Mexican Music

A fantastic recording of a live concert conducted by Carlos Chávez in May 1940 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The program representis an important period in Mexican history, and ranges from a special arrangement of music for Aztec instruments of the 16th century to the popular Huapangos, the gay love songs of the Mariachi and the traditional Yaqui music.

In 17th and 18th century New England, transplanted Englishmen like Daniel Read, Abraham Wood, and especially William Billings were composing beautiful but rough-hewn and distinctly American vocal music for use in what were called "singing schools." Far to the west and south, in what was then called New Spain and would later be called Mexico, natives and transplanted Spaniards were composing liturgical music of a richness and complexity that was worthy of the greatest cathedrals of Europe – and teaching their native converts to do the same. This disc showcases the works of two of 18th century Mexico's finest composers: the Mexican-born Manuel de Zumaya and the transplanted European Ignacio de Jerusalem. The latter is represented by a polychoral Mass in D Minor, a responsory, and a gorgeous Dixit Dominus setting written in six sections; from the former listeners have a setting of Jeremiah's lamentations, a breathtakingly complex solfeggio composition titled Sol-fa de Pedro, and the polychoral Celebren, Publiquen.

On Nuevo, a collection of music from Mexico spanning nearly 100 years, Kronos Quartet presents a kaleidoscopic view of a music as diverse as the culture of the country itself. On each track, the group’s sound is transformed, through the collaborative efforts of co-producers Gustavo Santaolalla, the noted Argentinean musician and Rock en Español producer, longtime Kronos producer Judith Sherman, and Kronos Artistic Director David Harrington, as well as through arrangements by composers Osvaldo Golijov, Stephen Prutsman, and Ricardo Gallardo, whose efforts serve to reflect the individual spirit and character of each song.

In a very specific sense in 16th- and 17th-century Spain and again in today’s Mexico (and elsewhere in Latin America) the Spanish term son denotes a particular genre of music with certain common traits including a close association with dance, text composed of several verses (coplas) and a fundamental harmonic pattern unique to each son.

This sounds more like an anthology of Mexican orchestral music than the work of one composer. Sensemayá is the best-known music here, and it fulfills our expectation of Revueltas as a kind of Mexican Stravinsky, with a folk-influenced base supporting tangy dissonances and exciting rhythms. Some of the music in the two other scores is similarly adventurous, while other sections are almost pops-concert material. The Night of the Mayas is film music, uncommonly interesting for such work. The Girl Colonel is an unfinished ballet, completed by two other Mexican composers with sections from other Revueltas film scores. It's all thoroughly involving and worthwhile music, well played by an obscure, recently formed (1989) Mexican orchestra and vividly recorded.