Manuel Ponce’s “Chapultepec”
Notes by TŌN oboist David Zoschnick
Dubbed the “Creator of the Modern Mexican Song,” perhaps no other composer is as responsible for popularizing Mexican concert music as Manuel Ponce. Ponce’s work to bring traditional rural cánciones into urban concert halls came at a time when the modern Mexican identity was being uprooted. The Mexican Revolution, which lasted from 1910 to 1920, saw the expansion of voting rights, workers’ rights, land reform, and the encouragement of education in indigenous languages. The result of these political changes was a Mexican identity that embraced and promoted Mexico’s indigenous and rural heritage and shunned the traditional white, Spanish, and urban culture that had dominated. Ponce’s perhaps best known orchestral work, the 1934 symphonic poem Chapultepec: Tres bocetos sinfónicos (Three Symphonic Sketches) is an example of how the Mexican composer contributed to this movement and celebrated indigenous culture.
Chapultepec portrays the vast, forested park of the same name, located in Mexico City, in three movements. The first movement is titled Primavera, or Spring, and Ponce uses the orchestra to great effect to portray this. Shimmering string ostinati create a dense jungle-like texture, through which woodwind solos dip and weave, like tropical birds of paradise dancing to impress each other. Horns and trumpets come to the forefront as the forest comes alive in a blooming crescendo, spring coming to life.
The second movement, titled Nocturno (Night), is full of lyrical pleading melodies in the strings, reminiscent of the love songs that Ponce was most well-known for during his career. One cannot help but picture a moonlit night at Chapultepec castle, the colonial palace that looms over the park, as a dashing caballero serenades his amor up in a balcony from the garden below.
The final movement, Canto y Danza (Song and Dance), begins with a lone oboe singing a somber melody while percussion hints at the raucous dance rhythm to come underneath. This somber song is passed around the winds until string pizzicati join the jaunty four-against-three dance rhythm, and the entire orchestra can’t help but join in the dance.