Silvestre Revueltas

Silvestre Revueltas Sánchez (Santiago Papasquiaro, December 31, 1899 - Mexico City, October 5, 1940) was a modernist Mexican composer of symphonic music from the first half of the XX, violinist and conductor. He is considered one of the most influential composers in Mexico, due to the scope and originality of his chamber music and of certain works that have become a very important part of the orchestral repertoire. These works, notably Sensemayá, are frequently performed, especially in Latin America.

General information

Revueltas' music has aroused international musicological interest, a phenomenon that was not observed until 50 years after his death. Different investigations are shaping a composer whose importance places him among the most original creators of 20th century music. Even Peter Garland, one of the main scholars of him, considers him the best composer to emerge from Latin America.

Be that as it may, his brief catalog of works is enough to consider an author of universal dimensions who does not need the quantity to surpass his contemporaries. The studies show an author who does not coincide with the aesthetics of Mexican nationalism, as it was for a long time pigeonholed, but who is in contact with the latest vanguards of his time in what Yolanda Moreno Rivas considers a highly informed style that transcended the same nationalism.

By the late 20th century and early present, composers and theorists trained in post-tonal analysis have undertaken the work of the study and contextualization of the work of Revueltas. In this way, it is expected to achieve a definitive detachment from the mere allusive description of national musicologists such as Moreno Rivas and Contreras Soto, to bring the work of the Duranguense to more solid and rigorous academic environments. Among these scholars are Arnoldo Vázquez and Humberto Robles at the Juárez de Durango University. Roberto Barnard Baca is at the University of Guadalajara.^{[citation required]}

In 1943, three years after the author's death, his sister Rosaura Revueltas acquired the rights to all of Revueltas's manuscripts that remained unpublished because the composer published virtually no work during his lifetime. Rosaura recounts the enormous and difficult task of publication and dissemination that she personally, and without any help, carried out for the publication in the United States of the works of Revueltas, who had died in poverty and oblivion at the age of 40.

The rejection of his work for a long time and little general recognition was largely due to his leftist affiliations and socialist tendencies to which Revueltas was always faithful.

The complex situation in the publication of his works has meant that his music is not in the public domain until after the year 2020. In 1998 the first publication of the complete catalog of Revueltas' works appeared, however some of his works still unedited. More and more recordings of Revueltas' music are being made worldwide, but the definitive biography is still awaited, which, 70 years after his death, has still not appeared.

Biography

Childhood. Studies. Early influences

Silvestre Revueltas was the eldest brother of a large family of artists, most of whom became important figures in Mexican cultural life, such as

• Fermín Revols (1901-1935), painter and muralist.
• Consuelo Revols (1909-1990), naif painter.
• Rosaura Revolts (1910-1996), actress and writer.
• José Revolvs (1914-1976), writer, screenwriter and political activist,
• Agustín Revols (1920-1996), artist and businessman.

Revueltas stood out in his childhood for being a violin prodigy. Silvestre obtained his first violin when he was seven years old, and got to play his first recital in 1911. His father sent him to Mexico City to study the instrument, and later to enter the National Conservatory of Music. He studied violin with José Rocabruna and composition with Rafael Tello. However, Revueltas was never satisfied with the training received. Although Revueltas studied in the capital during the years of the Mexican Revolution, Mexico City enjoyed a certain calm and tranquility, unlike other cities, and cultural life developed normally. His first composition works date from 1915. At the same time he sought to earn a living by playing in theaters and orchestras.

In 1917, his father decided to send Fermín and Silvestre to a school of the Holy Cross Congregation in the US city of Austin (state of Texas), St. Edward's College, when Silvestre was seventeen years old. In the school of St. Edwards Revueltas is remembered as a particularly gifted musician who gave recitals, although he was independent and did not accept all the instruction received. In this environment Silvestre discovers the music of Claude Debussy. In a letter, Revueltas relates that he unconsciously approached Debussy's style, believing that such music did not yet exist, when one of his teachers mentioned to him that the style of his first compositions was very Debussian. One of his earliest pieces, Daisy for piano, demonstrates a highly imaginative use of harmony with impressionistic textures, as well as a special melodic sense.

The talent of the Revueltas brothers was immediately recognized, so they were sent to the cultural and musical city of the time in the United States, which was Chicago (Illinois) in 1919. Silveste joined the Chicago Musical College. He had Félix Borowski as teachers and Leon Sametini on violin. In June 1919, Revueltas obtained a diploma in violin, harmony, and composition, and in July 1920 the brothers returned to Mexico. However, Silvestre and his brother had begun to abuse alcohol, a vice that would never leave either of them, and that worried his family a lot. Also in that city they were related to leftist movements for the first time since Chicago, being a working-class city, had important movements at this time. On the other hand, Silvestre married the American singer Jule Klarecy with whom he had a daughter, Carmen Revueltas Klarecy ―later called Carmen Montoya and Carmen Peers― (1922-1995), who was a ballet and flamenco dancer. In 1922, Silvestre Revueltas returned to Chicago and was taught by important renovators of violin technique, such as the Czech violinist Otakar Sevcik.

In 1923 his father died, a situation that forced him to return to Mexico. This considerably affected his economic situation, which is why he was forced to give recitals as the only way to support himself. At that time, Mexico was undertaking a great cultural and educational project at the hands of José Vasconcelos, Secretary of Culture under President Obregón. Revueltas began to make his way in the cultural environment of Mexico and to relate to prominent figures from the entire field of art. In the summer of 1924 he met the composer Carlos Chávez, who had just arrived from the United States. Revueltas returned to Chicago that same year for having left jobs pending in the city.

Eduardo Contreras Soto mentions that in 1925, Revueltas wrote a letter to Carlos Chávez mentioning that he was studying a Spanish suite by Manuel de Falla and the Gregorian concerto by Ottorino Respighi. On April 26, 1925, Revueltas returned to Mexico to give a recital at the Simón Bolívar Amphitheater, where Chávez was presenting contemporary music to the Mexican public. Revueltas left Chicago for good. Contreras Soto claims that around this time Chávez and Revueltas were planning the musical future of Mexico, dreaming of a symphony orchestra to change the perception of the conformist Mexican public. On December 18, 1925, the second cycle of new music began at the Simón Bolívar Amphitheater and Revueltas played the first violin. Later came several tours of the Republic, in which Revueltas would discover a new repertoire. However, Revueltas was not satisfied with the musical environment in Mexico and returned to the United States.

Between 1926 and 1928, Revueltas lived in the cities of San Antonio (state of Texas), and Mobile (state of Alabama). In San Antonio he played in a trio and joined the orchestra at the Cine Azteca in the center of that city. He gave regular recitals and reportedly even played a 1684 Guarnerius violin. In 1926, due to a reprimand for alcohol abuse, he moved to work at the Texas Theater. In that year he separated from Jule Klarecy and married Aurora, widow of Munguía, with whom he never had children.

The city of San Antonio (state of Texas) presented a strange musical mix due to Mexican immigration and its relationship with Latin American music. The economic situation of Revueltas in the city was not very good. In a letter he mentions that he was trying to organize a small orchestra, but it is not known with what result. In 1926 he was in charge of a theater orchestra.

That year, 1926, marks the spontaneous birth of the composer Revueltas, when he wrote the first important work in his catalog Batik for small orchestra. Musicologists have reiterated the virtues of Batik. The work is a strange mixture of the Debussian impressionist style with the expressionism of Arnold Schönberg. The originality of the piece and the extraordinary ability to generate concise and compact proportions showed an author of exceptional characteristics.

In 1928, he moved to Mobile, Alabama, and played in the Saenger Theater orchestra where he studied sheet music with the help of a victrola.

Shortly after returning to San Antonio, Texas, he was stabbed in the face and neck by an unknown attacker.

1929. Invitation from Carlos Chávez to the Mexico Symphony Orchestra

Carlos Chávez had founded in 1928, together with a union of musicians, the Orquesta Sinfónica de México (OSM). Chávez set out to gather a group of talented people to get his project running smoothly. He did not hesitate to invite Revueltas, who was in Chicago in a professional stagnation. Revueltas accepted. The position was assistant director of the orchestra, in charge of selecting the works to be performed. This event represented the inclusion of Revueltas in the cultural development of Mexico. The orchestra made the works of the two composers known to the Mexican public, who listened to them just created and who was astonished by the advanced avant-garde of both. Contemporary works were performed for the knowledge of the public. The orchestra fostered the creation of orchestral music, not only by Revueltas but also by other composers, thus becoming the genre most addressed by Mexican composers of the time. However, although Chávez constantly encouraged him to compose, Revueltas disdained his own composing skills and was hesitant to present his works to the public. According to Contreras Soto, his income was not high and the crisis with alcoholism began to worsen.

Simultaneously, Chávez ― “The iron musician”, as Revueltas considered him— invited him to take the violin chair at the National Conservatory of Music and to direct the children's orchestra there. Revueltas felt the need for a total change in music education in Mexico, considering it outdated and stagnant. He thus commented on his involvement with his fellow composers:

We were a small group, with the same impulse and with good destructive energy... Our new and joyful impetus fought with the ancestral apathy and the cavernous darkness of academic musicians. Bañó, cleaned, swept the old Conservatory, which crumbled with tradition, moth and glorious sadness.

1930-1933. «Cuauhnahuac», «Corners», «Windows»

Revueltas' start in composition was late. He did not start composing seriously until 1929. In fact, his work spans only 10 years, from 1930 to 1940.

A large number of Revueltas' works include different versions, such as the first two symphonic poems of the Cuauhnáhuac trilogy, Esquinas and Ventanas, cited in chronological order. Other works were arranged and reconstructed by different authors after the composer's death. Revueltas made two versions of Cuauhnáhuac, the first in 1930 for string orchestra and the better-known second for symphony orchestra in 1932. Cuauhnáhuac is Revueltas's first major work. It is the only work by the composer with an indigenous title and the one that has the greatest relationship with the aesthetics of Carlos Chávez, although at the same time it represents his break with him. The work does not focus on citing folkloric patterns and developing them in an academic way as the nationalists did, but on Revueltas capturing an essence, in this case of a folkloric type, in a lyrical and epic way through formal imagination. Esquinas is one of the works by Revueltas that has recently aroused the greatest interest in musicology. The work was recorded for the first time only in 2007, more than 70 years after it was composed. It is not published and is preserved only in the copyist's version. Esquinas expresses the music of the street, of the vagabond characters or the anonymous character of the street, and the cries that are heard in markets and streets, the noises of the city, in a series of orchestral pieces chained.

At the time of its premiere, the public thought that «Mexico is not so ugly». Regarding Esquinas, Carlos Chávez mentioned in an article: "This is the artist we need." In Esquinas, Revueltas makes use of dislocations of rhythm and treatment of melodies through polyrhythm and polytonality with complete ease and naturalness.

In 1930, he married Ángela Acevedo, with whom he had three daughters, of whom only one survives, the writer Eugenia Revueltas Acevedo (b. 1934). Around this time he became friends through Carlos Chávez with Aaron Copland, who from the beginning admired Revueltas' genius and wrote several articles about his music, promoting him on concert programs.

Revueltas did not like the position of interim director of the Conservatory very much and it seems that he did not like the Mexican musical environment in which he moved, since it was highly politicized. On April 30, 1933, he resigned from his position. According to Contreras Soto, Revueltas always fled from actions of authority and political power, defining himself as an art worker. He distrusted the Mexican musical milieu and was generally pessimistic about Mexico's cultural development, a surprising fact given that the country was at its cultural peak in those years. Thus he stated in 1932:

Why does an artist, a creator, suffer hunger and misery? Here lies, among us, the secret of the failure of Mexico's culture as a people. We're a decamised country and zánganos. The musician, the painter, the poet, is despised, for they are regarded as the bufons that lodge at the banquets of the bureaucrats. But it's just that they get buphones by the force of hunger. Although many rebelliously, rebellion is loneliness, unfettered loneliness, abandonment, misery.

Silvestre Revolts

In an interview conducted in 1936, and which has been little publicized, Revueltas comments about the musical environment in Mexico:

There is an artificing, false musical atmosphere. The honest musicians try to make it true. Musical criticism and part of the public influenced by it false, the first by ignorance and the second by snobbery.

Silvestre Revolts

On the same occasion, he comments on the situation of music students in Mexico. It is surprising to see that the situation has not changed at all since then:

The music and material life of the music student in Mexico is precarious, difficult. There is not enough artistic or economic stimulus: he loses the best years of his student life for lacking a healthy and educated education. No wonder, then, that the music student is not interested in his profession.

Silvestre Revolts

But he points to critics as part of poor musical development:

Musical criticism in Mexico stands out for its ignorance, for its bad faith, and for its determined commitment to disorient the audience of concerts. One or two exceptions perhaps among these jugglers of musical emotion.

Silvestre Revolts

1935. Break with Carlos Chávez. "Networks"

Revueltas' fast musical career was unstoppable. The rapid succession of works, among them Janitzio, Geometric Dance, Windows and above all the film score Redes, they were turning the author into the definitive figure of Mexican music. Historically it has been affirmed that "it was too much" for the Mexican music of the time. Revueltas's music was rapidly surpassing that of Carlos Chávez, and the followers of the two authors began to polarize, forming antagonistic groups: the "revueltistas" and the "chavistas".

Redes was the first work that gave Revueltas international fame. Even during his trip to Spain by boat, it was already known that the composer of Redes was traveling on board. While Mexican nationalist composers were only concerned with how, Revueltas produced works with extraordinary speed, which according to Copland was reminiscent of Franz Schubert's speed of composition. Originally the film was called Pescados and was a project in the form of a documentary about the fishermen of the town of Alvarado (in the state of Veracruz) between the American photographer Paul Strand and Carlos Chávez. For administrative reasons Chávez abandoned the project, and over time the commission fell to Revueltas. The tape was not finished until late 1935. Revueltas finished the score long before filming for the film ended. It should be noted that 1935 was Revueltas' least productive year. The film was never successful, but Revueltas' music completely transcended the project, becoming one of the most extraordinary film scores in talkies. Redes turned Revueltas into one of the first composers for sound film music along with Sergei Prokofiev. Although Revueltas's orchestral suite exists, the best-known and best-performed version is the one made by the Austrian conductor Erich Kleiber, who changed some details of the orchestration. One of its premieres took place in New York in April 1937. It was criticized and, according to Contreras Soto, it became a model for film composers in the United States. The music did not please Paul Strand. In the same year it premiered in Paris under the title Les revoltès de Alvarado.

Although the exact cause of the break between Carlos Chávez and Silvestre Revueltas, who was always dissatisfied, is not known, Chávez suppressed the name of Revueltas as deputy director of the orchestra on October 18, 1935 in the printed program. A Revueltas work in the orchestra was never programmed again.

League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists (LEAR)

Silvestre Revols leading the National Symphony Orchestra in Mexico City.

Revueltas' rivalry with Chávez went further. In 1936, Revueltas founded a rival orchestra to Chávez's, the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional (not to be confused with the current National Symphony). On May 12 of that year he appeared in the second season of that orchestra as a director, conducting Redes. According to Contreras Soto, the public got to know the music in this way before the film. The Orchestra also offered concerts for the workers, like the Mexico Symphony, but unlike the latter, it offered children's concerts, and premiered works by composers who did not sympathize with Chávez. The two orchestras had the same musicians.

One of the least explained aspects of post-revolutionary Mexico was that it had a strong inclination towards socialism and communism driven mainly by the arts, since there was the possibility at one time of moving towards socialism.

In 1936, Revueltas was appointed president of the Executive Committee of the League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists, which fought ideologically against fascism, Trotskyism and imperialism, in defense of syndicalism and Stalinism. Among its members were Carlos Pellicer, Eduardo Hernández Moncada, José Pomar and Luis Sandi. It was the main organization of left-wing Mexican artists, which had begun to function in 1933 and, according to Contreras Soto, its members verbally attacked Chávez. Likewise, Revueltas participated in the promotion of the Mexican Communist Party.

The execution of Federico García Lorca, which occurred on August 19, 1936, and with serious consequences for world culture, deeply moved Revueltas. This event inspired one of his main works, the Tribute to Federico García Lorca, premiered at the Palacio de Bellas Artes on November 14.

1937. Journey to Republican Spain. Spanish Civil War

A little attended aspect of the history of Mexico is its participation, not only military but also cultural, in the Spanish Civil War. Mexico was represented by the presence of the LEAR (League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists) in 1937, which was headed by José Mancisidor. The event has also gone unnoticed in Spain, since it had few important intellectual witnesses. Rather, it was a shared experience between Mexican and Spanish artists who would later emigrate to Mexico, such as Otto Mayer Serra and Rodolfo Halffter. Contreras Soto mentions that the cause of the interest of artists worldwide in the conflict was due to the fact that it was thought that the defense of the republican government meant the consolidation of the ideals of the internationalist left. The Spanish Republicans greatly appreciated the presence of the Mexican representatives. The only governments that supported the Republicans were those of President Lázaro Cárdenas and that of the Soviet Union, against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy that supported Francisco Franco.

Not leading the League, Revueltas had practically no financial resources for his trip and tried to seek help, while on a stopover in New York, from Aaron Copland, who was not in the city. Revueltas embarked on the MV Britannic. Traveling with him was the young poet Octavio Paz, who was a guest with Elena Garro, Juan de la Cabada and José Chávez Morado, among others. The ship arrived in France in July. On the 17th of the same month, Revueltas arrived in Barcelona with the group. Later they moved to Valencia and Madrid. On August 15, Revueltas conducted Caminos and Janitzio for the Valencia Symphony Orchestra at the Teatro Principal in Valencia.

However, the overwhelming impression of the war and the suffering of the Spanish people dampened the composer's spirits and his initial intentions. The destruction of a civilization made any attempt to collaborate with a noble cause considered useless, as he wrote in a letter:

I feel my pain and my impotence to break into me, without light, in discouragement. What am I to this tragedy? What can I do? I'm ashamed to go quietly down the street. I am envious of the most humble of the fighters. I am exhausted by the thought of our work of artists, full of vanity, of presumption. How disgusting, how sad! How it is possible not to feel oppressed, pained, small, useless to a man who dies, a child, a woman who weeps. And what can serve them, and what can matter to them a series of sounds or lines...

Silvestre Revolvs, Valencia, Spain, July 19, 1937

On September 13, Revueltas issued a message over Madrid radio summoning his Mexican comrades:

Comrades from Mexico, friends, brothers and sisters of my hearty village so distant at this time:
I would like to carry to the depths of your longing, to the depths of your hope, the upright pain and the bright and open heroism of this Spanish people, our brother... To build together the clean and high future of our children... To fight together, denodamente; in the trenches, in the chair, in the book, in the poem, against the darkness that burys the consciences; against the death that sows the bodies of children and women... To sing together the same hymn of victory... I address you, comrades of Mexico; workers, students, fellow artists, from this august town of Madrid: village example, village lesson, village light! Cheers!

Silvestre Revols, fragment of the radio message in Madrid, September 13, 1937

In September he jointly conducted the Madrid Philharmonic and Symphony orchestras with a very enthusiastic response from critics, including that of Rafael Alberti.

He tried unsuccessfully to get permission to travel to the Soviet Union, one of the greatest dreams of his life. In October he directed Redes in Barcelona. The different members of the League were gradually returning to Mexico. Revueltas remained in Paris for two months when his resources were running out. It is worth mentioning that the experience in Spain did not inspire the author any works, with the exception of some little-known revolutionary songs, but his personality would become even more discouraged and pessimistic, although his musical personality acquired immense depth and darkness.

1938. I return to Mexico. "Sensemayá"

According to Rosaura Revueltas, upon his return to Mexico, Revueltas no longer enjoyed the status he had enjoyed in his early years as a composer. Rosaura affirms that the composer went to live in the poor neighborhoods and with the poor people in Mexico City. He continued with his pedagogical and compositional activity, and Rosaura visited him frequently to bring him money, since his financial situation was very unfortunate.

With the absence of Revueltas in Mexico, the figure of Chávez had strengthened. Revueltas lost his job in the orchestra, so he devoted himself exclusively to composition. The composition of the orchestral toccata Sensemayá in its version for large orchestra dates from this period. Although he had already made a version for small orchestra before his trip to Spain, it is the 1938 version that has prevailed as the composer's most popular work and has been the favorite of orchestra conductors. Sensemayá is perhaps the most prestigious Mexican orchestral work in the world. Although the musical characteristics of Sensemayá are not Mexican but rather of Antillean influence, it is the most analyzed, recorded and performed Mexican concert work, above Carlos Chávez's Indian Symphony or José Pablo Moncayo's Huapango. It has been recorded and performed by highly prestigious conductors such as Leopold Stokowski, Leonard Bernstein, Eduardo Mata, Esa-Pekka Salonen or Gustavo Dudamel, among others. The primitivist and «wild» characteristics of Sensemayá, closely related to the aesthetics of Igor Stravinski, together with its great internal complexity, surprised musicians from all over the world, among them Leopold Stokowski who described it as "fortunately short"

At this time he also composed the Five Hours and various music for films such as El indio and Music to chat.

Diary in the psychiatric sanatorium

In 1939, Revueltas was admitted to a sanatorium for the mentally ill due to one of the many alcoholic crises he had. The immense loneliness and isolation of him made him write a diary with his ideas about love, humanity and life, always with a pessimistic character, apart from the incomprehension that he felt of the world towards his own creation. According to various witnesses, Revueltas used to drink excessively after finishing a work, as a way of releasing the tension accumulated in creation. He was not violent or agitated when he was drunk. According to Aaron Copland, Revueltas would go days without eating while working on a score and completely shut himself off from the world. The crises that resulted in finishing a creation resulted in strong alcoholism and the need to hospitalize him in sanatoriums. The diary is an invaluable document for understanding the personality of the composer. José Revueltas, brother of the composer, published in 1965 several fragments of the diary under the title My life among madmen.

Poor human being moved; everything makes him suffer. See the trees, the houses. They do not tremble or suffer. But the man is helpless... It looses everything inside one. Each nerve is a wet, open, weeping sun. Like those weeps you hear at night, no remedy. Children's cry, man's weeping, everything is weeping that nothing can rinse.

1939. "Night of the Mayans"

Revueltas had teamed up with film director Chano Urueta, producer and screenwriter Salvador Novo, and comic actor Mario Moreno Cantinflas. In this year, Revueltas dedicated himself to cinema. Urueta's works in the cinema have long been poorly regarded by critics.

The filming of The Night of the Mayas began on February 17, 1939. The film has no film value. It ended with a great contribution from Gabriel Figueroa in the photography in the ruins of the Mayans and the extraordinary music of Revueltas, which became one of the most performed orchestral works of the composer.

According to Contreras Soto, Revueltas' score is highly emotional, dramatic and brilliant. La noche de los mayas premiered on September 7, 1939 at the Alameda cinema in Mexico City. During the composition of the music, Revueltas received the news of the death of his mother, Romana Sánchez Arias. The current version of the music of La noche de los mayas is a compilation of the music from the film, made by José Ives Limantour twenty years after the death of the composer, who had made it in the form of a symphony.

The next film score produced by Revueltas was Los de abajo, also directed by Urueta and later ¡Que viene mi marido! (1939). Both films were released in 1940. Although the production of film scores earned him some financial gain, Revueltas withdrew from film composition.

1940. "The Colonel". Death

Silvestre Revolt Sepulchre in the Rotonda de las Personas Ilustres, in Mexico City.

According to Contreras Soto, in the early 1940s a dance movement began to emerge in Mexico thanks to the Campobello sisters, pioneers of modern dance, who had support from the Department of Fine Arts, and who needed modern repertoires for renewal of the dance repertoires. Rodolfo Halffter, who had just arrived from Spain as a refugee, was one of the main promoters of dance music in the country. Mexico was lagging behind in ballet composition due to a lack of government support, since ballet composition was an expression of world musical modernity in the first half of the century XX. Needless to say about the composition of operas that did not have any state support until the death of Revueltas, which is why there are no operas in the composer's catalogue.

The proposal to work for the scene was highly motivating for Revueltas. In May 1940, Revueltas accepted the proposal to perform the music for a choreography inspired by the engravings of José Guadalupe Posada. La coronela, his only ballet of great proportions, would open a new stage in his production. By October 1940, the composer had the piano part for three of the four episodes of the choreography, however, this new stage was interrupted with his death, while El renacuajo pasador was premiering in Fine Arts, another play for the stage. He was going through a period of alcoholism and after having drunk ice cold beer to cure it, he went out into the street with very light clothes, when he returned to his house in the Colonia Doctores in Mexico City, he was already with a painting of bronchopneumonia. He died in the early morning of October 5, 1940.

He left the last episode of La coronela unfinished and left the entire work unorchestrated. A first orchestration of La coronela was performed by Candelario Huízar and Blas Galindo, but it has been lost. The current orchestration is by Hernández Moncada and Limantour.

His body was veiled at the National Conservatory of Music of Mexico. Silvestre Revueltas was buried in the French Pantheon. During the funeral ceremony, Pablo Neruda read his poem To Silvestre Revueltas de México on his death.

On March 23, 1976, his remains were transferred to the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons where they rest today. On the occasion of his early death Aaron Copland commented:

His premature death deprived Mexico of a highly talented composer.

Aaron Copland.

Work

He composed music for films, chamber music, songs and a few other works.

His orchestral music includes symphonic poems; the best known is Sensemayá (1938), based on the poem by Nicolás Guillén.

Her musical language is tonal but at times dissonant, with rhythmic vitality, and often with a distinctly Mexican flavor.

Silvestre Revueltas appears briefly as a pianist in the film Vámonos con Pancho Villa! (Mexico, 1935), with a sign above the piano that reads: "Please don't shoot the pianist."

Revueltas also composed the film's soundtrack.

Catalog of works