Arturo Márquez

Fandango

Background

Arturo Márquez, one of Mexico’s most successful contemporary composers, was born in the state of Sonora. When he was 12 years old, his family moved to a suburb of Los Angeles, where he studied piano, violin, and trombone. Márquez later recalled that “My adolescence was spent listening to Javier Solis [the famous Mexican singer/actor], sounds of mariachi, the Beatles, Doors, Carlos Santana and Chopin.” He later studied at the Conservatory of Music of Mexico, with the great French composer Jacques Castérède in Paris, and at the California Institute of the Arts. He is on the faculty of the National Autonomous University in Mexico City. Márquez frequently uses Mexican and other Latin folk influences in his works, and his best-known series of works are the Danzónes he began composing in the 1990s for orchestra and other ensembles.

Márquez notes regarding the Fandango that:

The Fandango is known worldwide as a popular Spanish dance and specifically, as one of the fundamental parts (Palos) of Flamenco. Since its appearance in the 18th century, various composers such as S. de Murcia, D. Scarlatti, L. Bocherini, Padre Soler, and W. A. Mozart, among others, have included the Fandango in concert music. What is little known in the world is that immediately upon its appearance in Spain, the Fandango moved to the Americas where it acquired personalities according to the land that adopted and cultivated it. Today, we can still find it in countries such as Ecuador, Colombia and Mexico­­—in the latter specifically in the state of Veracruz and in the Huasteca area, part of seven states in eastern Mexico. Here the Fandango acquires a tinge different from the Spanish genre; for centuries, it has been part of a special festival for musicians, singers, poets and dancers. Everyone gathers around a wooden platform to stamp their feet, sing and improvise ten-line stanzas bout the occasion. 

In 2018 I received an email from violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, a wonderful musician, where she proposed to me the possibility of writing a work for violin and orchestra that had to do with Mexican music. The proposal interested and fascinated me from that very moment, not only because of Maestra Meyers’s emotional aesthetic proposal but also because of my admiration for her musicality, virtuosity and, 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 that were based on the Mexican Fandango. I had known this music since I was a child, listening to it in the cinema, on the radio and hearing to my father (Arturo Márquez Sr.), a mariachi violinist, play Huastecos and mariachi music. Also, since the 1990s I have been admiring the Fandango in various parts of Mexico. I would like to mention that the violin was my first instrument when I was 14 years old (1965). Remarkably, I studied it in La Puente, California in Los Angeles County where this work will be premiered with the wonderful Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel, whom I admire very much. This is a beautiful coincidence, as I have no doubt that the Fandango was danced in California in the 18th and 19th centuries.

What You’ll Hear

Márquez provides the following description of the work itself:

Fandango for violin and orchestra is formally a concerto in three movements:
1. Folia Tropical
2. Plegaria (Prayer) (Chaconne)
3. Fandanguito

The first movement, Folia Tropical, is in the sonata form of a traditional classical concerto: introduction, exposition with its two themes, bridge, development and recapitulation. The introduction and the two themes share the same motif in a totally different way. Emotionally, the introduction is a call to the remote history of the Fandango; the first theme and the bridge, this one totally rhythmic, are based on the Caribbean “Clave” rhythm, and the second is eminently expressive, almost like a romantic Bolero. Folias are ancient dances that come from Portugal and Spain. However, also the root and meaning of this word also takes us to the French word “folie”—madness.

The second movement Plegaria pays tribute to the Huapango mariachi together with the Spanish Fandango, both in its rhythmic and emotional parts. It should be noted that one of the Palos del Flamenco Andaluz is known as the Malagueña and Mexico also has a Huapango honoring the Andalusian city of Malaga. I do not use traditional themes but there is a healthy attempt to unite both worlds; that is why this movement is the fruit of an imaginary marriage between the Huapango mariachi and Pablo Sarasate, Manuel de Falla and Issac Albeniz, three of the Spanish composers whom I most love and admire. It is also a freely treated Chaconne. Perhaps a few people know that the Chaconne as well as the Zarabanda were two dances forbidden by the Spanish Inquisition in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, long before they became part of European Baroque music. Moreover, the first written descriptions of these dances place them in colonial Mexico of these centuries.

The third movement, Fandanguito, is a tribute to the famous Malaga huasteco. The music of this region is played by violin, jarana huasteca (small rhythm guitar) and huapanguera (low guitar with 5 courses of strings). This ensemble accompanies the songs and recited or sung improvisation. The huasteco violin is one of the instruments with the most virtuosity in all of America. Its technique has certain features similar to Baroque music but with great rhythmic vitality and a rich original variety in bow strokes. Every huasteco violinist must have a personal version of this playing technique, if he wants to have and maintain prestige. This third movement is a totally free elaboration of the Fandanguito huasteco, but it maintains many of its rhythmic characteristics. It demands great virtuosity from the soloist. It is music that 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 this repertoire is part of the fundamental structure of classical music. On the other hand, composing in this during the 2020 pandemic was not easy due to the huge human suffering. Undoubtedly my experience with this work during this period has been intense and highly emotional but I must mention that I have preserved my seven capital principles: tonality, modality, melody, rhythm, imaginary folk tradition, harmony and orchestral color. 

Program notes ©2026 J. Michael Allsen