Silvestre Revueltas

Mexican composer, conductor and violinist Silvestre Revueltas was born in Santiago Papasquiaro on 31 December 1899 into a family of artists. He studied in Mexico City (at the National Conservatory) and in the USA (in Austin, Texas and in Chicago).

As a composer, he is best known for his orchestral work Sensemayá and for his score for the 1939 film La noche de los mayas, but he also wrote chamber music and songs.

Carlos Chávez invited Revueltas to become assistant conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico in 1929, and they were both instrumental in promoting contemporary Mexican music. The two men fell out in 1935 and Revueltas became conductor of the short-lived Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional.

Silvestre Revueltas traveled to Spain during the civil war there, returing to Mexico when Franco won the war, then fell into poverty, dying at the age of forty in Mexico City from pneumonia, complicated by alcoholism, on 5 October 1940 - the day of the first performance of his ballet El renacuajo paseador.

 

A selection of articles about Silvestre Revueltas

Echoes of Oblivion by Robert McCarney - Four by Four by Five fff

CD Spotlight. No Reservations Here - The Meridian Arts Ensemble, heard by the late Howard Smith. '... an unusually broad span of inspired composition.'

Ensemble. Dancing in the Air - Mary Isaac enjoys a concert of music from Latin America