Carlos Chavez

Carlos Chávez stood among the most significant Mexican composers and conductors of the twentieth century. He also exerted considerable influence as a writer and educator while serving as a pivotal force in bringing Mexico’s music to international audiences.

Born in 1899 in Popotla, a suburb of Mexico City, Chávez was the youngest of seven children. His father died when the boy was three, and his mother raised the family. At age nine he began piano studies with an older brother; lessons with Asuncion Parra followed, and at eleven he became a pupil of Manuel Ponce. Around the same period he grew fascinated with orchestral music and taught himself other instruments and the principles of orchestration by studying scores of Beethoven and Brahms. About 1915 he took piano lessons from Pedro Luis Ogazón, and in 1916 he studied harmony with Juan B. Fuentes.

In 1919 Chávez completed his Piano Sextet and participated in its 1921 premiere. That same year the Mexican Revolution concluded, prompting the government to promote the arts and to revive appreciation for the nation’s Indigenous heritage. The composer received his first official commission from the Mexican authorities for the ballet El fuego nuevo, which drew on an Aztec subject. He married Otilia Ortiz in 1922, and the couple journeyed to Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and New York. Beginning in 1924 he contributed music articles to the Mexico City newspaper El Universal, an association that continued throughout his life. Chávez lived again in New York from 1926 to 1928, during which time he developed friendships with Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, and Edgard Varese.

In 1928 he was named director of the newly established Orquesta Sinfónica de México and quickly gained substantial influence in Mexican political circles. A few months later he also became director of the Conservatorio Nacional de Musica, where he overhauled the curriculum; he held the post until 1934. During these years he produced several compositions, among them Cantos de Mexico, Sinfonia de Antigona, and Tierra Mojada. For much of 1938 and again in 1940 he led the NBC Symphony Orchestra during Toscanini’s absences. By then he was widely recognized as Mexico’s foremost composer and conductor, yet he continued his journalistic work for El Universal.

After returning to Mexico in the early 1940s, Chávez wrote the ballet La hija de Colquide, String Quartet No. 3, and a number of choral pieces. Appointed director general of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1947, he created the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional to serve as the country’s leading orchestral body. Both institutions thrived under his guidance, yet he eventually stepped down to devote himself more fully to composition. In the early 1950s he maintained an active schedule as a guest conductor and completed three symphonies. By 1955 he had published more than two hundred articles in El Universal and had conducted over one hundred orchestras around the world. He resumed teaching at the Conservatorio Nacional de Musica from 1960 to 1964 and delivered lectures at universities in the United States and England until the mid-1970s. Increasing health difficulties marked his final years; he died at his Mexico City residence in 1978.