Mexica - Carlos Chávez

9/17/2015 Carlos Chávez ­ Long Biography ­ Music Sales Classical

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Carlos ChávezBorn: 1899Died: 1978Nationality: MexicanPublisher: G. Schirmer

Born 13 June 1899 in Mexico City, Carlos Chávez was a renowned composer, conductor,and educator whose distinctive, often highly percussive music synthesized elements ofMexican, Indian, and Spanish­Mexican influence. A prolific writer of music and musiccriticism, Chávez's oeuvre includes five ballets, seven symphonies, four concertos, acantata and opera, and innumerable pieces for voice, piano, and chamber ensemble; hewrote two books (of which Toward A New Music: Music and Electricity became a majorcontribution and fundamental document of new musical thought) and more than 200articles on music.

Chávez was trained primarily as a pianist and developed much of his compositional skillsindependent of instructors. Coming of age at the close of the Mexican revolution andduring a time of renewed cultural nationalism, Chávez's investigation of indigenous Indiancultures, native folk elements, and dance forms brought an unprecedented vigor andvisibility to 20th­century Mexican music. A master of orchestration, Chávez's use of nativeinstruments was inimitable with polyrhythms, cross­rhythms, syncopation, and numerousirregular meters often significant elements of compositonal structure. Works such as theSinfonía de Antígona, Sinfonia India, and a ballet for Martha Graham (La Hija deCólquide, "The Dark Meadow") were celebrated for their remarkably distinctive andoriginal sound.

Chávez lectured as part of his appointment in 1958 to the Charles Eliot Norton Chair of Poetics at Harvard and served asdirector of the National Conservatory in Mexico. He organized and served as music director of the National SymphonyOrchestra of Mexico and conducted nearly every major orchestra in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. He wasawarded honorary memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Institute of Arts and Letters.

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