Silvestre Revueltas

Revueltas is frequently associated with the musical nationalist movement in Mexico; his main inspiration came from the popular and folk music of his country. Unlike Carlos Chávez, however, Revueltas showed little concern for form or the other more traditional elements that makes Chávez's music an intellectual product. Revueltas's music is also frequently described a humorous or ironic. His orchestration is bold and uncanny and his rhythms are propulsive. Much of his music has achieved and sustained a high level of popularity, such as "Sensemayá," which is a setting of Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén's poem of the same name. Around this same time Revueltas had returned to Mexico after having been in Spain in support of the Loyalist cause. However, after a lifetime of intense poverty and heavy drinking, in 1940 he became so stricken with pneumonia that he was unable to fight the disease. He was found unconscious in a Mexico City street and died not long thereafter.

Revueltas’s Compositions