Arturo Márquez

Born: December 20, 1950, Alamos Sonora, Mexico

Fandango

• Composed: 2020
• Premiere: August 24, 2021 at the Hollywood Bowl by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel conducting, Anne Akiko-Meyers, violin
• CSO Notable Performances: These are the CSO’s first performances of this work.
• Instrumentation: solo violin, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cajon, claves, crash cymbals, güiro, snare drum, harp, strings
• Duration: approx. 30 minutes

Arturo Márquez was born in 1950 in Alamos in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora, where his father was a mariachi violinist. Arturo Sr. introduced his son to music and, when the family moved to Los Angeles in 1962, young Arturo was ready to begin studying violin and immersing himself in a variety of musical styles—“I spent my adolescence,” he recalled, “listening to [Mexican singer] Javier Solis, sounds of mariachi, The Beatles, The Doors, Carlos Santana and Chopin.” By the time the family returned to Sonora, when he was 17, he had started to compose, and the following year he was ready to become director of the municipal band in Navojoa. Márquez went to Mexico City in 1970 to begin his professional studies at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, where he majored in piano and composition. From 1976 to 1979, he studied at the Institute of Fine Arts of Mexico, and a French government grant in 1980 enabled him to study in Paris with Jacques Castérède for two years; he then did his academic graduate work on a Fulbright scholarship at the California Institute of the Arts with Morton Subotnick, Mel Powell and James Newton. 

Today one of Mexico’s most respected musicians, Márquez has taught at the National University of Mexico; held a residency at the National Center of Research, Documentation and Information of Mexican Music; fulfilled commissions from the Organization of American States, Universidad Metropolitana de México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Festival del Caribe, Festival de la Ciudad de México, 1992 Seville World’s Fair and Rockefeller Foundation; and received, among many distinctions, Mexico’s National Prize for Arts and Sciences, Austrian Embassy’s Medalla Mozart and the Gold Medal of Fine Arts of Mexico, the first musician honored with the country’s highest award for artists.

Márquez wrote of his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, “The fandango is known worldwide as a popular Spanish dance and, specifically, as one of the fundamental parts (Palos) of flamenco. Since its appearance around the 18th century, composers such as de Murcia, Domenico Scarlatti, Boccherini, Padre Soler, Mozart and others have included fandango in concert music. Soon after its appearance in Spain, the fandango moved to the Americas, where it acquired a personality adapted to the local cultures. It is still found in Ecuador, Colombia and Mexico, specifically in the state of Veracruz and the Huasteca area in eastern Mexico, where it accompanies a special festival for musicians, singers, poets and dancers in which everyone gathers around a wooden platform to stamp their feet, sing and improvise 10-line stanzas appropriate for the occasion. It should be noted that fandango and huapango have similar meanings in Mexico. 

“In 2018, I received an e-mail from violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, a wonderful musician, in which she proposed writing a work for violin and orchestra rooted in Mexican music. The proposal interested me immediately, not just because of my admiration for her musicality and virtuosity but, above all, for her courage in proposing a concerto so out of the ordinary. I had already tried, unsuccessfully, to compose a violin concerto some 20 years earlier with ideas based on the Mexican fandango. I have known this music since I was a child, listening to it in the cinema and on the radio, and hearing my father, a mariachi violinist (Arturo Márquez, Sr.), interpret Huastecos and mariachi music. I would like to mention that the violin was my first instrument—when I was 14 I studied it in La Puente, California in Los Angeles County, in which same county, fortuitously, this concerto was premiered by Ms. Meyers, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel in August 2021. It was a beautiful coincidence that Fandango connects 18th-century California with the present day.

“The first movement, Folia Tropical, has the form of the traditional classical concerto: introduction, exposition with two themes, bridge, development and recapitulation. The introduction and the two themes share the same motif but use it in a totally different way. Emotionally, the introduction is a call to the remote history of the fandango; the first theme and the bridge are based on the Caribbean ‘clave’ rhythm; the second is eminently expressive, almost like a romantic bolero. Folias are ancient dances from Portugal and Spain whose title was borrowed from the French word folie: 'madness.'

“The second movement, Plegaria (‘Prayer’), pays tribute to the huapango mariachi together with the Spanish fandango in both its rhythmic and emotional aspects. I do not use traditional themes but there is an attempt to unite both worlds, an imaginary marriage between the huapango–mariachi and the concert music of Pablo de Sarasate, Manuel de Falla and Issac Albéniz, three of my beloved and admired Spanish composers. The movement is also a freely treated Chaconne [i.e., based on a repeating pattern], evolved from a late 16th- and early 17th-century dance forbidden by the Spanish Inquisition before it became part of European Baroque music. This dance was also known in colonial Mexico at that time.

“The third movement, Fandanguito, is a tribute to the fandangito huasteco, music for violin, jarana huasteca (small rhythm guitar) and huapanguera (low guitar with five orders of strings) that accompanies singing of sones and improvised song or recitation. The huasteco violin is one of the most virtuosic instruments in all of America. It has certain features similar to Baroque music but with great rhythmic vitality and a rich original variety in bow strokes. This movement reflects that virtuosity. It is a free elaboration of the huasteco fandanguito but maintains many of its rhythmic characteristics. It is music I have kept in my heart for decades.

“I think that for every composer it is a real challenge to compose new works from old forms, especially when that repertoire is part of the fundamental canon of classical music. On the other hand, composing this work during the 2020 pandemic was not easy due to the huge human suffering. Undoubtedly, my experience with this work during that period was intense and highly emotional, but I have preserved my seven stylistic principles: tonality, modality, melody, rhythm, imaginary folk tradition, harmony and orchestral color.”

 —Dr. Richard E. Rodda