this period are Candelario Huízar (1883-1970) —who produced works in a markedly Mexican style, but without resorting to the textual quotation of popular themes—, Carlos Chávez (1899-1978) —visible head of the nationalist movement and creator of the Mexico Symphony Orchestra and the National Institute of Fine Arts—and Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940)—frequently considered the most representative and talented composer of his generation.

The so-called “Group of Four” also stands out, formed by Blas Galindo (1910-93), who used traditional themes such as mariachi sounds and who also left a wide catalog of polytonal and atonal music; José Pablo Moncayo (1912-58) who used traditional Veracruz sones to create one of the best-known Mexican symphonic works, Huapango (1940); Salvador Contreras (1910-82), author of symphonic and chamber music, tonal and later atonal, in a more personal and developed style. Paulino Paredes (1913-1957) is known for his symphonic poem Cañón Huasteca (1956), an example of late descriptive impressionism. Other composers from this period are Eduardo Hernández Moncada (1899-1995), Luis Sandi (1905-96) and Miguel Bernal Jiménez (1910-56).

It should be noted that this current, like other cultural branches of post-revolutionary Mexico, had great government support, which overshadowed alternative movements. The same phenomenon occurred in painting with muralism and in literature with the revolutionary novel.

In the Yucatán peninsula a group of composers was formed, which projected a development of regional opera: Gustavo Río Escalante, Fausto Pinelo Río, Cornelio Cárdenas Samada, Arturo Cosgaya Ceballos, Efraín Pérez Cámara and the Norwegian musician Halfan Jebe, who He lived in Mérida, Yucatán, and worked not only as a musician but also as a teacher at the Conservatory.

Avant-garde and postmodernism

At the beginning of the second half of the XX century, Mexico, thanks to the openness policies towards the fugitives of the different international or national armed conflicts in other countries, welcomed into exile several foreign composers who settled in the country after 1940. Prominent among them are Rodolfo Halffter, of Spanish origin, to whom we owe the formalization of the teaching of serial music at the National Conservatory of Music; Conlon Nancarrow, of American origin, who is credited with the development of polyrhythm and polymetrics through the experimental use of the automatic pianola; and Gerhart Muench, of German origin, who exerted great influence among the new Mexican composers. The latter can be described as a generation that carried out many avant-garde searches: Mario Lavista (1943), founder and director of the magazine Pauta, whose work is known in the field of concert music in Mexico, Spain and the United States, continued to the formula for teaching and managing political-cultural power created by Carlos Chávez in his Composition Workshop at the National Conservatory of Music and later at the Superior School of Music, training many of the following generation of composers based in Mexico, cited above. forward. Mario Lavista received the Guggenheim scholarship for his opera Aura and has published many essays, most of them collected in the book “Texts around music”. Other composers that can be mentioned, related to this period, are Francisco Núñez (1945), Graciela Agudelo (1945), Federico Ibarra (1946) and Daniel Catán (1949), among others.

Manuel Enríquez developed personal models of musical writing and created an abundant repertoire for bowed instruments and percussion, mainly, as well as symphonic works in which for the first time the concept of tone yields its prominent place to texture (that is, the elaboration of a range of sounds via instrumental treatment). At the level of cultural policy in Mexico between 1960 and 1990 Manuel Enríquez was the most influential composer.

Without a doubt, the composer who in this period manages to introduce his work with greater evidence in the field of the international avant-garde is Julio Estrada. The son of Spanish immigrants exiled in Mexico as a result of the Spanish Civil War, he is a full-time professor and researcher at the National School of Music of the UNAM (Coyoacán, DF) and at the Institute of Aesthetic Research of that same university. Estrada is responsible for the development of multidimensional musical representation techniques and for the formation of analysis and structuring models of musical pitches, using tools taken from set theory, the subject of his book Music and theory of finite groups (3 variables booleanas) [UNAM, 1984], written in collaboration with the mathematician Jorge Gil. Among Estrada's works, the opera Los murmullos del páramo stands out, based on the novel Pedro Páramo, by Juan Rulfo.

Other composers who contributed to the Mexican musical creation of this period are Joaquín Gutiérrez Heras (1927) -especially known for his film music-, Mario Kuri Aldana (1931-2013), Leonardo Velázquez (1935), Manuel Jorge de Elías (1939) -who in addition to being a composer and promoter of Latin American music, stood out as a conductor- and Héctor Quintanar (1936 - 2013), a disciple of Chávez who was responsible for the continuity of the Composition Workshop of the National Conservatory of Music and who inaugurated the Electronic Music Laboratory on that campus, in 1971 (see below: Electronic and electroacoustic music)- and Alicia Urreta (1931-1987). And one cannot fail to mention Graciela Agudelo, author of an extensive and varied catalog of works, who has dedicated herself to pedagogy and the dissemination of music, both in organizational activities, as well as in radio, teaching, academic, editorials and parliamentarians of an international nature. Always preserving the traits of her own style, and the uniqueness of her genuine voice, she is a composer who practices a healthy eclecticism, that is, a multiple orientation in which she can express herself beyond the languages of which she is OK; she, then, does not use them as an end, but as a referent. In her compositional work, Agudelo's identification with America is perceived; which has led her, as her creator, to discover and explore an aesthetic and philosophical vein committed to her roots. She combines her activity as a composer with pedagogy; convergence of vocations that is verified in the quality and the number of didactic productions dedicated to children and young people.

Some authors born in the 1950s continued to be open to new languages and aesthetics, but with a clear tendency towards hybridity with very diverse musical currents. Proof of this are the works of Arturo Márquez (1950), Marcela Rodríguez (1951), Federico Álvarez del Toro (1953), Eduardo Soto Millán (1956).

Among the active Mexican composers of the succeeding generation, we can mention Ana Lara (1959), who completed specialized studies in Warsaw with Witold Lutoslawski, also obtaining in 2004 a Master's degree in Ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland (USA)..). Her work ranges from music for solo, chamber, symphonic and choral instruments to choreographic and theatrical music. She has been awarded the Young Creators scholarships (1989-1990), the United States-Mexico Artist Residency Exchange Program (1995) and the Rockefeller Foundation Artist Residency in Bellagio, Italy (2000). She is currently a member of the National System of Creators; the creation of the "International Festival of Music and Scene of Mexico City" is due to her. Hilda Paredes —who studied her doctorate in composition at the University of Manchester— was the first Latin American composer to present her own opera on European stages and has been a promoter of contemporary music for Latin American youth, and a professor and lecturer at various international composition seminars.. Born in Tehuacán Puebla and based in London, she is firmly established internationally as one of the most important composers of her generation. She completed her first musical studies in Mexico City and later participated actively in master classes at Darington Summer School by Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle and Richard R. Bennett in Great Britain and by Franco Donatoni at the Academia Cighiana. She graduated from the Guildhall School of Music, she earned her MA from the City University of London and her PhD from the University of Manchester. Despite living in London for many years, her participation in the musical life of Mexico has continued, as a professor at the National School of Music of the University, as well as other institutions, as a producer of the radio program Apariciones Sonoras del siglo XX of Radio UNAM and collaborating with various Mexican performers, ensembles and orchestras. His music has been performed by leading international soloists and groups such as L'instant donné, Neue Vocalsolisten, Lontano, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Recherche, Aventure, Collegium Novum Zurich, Trío Arbós, Ensemble Signal, Grup Instrumental de Valencia, Plural Ensemble, Arditti Quartet, Court Circuit, among others. Her work has been presented at major international festivals such as: Huddersfield Festival in Great Britain; Eclat and Ultraschall in Germany; Festival d'Automne à Paris: Musique d'aujourd'hui, in France; Wien Modern, in Austria; Akiyoshi Dai and Takefu Contemporary Music Festival in Japan; Archipel in Switzerland; Autumn in Warsaw, in Poland; Last in Oslo; Melbourne Festival in Australia; ISCM, Alicante International Festival and ENSEMNS, in Spain; the Venice Biennale and Traettoria in Parma, Festival of Arts and Ideas, New Haven, June in Buffalo and in the Portrait Series at Miller Theater in New York in the US; Ars Musica, in Brussels; Cervantino Festival in Mexico, among others. University of York Music Press, currently publishes her most recent works.

Hebert Vázquez, a student of Mario Lavista, son of a Uruguayan scientist who emigrated to Mexico with his family because of the military dictatorship in his country, has been one of the main promoters of the new musical theory developed in Mexico, on the space of musical pitches, also under the approach of set theory. He himself has given musical analysis seminars in the main musical education establishments of the Mexican Republic.

Javier Torres Maldonado has been a professor of composition and new technologies at the Italian conservatories «A. Vivaldi» (Alessandria) and «A. Bonporti» (Trento), as well as director of the «Dynamis Ensemble» of Milan. See "A. Vivaldi» from Alessandria He currently carries out intense and important pedagogical work as a tenured professor of composition and new technologies at the G. Verdi Conservatory in Milan. He has received many of the most prestigious international awards in the field of musical composition abroad (&# 34;Commande d'Etat' of the Government of France, "Queen Elisabeth" of Brussels, "Queen Maria Jose" of Geneva, "Alfredo Casella" of Siena, "Prix des Musiciens" of the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, "Ad Referendum II" of Montréal, Canada, "Città di Barletta", Italy, and twice consecutive times he was awarded second place in the "Mozart" contest in Salzburg, Austria) thanks to different works in which a solid trade as a composer coexists with interesting conceptions about the manipulation of temporal velocity, the spatialization of sound sources and acoustic illusions. All his production is published by Suvini Zerboni (Milan) and Universal Edition (Vienna) publishing houses.

Carlos Sánchez Gutiérrez, currently professor of composition at the Eastman School of Music in New York and winner of international awards in the United States (Guggenheim, Fulbright, Koussevitzky, Fromm, American Academy of Arts and Letters), has founded together with Ricardo Zohn -Muldoon, who is also a professor at Eastman, the Eastman Broadband Ensemble. Ignacio Baca Lobera, who teaches composition and music theory in the city of Querétaro, has works that combine the complexity of a non-traditional formal search with an almost aggressive coloristic ingenuity that recalls the route opened by Enríquez. Ignacio Baca Lobera was taught by Julio Estrada and Joji Yuasa, as well as Jean-Charles François and Brian Ferneyhough at the University of California at San Diego, an institution where he obtained his doctorate in musical composition. In his chamber and orchestra music he uses techniques such as random processes, microtonalism, network theory and graphing methods applied to composition. Baca Lobera has received honorable mentions in the José Pablo Moncayo for orchestra (1982) and Lan Adomián for chamber music (1980) competitions, both in Mexico. He has been a finalist in the New Music Today competition (1988) in Japan, the "Kranichsteiner Musikpreis" in Darmstadt, Germany (1992) and the lrino Music Prize for orchestral music in Japan (1996).

Víctor Rasgado (1956) and Juan Trigos (1965) stood out at the beginning of the 1990s for their educational work, organizing international composition seminars with Franco Donatoni in Mexico City, they later followed their careers in different ways. The first of them, after receiving prizes such as the "Alfredo Casella International Composition Competition" (1993) or the Spoleto Opera International Competition, for his opera Anacleto Morones (1991), has continued his career as a teacher at the Center for Musical Research and Studies Tlamatinime (CIEM). For his part, Trigos developed an important musical activity in Mexico in the 1990s, both as a composer and as a conductor.

Armando Luna Ponce —a professor of composition and instrumentation at the National Conservatory of Music— is the author of a catalog that stands out for its expert handling of the chamber ensemble, almost always in a dialogue between personal proposals of coloristic and rhythmic interest, inspired by ancient classic forms, such as the chaconne, the zarabanda or also Mexican, such as the guateque. Leonardo Coral (1962) member of the National System of Creators, with more than 130 works, 23 CDs (four of them monographic), a neoclassical, sober and rigorous style. He is the author of various symphonic works: mythical animals, allegories, concerts for piano, guitar, viola, flute, cello. Professor at the National School of Music of the UNAM. Gabriela Ortiz (1964) —professor at the UNAM National School of Music— is the author of an extensive catalog that explores various aspects of Mexican postmodernism, including her video opera ¡Solely the truth!. María Granillo (1962) trained in Mexico, England and Canada; author of symphonic and chamber works such as Breathing music for orchestra or Trance for chamber ensemble. Professor at the National School of Music of the UNAM. Georgina Derbez, a student of Arturo Márquez, Ana Lara and the pianist Ana Maria Tradatti, is currently a Composition Teacher at the Higher School of Music of the National Center for the Arts.

Among the composers of the last generation are Leticia Cuen —student of Julio Estrada, resident in Paris since 2000, where he has released most of his chamber work—, Rodrigo Valdez Hermoso -student of Víctor Rasgado, winner of several awards including the R.E. National Award of Youth in Arts 2004 and the National Award for Choral Composition in 2005, in the same way he has been designated Resident Artist by the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec in 2013 and by the Ministries of Culture of Venezuela in 2006 and Colombia in 2009, his works have been performed and commissioned by international ensembles and orchestras. Gabriel Pareyón —student of Mario Lavista and Clarence Barlow, who has written for indigenous musical instruments using them under mathematical models of algorithms and series—, Mauricio Rodríguez —disciple of Estrada, Barlow and Ferneyhough, to whom we owe a job of meticulous musical representation, separated from the influence of his teachers—, Juan Cristóbal Cerrillo —who has been selected by international ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet and the chamber ensemble of the courses organized by the Acanthes festival, in France—, José Luis Hurtado —doctor in composition by Harvard University, where he attended Lindberg, Birtwistle, Ferneyhough and Lachenmann courses and Iván Ferrer Orozco -student of Mario Lavista and Armando Luna- who has worked using acoustic models as a source of inspiration and using them to deduce self-generating structures. Edgar Barroso who is studying his PhD in Composition with Hans Tutschku and Chaya Czernowin at Harvard University, but has also taken courses at the same institution with Helmut Lachenmann.

Adjusting to the tradition that intertwines the entire phenomenon of the foundation in the world of electroacoustic music studies, also in Mexico the first experiences in the field of music produced with technological means is due to a culturally hybrid figure, more scientific that musical: the Cybernetic Engineer Raúl Pavón Sarrelangue, who carried out, in the sixties, research studies in the field of music and new technologies, carrying out an electronic synthesizer for musical applications. Together with Héctor Quintanar, Raúl Pavón founded the first electroacoustic music studio in Mexico, a laboratory that was inserted in the context of the National Conservatory of Music.

In the field of electroacoustic music, it can be said^{[citation needed]} that this genre has reached maturity in Mexico today. Among the Mexican authors who have concentrated most of their energies on electroacoustic production, we can mention Antonio Russek (1954), Manuel Rocha Iturbide, Vicente Rojo Cama (1960), Roberto Morales Manzanares (1958) and Javier Álvarez (1956).. The latter has received international awards for his electroacoustic production. His work is characterized by the use of traditional Mexican instruments out of their original context, using them in works with mixed resources, as well as by the development of an aesthetic that seeks a different path from the roots of Latin American, pop and New Age music. to the complexity posed by avant-garde music. Among his relevant works we can mention Temazcal (1984), for maracas and electroacoustic sounds.

Other relevant electroacoustic music composers of these generations are Guillermo Galindo, Antonio Fernández Ros and Carlos Sandoval, who worked at the UPIC (founded by Xenakis) in Paris, making the works Tomos (1989) and Homage (1991).

Particularly is the case of the aforementioned Javier Torres Maldonado, who carries out a parallel activity as a composer of music for acoustic instruments and for electroacoustic media. In this field he has ventured with works in which the perception of the temporal speed of sound events is closely linked to the spatialization of sound. He has received commissions from renowned international institutions as well as the international GRAME prize in Lyon (France), and his pedagogical activity, developed mainly in Italy and Switzerland, stands out.

Among the most recent composers we can mention Víctor Romero, Israel Martínez, Juan Sebastián Lach, Andrés Solís, Rodrigo Sigal, Rogelio Sosa, Héctor Bravo Benard, Felipe Pérez-Santiago, Alejandro Casales, Mauricio Vázquez and Sergio Luque, who They have participated in electronic music festivals in Mexico, the United States, Europe and Japan.

It should be noted that currently the Radar festival, which stems from the Festival of the Historic Center of Mexico City, is one of the meetings dedicated to this genre of music in Mexico and includes Mexican composers of this genre in its programming.

List of Mexican composers

• Annex: Mexican Composers of Classical Music

Orchestras and soloists in the 20th and 21st centuries

Among the recognized orchestras are:

• Chamber of Fine Arts Orchestra
• Xalapa Symphony Orchestra
• Mexico State Symphony Orchestra
• UNAM Philharmonic Orchestra
• National Symphony Orchestra (Mexico)
• Philharmonic Orchestra of Mexico City
• Symphony Orchestra “Carlos Chávez”
• Jalisco Philharmonic Orchestra
• Yucatan Symphony Orchestra

Orchestral conducting

• Enrique Bátiz
• Sergio Cárdenas
• Ludwig Carrasco
• Julian Carrillo
• Carlos Chávez
• Manuel de Elías
• Luis Herrera de la Fuente
• Alondra de la Parra
• James Demster
• Eduardo Diazmuñoz
• Enrique Diemecke
• Fernando Lozano Rodríguez
• Eduardo
• Carlos Miguel Prieto
• Silvestre Revolts
• Zaeth Ritter Arenas
• Miguel Salmon Del Real
• Francisco Savín
• Pablo Varela
• Anatoly Zatin
• Armando Zayas
• Juan Carlos Lomónaco

Recorder

• Horacio Franco

Flute

• Wilfrido Terrazas
• Salvador Torre
• Alejandro Escuer
• Ruben Islands Bravo

Clarinet

• Luis Humberto Ramos
• Antonio Rosales
• Fernando Domínguez

Piano

• Ana Cervantes
• Raúl Herrera
• Daniela Liebman
• Mauritius Nader
• Silvia Navarrete
• Jorge Federico Osorio
• Guadalupe Parrondo

• Eva María Zuk (born in Poland and Mexican nationalized)

Organ

• Miguel Bernal Jiménez

Violin

• Ludwig Carrasco

• Julián Carrillo
• Enrique Diemecke
• Román Revolts

• Silvestre Revolts
• Higinio Ruvalcaba

• Henryk Szeryng (from Polish and Mexican nationalized origin)

Violet

• Omar Hernández-Hidalgo
• Javier Montiel
• Felisa Hernández Salmerón
• Alexander Bruck

Cello

• Carlos Prieto

Percussions

• Tambuco

Singers

• Francisco Araiza
• Juan Arvizu
• Javier Camarena
• Plácido Domingo
• Rosendo Flores
• Irma González
• Olivia Gorra
• Nestor Mesta Chayres
• Jesus
• Ramón Vargas
• Rolando Villazón

Classical music on the computer

• Carlos David López Grether

Cultural dissemination

Radio stations

- Mexico City, Federal District:

• Radio UNAM XEUN-AM 860 kHz
• Radio XEEP-AM 1060 kHz
• Opus XHIMER-FM 94.5 MHz

Cultural Institutions

• CONACULT
• INBA