Carlos Chávez

For more information on Carlos Antonio de Padua Chávez y Ramírez, visit Britannica.com.

(b Mexico City, 13 June 1899; d there, 2 Aug 1978). Mexican composer. He studied with Ponce (1910-14) and Ogazón (1915-20) but was self-taught as a composer, being most influenced by his experience of Indian culture. A visit to Europe in 1922-3 was unproductive, but his first trip to the USA (1923-4) began a close association: in 1926-8 he lived in New York and formed friendships with Copland, Cowell and Varèse. On his return to Mexico he became founder-director of the Mexico SO (1928-48) and director of the National Conservatory (1928-33), having a decisive influence on Mexican cultural life. His works include seven symphonies (the Sinfonía india is no.2, 1936) and two Aztec ballets (El fuego nuevo, 1921; Los cuatro soles, 1925). He was a master of orchestration, particularly of wind writing, and explored concerto writing; characteristic are the four Soli (1933-66) for small groups and orchestra.

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Carlos Chávez (1899-1978) was a Mexican conductor and composer. By taking the lead in introducing national and folk elements to express the spirit of his country, he became the founder of modern Mexican music.

On June 13, 1899, Carlos Chávez was born in Mexico City, where he studied piano under Manuel M. Ponce and Pedro Luis Ogazón. But Chávez's ability as a composer was acquired primarily from direct observation and study of works by the great masters.

From a very early age Chávez felt the need to create a style and personality of his own. His first works, written in 1921, marked him as an innovator and alarmed the musicians who had been educated in the romantic European tradition. José Vasconcelos, minister of education, then commissioned Chávez to compose a ballet entitled El fuego nuevo (The New Fire), in which he introduced some instruments and elements which were considered to have existed in Mexico before the time of the Conquest.

In 1928 Chávez and the Mexico City Syndicate of Musicians founded the National Symphony Orchestra, which a few months later became the Mexican Symphony Orchestra. He devoted all his efforts to stimulating the musical life of the Mexican capital as well as, on a lesser scale, that of the rest of the country. In 1928 Chávez was appointed director of the National Conservatory of Music, and the following year he established the Conservatory Choir.

Becoming deeply interested in the problems of constructivist music depicting the machine age, Chávez composed his operatic ballet, H. P. (Horse Power), to symbolize the economic relationship between the industrial United States and the agricultural tropical lands. The ballet was first produced in Philadelphia in 1932.

Chávez was named chief of the Department of Fine Arts in Mexico City in 1933. The next year he left the conservatory to devote himself exclusively to the Mexican Symphony Orchestra. He was guest conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1936 and of the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in 1937. In 1946 he became director of the National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico City.

Chávez conducted the first performance (1953) of his Fourth Symphony with the Louisville Orchestra, which had commissioned it. During the academic year 1958-1959 he was Charles Eliot Norton lecturer at Harvard University; his lectures were published as Musical Thought (1960). In 1960 he helped implement the Composer's Workshop which is held at the National Conservatory. Before his death in 1978 he was awarded honorary memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Institute of Arts and Letters.

Works by Chávez include six symphonies, a piano concerto, two violin concertos, a concerto for four horns, the Ballet of the Four Suns, the Ballad of the Sun, Flames, and the opera Love Propitiated. The Toccata for Percussion is perhaps his best-known work.

Further Reading

Chávez's Catalogue of His Works (1944) has a biographical introduction by Herbert Weinstock. Brief discussions of Chávez's life and work are in Paul Collaer, A History of Modern Music (trans. 1961), and David Ewen, The World of Twentieth Century Music (1968).

• Period: Modern (1910-1949)
• Born: June 13, 1899 in Mexico City, Mexico
• Died: August 02, 1978 in Mexico City, Mexico
• Genres: Ballet, Chamber Music, Concerto, Orchestral Music, Symphony

Biography

Carlos Chávez was probably the most important Mexican composer of the twentieth century. Known for his seven symphonies, the ballets La hija de Colquide (The Dark Meadow), and Toxcatl -- which uses his popular 1947 Toccata for percussion -- his concertos for piano and violin (one each) and the four Soli (the third for orchestra and soloists and the others for winds), he was a composer who generally did not follow trends and fared better in purely orchestral or instrumental music. While Chávez's style is sometimes not recognizable as Latin, as it can often sound Stravinskyan and neo-Classical, folk elements of Aztec and Mexican music rarely stay dormant for long, with their colorful rhythms, exotic percussion and characterful themes. Chávez also wrote two books, one of which was the influential Toward a New Music: Music and Electricity, from 1932.

Chávez's father died when he was three, but he and his five other siblings were generally well cared for by their mother, who was a school teacher. He studied piano with Asuncion Parra, having already developed a measure of proficiency from lessons in his early childhood from an older brother. Young Carlos advanced rapidly and by the age of 11 began studies with Ponce. While he received instruction only on piano during his early years, Chávez began to study instrumentation on his own. Throughout his career, in fact, he continued this practice: his copies of Beethoven's and Brahms' symphonies, for instance, contained all sorts of notations in his hand.

At 15, Chávez became a pupil of Ogazon and a year later took some instruction from Fuentes in harmony. Among his first important works was the Piano Sextet (1919), whose piano part he performed at its 1921 premiere. That same year Chávez began work on his Aztec ballet El fuego Nuevo, on a government commission.

Chávez married Otilia Ortiz in September 1922, then traveled to Europe and the United States with his bride over the next several years, finding the culture of the latter much more to his liking. In fact, he made many subsequent trips there and even lived in New York City from 1926 to 1928, where he developed friendships with Copland, Varèse and other important figures of the day. His only opera, The Visitors, premiered in New York in May 1957.

In 1924, Chávez began writing music articles for El universal, a Mexico City newspaper, and he continued to do so for most of the rest of his life. He also had developed ties in politics by now and soon received important appointments: directorship of the National Conservatory came in 1928; and in 1933 he took up the reins at the Public Education's fine arts department. But he remained busy composing during these years, too, completing his ballet Caballos de vapor in 1932 and turning out his first (1933) and second (1935-1936) symphonies, as well as many other works.

In 1947, Chávez helped establish Mexico's National Institute of Fine Arts. He made a return trip to Europe two years later, but still found its culture of no great appeal to his sensibilities. Over the next two decades he composed more symphonies (his seventh coming in 1960 and his sixth in 1961), many songs, and chamber works. In 1958-1959, he served as Charles Eliot Norton Chair of Poetics at Harvard University. In the 1970s, Chávez's inspiration seemed to vanish, as he produced no significant new work. ~ Robert Cummings, All Music Guide