Description of Mexico's Timeline

The pre-Encounter Era

Extensive historical evidence shows us that during many periods before 1521 and in numerous areas of what is called now Mexico, music was complex and important. Instruments like Tubular duct flutes where apparently played simultaneously in what seems to be a more than 2000 years tradition of polyphony.

Little is known about ancient Mexican civilizations previous to the Aztecs due to the chronological distance between them and the arrival of European documentarians and therefore we don’t know much about their music.

Although, we do have a rich store of archeological and written evidence about Aztec music and its importance and centrality in the Aztec’s public and ritual life. Spanish chroniclers like Toribio de Motolinia, Sahagun and Diego Duran, describe many elaborated ceremonies and rituals with music at their center, which shows us how music was so closely linked to spiritual and material life in Aztec civilization.

These Spanish chronicles also account for the importance and prestige of certain Aztec musicians, for the belief in the divinity and origin of certain instruments and the attention that Aztecs paid to accuracy of pitch and rhythm. It is also known that there where formal music schools called Cuicalli but unfortunately there are no transcriptions of melodies from that era.

The Colonial Period

In 1523 the first three Franciscan missionaries arrived in Mexico, of whom one, Pedro de Gante, opened the first music school where Indians were taught plainchant and instrument making. Gante’s pupils spread his instruction through the colony; Franciscans and missionaries of other orders, as well as the secular clergy who came later, adopted his educational methods. Missionary work continued throughout the colonial period.

There were remarkable achievements in the organization of musical life around the church and in the repertories performed. At the outset of the Spanish Conquest church officials emphasized music in worship. Missionaries were instructed by Juan de Zumárraga, first Bishop of Mexico, to use and teach music as an indispensable aid in the process of conversion, and the admirable aptitude and talent of the Indians in learning the European musical system was constantly discussed in 16th-century missionary chronicles.

Polyphony in the best Spanish tradition was practised early in Mexico, at first in the form of villancicos, motets and psalms. Works of the Spanish polyphonists Morales, Guerrero and Victoria were sent to New Spain (now Mexico) soon after their publication. The Mexico City and Puebla cathedrals received copies from the Seville and Toledo cathedral archives, which indicates the importance attached to partsinging. The most substantial Mexican archives are those of the Mexico City and Puebla cathedrals, Tepotzotlán and Morelia, which contain many copies and originals of European and Mexican music from the 16th to 19th centuries.

Several composers active at Mexico City Cathedral as maestros de capilla during the 18th century contributed greatly to the city’s musical life. Antonio de Salazar, maestro de capilla from 1688 to 1715, wrote Latin hymns and villancicos. Manuel de Zumaya , a native of Mexico, composed the second opera known to have been produced in the New World, La Parténope (1711). The Italian composer Ignacio Jerusalem, maestro de capilla 1749–69, introduced the prevailing operatic style; he was succeeded by Matheo Tollis de la Roca. During Antonio de Juanas’s appointment José Manuel Aldana (1758–1810) was considered the most prominent musician of the time, but his liturgical and instrumental works clearly indicate the decline of neo-Hispanic music in Mexico. The fact that Manuel Arenzana, an opera composer, was maestro de capilla at Puebla at the turn of the 19th century similarly indicates the secularization of sacred music, following the concurrent European tendency.

The Independence Period

During the 19th century Italian opera dominated the Mexican musical scene. At first the cultivated genres were of Spanish origin: zarzuela, tonadilla escénica, sainete. But the Coliseo Nuevo theatre, which had been functioning from 1735, became bankrupt during the revolutionary period, and Mexican operas began to be produced only after independence. In the meantime José Mariano Elízaga exerted an important influence in music education. He founded a conservatory of music in 1825 which flourished briefly, and wrote two influential theoretical treatises, the second, Principios de la armonía y de la melodía, being an introduction to four-part harmony. His compositions are mostly sacred and adhere to the Classical style. Later attempts to create a regular school of music in Mexico City resulted in the foundation of a privately maintained conservatory, which eventually became the government-subsidized Conservatorio Nacional de Música.

The better-known Mexican opera composers of the 19th century were Luis Baca, Cenobio Paniagua y Vasques and Melesio Morales. The opera Guatimotzin by Aniceto Ortega de Villar, first performed in 1871 with the Mexican soprano Angela Peralta, is considered the first serious attempt to incorporate some elements of indigenous music within the framework of prevailing Italian models.

A large number of pianist-composers who cultivated salon-music genres and European Romantic piano music were active during the last three decades of the 19th century. The most popular composer of salon music was Juventino Rosas, who wrote a set of waltzes in the purest Austrian tradition, Sobre las olas, which became famous throughout the world. The piano virtuosos of the time included Tomás León, Julio Ituarte, Ernesto Elorduy and Felipe Villanueva. The last two cultivated the danza mexicana, following the model of Ignacio Cervantes’s Cuban contradanzas. Ricardo Castro Herrera, who had some success in Europe, wrote piano and orchestral works and two operas, Atzimba and La légende de Rudel. Gustavo E. Campa wrote piano music and an opera Le roi poète, strongly influenced by Saint-Saëns and Massenet.

An exceptional case in Mexican music history is the prophetic theoretical work of the composer Julián Carrillo, who from 1895 elaborated a microtonal system known as sonido trece (‘13th-tone’), using up to 16th-tones. He wrote orchestral and chamber works according to this system and also in more conventional genres.

The post-Revolutionary Twentieth Century

The Mexican Revolution (1910) made a deep impression on the country’s artistic life. Musicians gave expression to their patriotic fervor in nationalist music which drew on Indian and mestizo cultures. The composer Manuel Ponce, considered the pioneer of nationalism in Mexico, systematically investigated and used all types of mestizo folk music (corrido, jarabe, huapango son etc.). His large output reveals a nationalist orientation which implies a greater autonomy of the popular elements integrated within a generally neo-Romantic or neo-classical style. This tendency was followed by most composers of Ponce’s generation, such as José Rolón and Candelario Huízar.

In the so-called ‘Aztec Renaissance’ of the post-revolutionary period the attempted return to pre-Conquest Indian musical practices was less an authentic reconstruction of those practices than a subjective evocation of the remote past, or of the character and physical setting of ancient and contemporary Indian culture. Carlos Chávez, the most influential early 20th-century Mexican composer, has been particularly successful in assimilating elements of music. In his works of Amerindian character, such as Los cuatro soles, Sinfonía India, or in his most abstract compositions, such as his last three symphonies, his highly personal style and Mexican identity appear so intimately connected that his music has been described as ‘profoundly non-European’. Chávez has also had a brilliant career as a conductor; he founded the Orquesta Sinfónica de México in 1928, and directed it for over 18 years. The orchestra has given the first performances of many 20th-century Mexican symphonic works.

Silvestre Revueltas, another nationalist composer of international fame, drew on contemporary Mexican popular and folk music to evolve his own style. Many of his works, such as Ocho por radio and Sensemayá, reveal his spontaneous and good-humoured temperament.
As a teacher of composition at the Conservatorio Nacional the Spanish-born Rodolfo Halffter has exerted a decisive influence on the younger generation of Mexican composers. His style, at first a form of neo-classical nationalism, gradually evolved towards atonality and serialism. Musical nationalism began to decline in Mexico only in the 1960s, largely through the work of a dynamic group of avant-garde composers that included Manuel Enríquez, Héctor Quintanar and Mário Kuri-Aldana. In subsequent decades the mayor figures in Mexican composition have been Manuel de Elías, Eduardo Mata, Julio Estrada, Mario Lavista, Federico Ibarra, Arturo Márquez and Gabriela Ortíz.