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30-489: Esquinas (Corners) is an orchestral composition by the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas , written in 1931 and extensively revised in 1933. The first version is in two movements with a duration of about 11 minutes in performance; the second is variously described as being in one or in three (continuous) movements with a total duration of about seven minutes. The scores of both versions are dedicated to Ángela Acevedo. Esquinas

60-443: A corner. Me too. With good will you can imagine anything: streets, alleys, squares, plazas. It would be fun to find in this music noise of horns, trams, trucks and so on. Unfortunately there is nothing like that. (At least, naively, I think so.) Rather there is noise or silence, the internal traffic of souls that I see passing by near me. Some music connoisseurs are able to find a determinate form in this music—binary, ternary, lied. This

90-541: A letter to Arthur Berger from Tepoztlán , Mexico: We are only two hours from Mexico City so I have heard the Sinfonica several times. Chavez played a piece of Revueltas' called Ventanas (Windows). Its very amusing to listen to—chuck full [ sic ] of orchestral color—but the form isn't very good, I'm afraid. He was like a modern painter who throws marvelous daubs of color on canvas that practically takes your eye out, but it doesn't add up. Too bad—because he

120-511: A post he held until 1935. He and Chávez did much to promote contemporary Mexican music. It was around this time that Revueltas began to compose in earnest. He began his first film score, Redes , in 1934, a commission which resulted in Revueltas and Chávez falling out. Chávez had originally expected to write the score, but political changes led to him losing his job in the Ministry of Education , which

150-423: A semantic marking, enabling or enhancing their identification as a musical sign of cultural origin. As an instance of Revueltas's harsher, more abstract, and modernist style, Esquinas was poorly received by audiences initially, in contrast to his more lyrical and tonal works, such as Colorines and Janitzio . Esquinas , in either of its two versions, has remained one of Revueltas's least-performed works, and

180-479: A three-part structural pattern but rather is formally free and through-composed . Ventanas , characteristic of Revueltas's style, employs pedal tones and ostinatos as bases for musical constructions which usually are accumulations of rhythms and instrumental textures. Broadly melodic sections contrast with others in which small motives are developed rhythmically. These fragmentary motives recall folk music, often as melodies in parallel thirds. The harmonic texture

210-415: A whole mountain of new energy and new hope. There remains only the substance of these tumultuous corners that retain the noise of the crowds' struggle, their bitter taste of heartbreak and the hard consistency of the people, forged in all their sorrows. The first version of Esquinas is unpublished and details of the scoring are unknown. The second version is scored for a chamber orchestra which, according to

240-550: Is also a feature, with constantly changing rhythms and meters. The music "never stands still (except when the composer intends so, always to maximum effect; these episodes are felt both as moments of melodic statement and rhythmic repose)." As an instance of Revueltas's harsher, more abstract, and modernist style Ventanas , as also Esquinas were poorly received by audiences, in contrast to his more lyrical and tonal examples, such as Colorines and Janitzio , were warmly praised. On 8 September 1944, Aaron Copland wrote, in

270-501: Is more compact, less repetitive, without abandoning the collage-form structure of short episodes. The two final movements are combined into one, and several orchestrational problems of the original version are corrected or improved. This abbreviated version is regarded as either a single-movement composition, or as broken into three movements. The composer's note for Esquinas reads: From every street and every neighborhood. Listeners would probably be hard pressed to imagine themselves in

300-495: Is mostly open rather than dense, despite chromatic melodic movement, and there are frequent hints of bitonality . Fifths and octaves anchor the strongly etched melodic contours and active harmonic rhythms. In the scoring, Revueltas displays a fondness for the low brass, especially the tuba, which also has a prominent role in many of Revueltas's other works, such as Sensemayá , Homenaje a Federico García Lorca , El renacuajo paseador , Troka , and Alcancías . Rhythmic complexity

330-580: Is neither a soloist, nor is part of the orchestra, and her participation is brief and sporadic) appears to be explained by its communicative function serving the composer to highlight or underline certain musical elements he considered significant". It has been proposed that the musical construction of Esquinas is based on the cries of Mexican street vendors who once populated the urban landscape. Revueltas does not quote actual street cries, but rather imitates certain of their stereotypical aspects. The incorporation of these characteristic features merely suggests

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360-408: The 1939 film La noche de los mayas , although some dissenting opinions hold that the orchestral work Sensemayá is better known. In any case, it is Sensemayá that is considered Revueltas's masterpiece. He appeared briefly as a bar piano player in the movie ¡Vámonos con Pancho Villa! ( Let's Go with Pancho Villa , Mexico, 1935), for which he composed the music. When shooting breaks out in

390-529: The actual function of the singer is not clear: is she a soloist, or should she be regarded as a sort of "supplemental instrument" in the orchestra? In turn, where should the singer be placed on the stage, and how should the melodies be sung, since there are no words and the composer has provided no indication for vocalization? It has been suggested that the soprano voice may represent the score's dedicatee, Ángela Acevedo, with whom Revueltas had been living since 1930 and would marry in 1932, and to whom he also dedicated

420-530: The age of 40 on October 5, 1940, the day his ballet El renacuajo paseador , written four years earlier, was premiered. In 1976, his remains were transferred to the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres in Mexico City. Revueltas wrote film music, chamber music, songs, and a number of other works. His best-known work is the 1960 arrangement by José Yves Limantour  [ es ] drawn from Revueltas' film score for

450-420: The bar while he is playing " La Cucaracha ", he holds up a sign reading "Se suplica no tirarle al pianista" ("We beg you not to shoot at the pianist"). Ventanas (Revueltas) Ventanas (Windows) is an orchestral work by the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas , written in 1931. A performance of it lasts about 11 minutes. Ventanas was Revueltas's third orchestral work, composed immediately after

480-770: The first recording was released only in 2004. Silvestre Revueltas Revueltas was born in Santiago Papasquiaro in Durango , and studied at the National Conservatory in Mexico City, St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, and the Chicago College of Music . He gave violin recitals and in 1929 was invited by Carlos Chávez to become assistant conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico ,

510-602: The first versions of Cuauhnáhuac and Esquinas , and concurrently with the second, large-orchestral version of Cuauhnáhuac and the Duo para Pato y Canario . It was completed in December 1931 and premiered on 4 November 1932 by the Orquesta Sinfónica de México  [ es ] under the composer's direction. Although not so indicated in the published score, Revueltas dedicated Ventanas to Ángela Acevedo, whom he married in

540-413: The heart with a new perspective, more understanding, more faithful, more experienced; modeled with new material, leaving intact their tortured anguish of fettered aspirations, their persistent pain stuck in the middle of the street, the harrowing cry of the poor and helpless vendor, fruitful in a defiance that now feels a little strange within the encouraging optimism of my present desire, happy and strong as

570-401: The light of the moon, or without it?" In another, better-known one, however, he demurred: Ventanas is music that has no program. Perhaps, in writing this work, I thought of expressing some definite idea. Now, several months after writing it, I can't remember what it was. The name doesn't mean anything; it might be called "Skylights" or anything else. (It all depends on the good or bad will of

600-462: The listener.) Nevertheless, a window does offer a fertile literary theme, and it might satisfy the taste of some persons who can neither understand nor listen to music without a program, without inventing something more or less disagreeable—but, fortunately, I am not a literary man. I am a musician with technique and without inspiration. Like Planos , Ventanas is exceptional among Revueltas's single- movement works in that it does not fall into

630-819: The manuscript of the score held by the Free Library of Philadelphia (Fleisher Collection), consists of piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, E ♭ clarinet, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (including xylophone), and strings. The publisher's (Peer International) website gives a slightly different instrumentation: 3 flutes (third doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, cor angalis, E ♭ clarinet, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 4 horns, D trumpet, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (2 Indian drums, xylophone, ch, bass drum, suspended cymbal, woodblock, tamtam, triangle, jingles, güiro), harp, and strings. The original version of Esquinas consists of three movements,

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660-421: The original. Although it is difficult to be certain about the composer's reasoning, it was most likely a purely practical consideration. There are several difficulties with the part. First, it comes to only 24 bars in all, consisting of four very short, widely separated outbursts. Second, the required registers exceed the normal range of a typical vocal tessitura , creating problematic technical difficulties. Third,

690-415: The scores of Ventanas , Parián , and Caminos . The presence of a vocal part in the first version, however, suggests "In a direct and very natural way, the evocation of the sung street cry leads to the interpretation of two other cries of Esquinas , which call attention to themselves because, among other reasons, they are enunciated by a female voice. The unusual way of incorporating the voice (since she

720-413: The second and third of which are played without a break: Esquinas offers an early example of Revueltas's Mexican popular-musical modernism , "whose themes are shattered at the moment of their birth, a struggle that does not permit its features to be heard emerging, decomposed, barely sketched and acclimated". In the second version of the work, Revueltas discarded the vocal part in the first movement of

750-409: The year of its premiere. Ventanas is scored for an orchestra of piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, E ♭ clarinet, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. In one programme note, Revueltas gave a rather conventional programmatic description: " Ventanas is sharply romantic music. Who does not remember a window by

780-646: Was a gifted guy. A 1999 review of Esa-Pekka Salonen 's recording rates Ventanas somewhat higher, as a "minor masterpiece", in fact, describing it as cinematic and rhapsodic with primitive, ritualistic episodes recalling Sensemayá , but also with "delightful interludes in the Mexican folk style, a blues-tinged oboe theme, impassioned violins, and a drunken, orgiastic coda that builds to an appropriately festive climax". The work has been interpreted as an example of Revueltas's representation of Mexican society, in which different cultural, ethnic, and social-class differences do not coexist peacefully, much less are brought into

810-650: Was an actress and dancer, and younger brother José Revueltas (1914–1976) was a noted writer. His nephew Román Revueltas Retes, son of José, is a violinist and conductor. In 1937 Revueltas went to Spain during the Spanish Civil War , as part of a tour organized by the leftist organization Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR); upon Francisco Franco 's victory, he returned to Mexico. He earned little, and fell into poverty and alcoholism. He died in Mexico City of pneumonia (complicated by alcoholism), at

840-618: Was behind the film project. Revueltas left Chávez's orchestra in 1935 to be the principal conductor of a newly created and short-lived rival orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional . He was a member of the Revueltas Sánchez family, a number of whom were also famous and recognized in Mexico: his brother Fermín (1901–1935) and sister Consuelo (born before 1908, died before 1999) were painters, sister Rosaura (ca. 1909–1996)

870-481: Was not my intention. The traffic I was talking about has multiple shapes and no apparent coherence. It is subject to the rhythm of life, not to the distance from one side of the street to the other. I have nothing to say about the technique behind the music because it doesn't interest me. Some good-humoured people say I have technique; other, bad-tempereded ones, say I do not. They ought to know better. Yesterday's corners with today's emotion, observed from other roads of

900-453: Was originally composed in 1931, in two movements and scored for chamber orchestra with a soprano voice in the first movement. According to one source, a version of Esquinas for orchestra alone was premiered on 20 November 1931 by the Orquesta Sinfónica de México under the composer's baton. Two years later, in October 1933, Revueltas decided to make a new version of Esquinas . The second version

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