Discovery of 25 early works by Silvestre Revueltas debunks myths surrounding him

Mexico City. The discovery and recovery of 25 piano works written by Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940) in his early youth, whose world premiere will be today in the main hall of the Palacio de Bellas Artes at 5 p.m., demolishes myths surrounding the life and work of one of Mexico’s most important and celebrated composers, while opening new paths in the history of music and national culture.

This is what the musicologists from the Carlos Chávez National Center for Musical Research, Documentation and Information (Cenidim) who participated in these works, carried out as part of a long-term project undertaken a couple of years ago by the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (Inbal), with the support of researcher Eugenia Revueltas, daughter of the legendary musician from Durango, whose 125th birthday is celebrated this year, agree on.

According to Victor Barrera, director of Cenidim, the impact of this discovery It is incalculablerepresenting a significant advance in the rescue of the country’s cultural heritage, in addition to enriching knowledge about Revueltas’ career and preserving an invaluable legacy for future generations.

“These compositions offer an intimate look at the development of Revueltas’ musical thought.

Documenting his exploration of forms, styles, consonances and dissonances, they reveal a valuable link that allows us to observe and connect the continuity between Mexican music of the late 19th century and the new musical trends that prevailed in the first decades of the 20th century, which would lead to the consolidation of the nationalist period, of which this musician was a leading figure.

Evidence of gaps

For Luis Jaime Cortez, who led the team that made the discovery and recovery of that corpus, This is an event worth celebrating, but it also shows how There is a gap, until today, in understanding and knowledge of the figure of Silvestre Revueltas.

Doctor Victor Barrera, musicologist who participated in the recovery of the 25 piano scores by the Durango composer Silvestre Revueltas. Photo courtesy of Inbal and archive

According to the musicologist, this material allows us to break many myths surrounding his life and work, to change perspectives on the history of Mexican music and to complete the vision that we have of this composer.

Among the myths that are being debunked, he mentioned the romantic idea that the creator from Durango began to compose around 1930 and that he only did so during the last decade of his life, encouraged by his counterpart Carlos Chávez; that he did not write works for piano, because he was unfamiliar with the instrument, and that the substantial part of his musical training took place in the United States.

“We thought that and suddenly the appearance of these works – the first dated May 1915 and the last in January 1924 – reveals a completely unusual period in Revueltas. It shows us that he already thought of himself as a composer in 1915, when he was only 15 years old.”

According to the researcher, the manuscripts of these 25 pieces can be read in biographical keyand they allow us to deduce several things, as if they were letters or diaries, in addition to appreciating, in musical terms, the end of Mexican romanticism and the beginning of modernism. He even said that there is a piece, Hungarian whim, that sounds like Microcosm, by Béla Bartók, 20 years before the Hungarian composer wrote that collection of piano works.

“It is very interesting to see how Revueltas is not content to say: ‘I have found this path and I am going to repeat it’. Each work is a process of radical experimentation. In some cases, one hears echoes of the Mexican Romantics; in others, there is a frank debus sysmo.

“Much has been said in traditional historiography that Revueltas had at one time something of debus system; We knew it somehow, it was said, but we did not have the evidence that we now have in masterpieces from that period,” he added.

Silvestre Revueltas, above these lines, whose 125th birthday is commemorated this year. Photo courtesy of Inbal and archive

Luis Jaime Cortez said that luck played an essential role in finding those piano pieces, since, as in The stolen letter, the tale of Edgar Allan Poe, They were previously visible to many researchers, but they were not seen.

They were found, he said, in a notebook that is part of Silvestre Revueltas’ archive, a collection to which the Cenidim team has had access for two years thanks to the generosity of Eugenia Revueltas, after two decades at UNAM.

Long-range project with Inbal

The director of INBAL, Lucina Jiménez, reported that the agency signed a four-year agreement with the composer’s daughter for a long-term project with that collection, which, in addition to the discovery of those unpublished scores, has allowed for its complete digitalization, in addition to the fact that the author’s complete work will be published in 42 volumes, in printed and digital versions, and all that musical material will be recorded to make it available to the public.

The first of these volumes contains the 25 pieces for piano and will be presented in September, as well as its respective album. By the end of the year, the same will be done with volumes two and three, with works for violin and piano, and for voice and piano, said the official, who assured that she has open budgetwithout limit, for this initiative.

Although this project will involve the editing and recording of one hundred percent of the works in the archive, Luis Jaime Cortez did not rule out the appearance of more unpublished material. He even commented that there is a piece that the composer wrote to play with his daughter Eugenia when she was a child, as well as a series of small notebooks in which the Durango native made notes for his works.

These notebooks were stolen by a German researcher in the 1960s, when the archive was guarded by Rosaura Revueltas, the composer’s sister, and only one remains, with the notes for Sensemayá, he clarified.

The world premiere of Silvestre Revueltas’ piano pieces will be performed by pianists Mauricio Nader, Salomé Herrera and Rodolfo Ritter, who also participated in the previous process of their revision, editing and recording. In reality, it will only be the premiere of 24, because one, Tragedy in the form of a radish, It has already been played and recorded.