Sinfonía india
Carlos Chávez (1899-1978)

[1935-36]

After a decade of violent conflict in Mexico, revolutionary forces prevailed in 1921, launching a new era of governance and a hunger to redefine the country’s national identity. The 21-year-old composer Carlos Chávez was just then breaking through into the professional music scene in Mexico City, and soon his travels to Europe and New York (where he befriended Aaron Copland) made him the most worldly and accomplished musician in Mexico. While still in his twenties, Chávez was appointed music director of the country’s first permanent symphony orchestra and director of the National Conservatory of Music—all while he continued to compose his own works, tour internationally as a conductor, and write hundreds of influential articles about music and culture.

In the same way that American composers (with a nudge from Dvořák) looked to Indigenous and African-American sources to forge a national sound, or how Bartók undertook exhaustive studies of folk music from his native Hungary, Chávez led the way for Mexican composers to recognize and reclaim the Indigenous traditions that flourished before the arrival of Spanish colonizers. He was actually in New York in the winter of 1935-36 when he wrote his most famous example of Indigenous-influenced concert music: the Sinfonía india that was commissioned by the CBS network. Chávez conducted the premiere during a radio broadcast with the CBS Orchestra, and the single-movement symphony soon became his signature work in the United States and beyond.

The inclusion of melodies sourced from widespread tribes gave Chávez the raw material to create an authentic Mexican sound, but it was his own brilliance as an orchestrator and his ear for modern sonorities that brought out the sparkle and sizzle of this irresistible concert score.

One other fascinating aspect of Chávez’ influence is the role he played in helping Copland find his own locally-rooted sound. While visiting his friend in Mexico City, Copland went out to the nightclub that inspired El Salón México, a seminal score completed the same year as Chávez’s Sinfonía india. It was a direct line from there to Copland’s two Southwestern-themed ballets, Rodeo and Billy the Kid, and ultimately the peak Americana of Appalachian Spring and the Third Symphony.

Two piccolos, three flutes, three oboes, E-flat clarinet, two clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two trombones, timpani, percussion, harp, strings