MUSIC FOR CINCO DE MAYO, AND POULENC’S GLORIA

By Judith Eckelmeyer

(GRACE WOODS MUSIC SESSION MAY 5, 2025)

---

The arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese explorers into the Americas in the 15th century created a profound cultural seism there. Subjugation and slaughter of the native peoples and the forcible imposition of European domination, including religion, in many ways nearly eradicated the world that the original inhabitants knew. What filled the vacuum, of course, was European culture. Not only systems of governance and religion but the arts as well became deeply affected by the new culture. European music, for example, infected (yes) the style of the art among the remaining natives and introduced new sounds, new genres which slowly were reflected in the music being created not only by Europeans but also by native composers in the 16th through 18th centuries. Because music for the church was important for the Catholic clergy who arrived with the military forces, it was a strong component of the works created early in the conquest. But not long after that, secular music began to appear: songs and dances with European structures and harmonies, and simple stage works—operas with European topics and characters—as well. But in all cases, elements of the indigenous music were evident in some way or other: frequently as rhythms and thereby dances, and instruments. ​

By the 19th century music education in each nation had begun to be established in each country. Conservatories became important, especially by the early 20th century, for developing the new generations of composers and performers. Although European music was primary in such institutions, a number of composers, aware of their cultural heritage, looked to the folk traditions and musical styles for their inspiration and stylistic elements. Countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and Peru have a long record of composers and works. 
 
I have found it difficult to find a trail of composed and recorded music and known composers from Mexico. I don’t know why this is the case, but it’s probably in part because I am not familiar with Spanish or Portuguese languages, nor am I a scholar of Hispanic music or its development in the Americas, and possibly because scholarship reflected in our music history texts has not expanded enough to included Hispanic culture in the Americas. In this dearth of information I have, however, uncovered in my collection music of two Mexican composers of the 20th century, and these I offer to honor the celebration of Cinco de Mayo.

Revueltas in 1930

Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940) was born in Santiago Papasquiaro in Durango and studied at the National Conservatory in Mexico City, and thereafter in Texas and Chicago. A violinist, he gave recitals which caught the attention of his countryman, Carlos Chávez, who then invited him to be assistant conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico. His composition career began then with a film score in 1935 followed by five other film scores before his death. He also composed numerous orchestral works, chamber music and ballets. His masterpiece is considered to be Sensemayá (1938), a name from a combination of sensa, a Bantu word for Providence and the name of an Afro-Cuban goddess, Yemenyá, whose name comes from the Yoruba language. This is a symphonic poem based on a poem by Nicolás Guillén about a magical rite of the African—Cuban Mayombe sect, in which a large symbolic snake, carried by a dancer, is ritually killed by a human. Rhythms throughout the work simulate the poem’s text. Revueltas’s revised score uses a large orchestra featuring a variety of percussion instruments along with brasses, winds and strings. [Much of the information about Sensemayá is borrowed from A History of Western Music, 8th edition, by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca.]

Silvestre Revueltas | Sensemayá | Philarmonia Orchestra

---

Manuel Ponce

Manuel Ponce (1882-1948), recognized at age 4 by his family as a musical prodigy, had already been successful as a pianist and composer when he entered the National Conservatory of Mexico at the age of 19. He then studied in Bologna, Italy, and Berlin. Returning to Mexico he took the position of piano and music history teacher at the National Conservatory, with a 5-year break for a sojourn in Havana. His compositions include works for solo, chamber and orchestra ensembles, but his guitar and piano works are more numerous than other solo works. Perhaps equally important, he incorporated elements of Mexican popular music into his “classical” works. His contemporary in Brazil, Heitor Villa-Lobos, who also drew on native sources in his compositions, wrote to Ponce of his delight to find another composer “arming himself with the resources of the folklore of his people in the struggle for the future musical independence of his country” [Wikipedia, Ponce]; the audience who heard his concerto of Mexican popular music were scandalized that such a resource should be encountered in European classical music. 
 
Ponce’s songs, including “Estrellita” and “Cielito lindo”, appear to have entered the American culture by way of elementary school music classes. There are dozens of his songs and folk song arrangements, all showing the world the “Mexico” we have come to know through our popular  culture. But Ponce’s guitar music and his comfort in the European tradition can be clearly recognized in his Suite in A major. Its traditional four movements are 1) Prelude and allemande, 
2) Gavotte, 3) Sarabande, and 4) Gigue.

Suite in A minor by Manuel Maria Ponce (in the style of Sylvius Leopold Weiss)
​Movements by minutes: I. Prelude 0:06 II. Allemande 2:40 III. Sarabande 5:21 IV. Gavotte I & II 9:54 V. Gigue 12:35

---

Poulenc in the early 1920s

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) was born and raised in Paris, learned piano as a child from his mother, and was introduced through her and her brother into a highly secular Parisian world of contemporary French literature and music. Poulenc’s father, whom he described as a “deeply religious but liberal” Catholic from the south of France, died in 1917, after which Francis moved in the spheres of his mother’s secular, cosmopolitan world. As a teen, he studied the piano music of Debussy and Ravel, then met Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud—three of Les Six—and Eric Satie, their older friend and guide to the avant-garde. At the age of 18 he dedicated his first published work to Satie and became associated with the iconoclastic Six. Although he eventually studied composition formally, it was with private teachers rather than in a classically structured program; he famously progressed no further in counterpoint than Bach’s chorales in spite of having met and conversed with Schoenberg and his pupils in 1921 in Vienna. In this highly individualistic and open-ended development, Poulenc acquired the diversity of resources that would characterize his music: sensitivity to harmonic and tonal color, melodic freedom, and the “language” of popular music current in Parisian cafes and theaters. 

Poulenc’s world changed in 1936 when his friend, composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud, was killed in a car accident. In the wake of this tragedy Poulenc retired to Rocamadour, a pilgrimage town in the southern region from which his father had come. There, Poulenc returned to religious faith. His very first sacred choral pieces, “Litanies to the Black Virgin” of 1936, are settings for women’s and children’s voices of recitations honoring the Virgin who is represented by a blackened wood statue in the church of Notre Dame in Rocamadour. Other sacred choral works followed soon after and appear throughout the rest of his life. 

​One such work was his 1969 setting of the Gloria, one of the portions of the liturgy of the Mass, creating with it a concert work of 6 exceedingly varied atmospheres, not all of which seem to connect directly with the text being set in the particular movement. The full text, and Poulenc’s division of it, are as follows:
​

1. Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.
   Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good will.
 
2. Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te.
   Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam.
   We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we adore Thee, we glorify Thee.
   We give Thee thanks for Thy great glory.
 
3. Domine Deus, Rex caelestis, Deus Pater omnipotens.
   Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father omnipotent.
 
4.Domine Fili unigenite Jesu Christe.
   Lord, the only begotten son, Jesus Christ.
 
5. Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris,  Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
    Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem nostrum.
   Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father,   
   Who bears the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
   Who bears the sins of the world, receive our prayer
 
6. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis.
    Quoniam tu solus sanctus. Tu solus Dominus. Tu solus Altissimus, Jesu Christe.
    Cum Sancto Spiritu, in Gloria Dei Patris. Amen.
   Who sits at the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us.
   For You alone are holy, You alone are the Lord, You alone are the highest, Jesus Christ.
   With the Holy Spirit, in the Glory of God the Father. Amen.
​

As we know, dissonance comes in many flavors, from intensely bitter, to harsh, to melancholy, to poignantly sweet. He was a master at choosing just the right combination of pitches to help define the emotional values of the texts, and he also intensified the choral effects through the vocal ranges. The musical styles in the Gloria range from the realm of mysticism to the secular jollity of the dances of the Folies Bergère. He felt no obligation to follow the traditional accents of ecclesiastical Latin, but introduced what seem to be the speech patterns of the every-day French citizen. A good example is at the word “benedicimus” (in no. 2), with the accent not on the expected syllable -di- but rather on -mus-: “benediciMUS te”. 
​
Poulenc thought his sacred choral music represented “the best and most genuine part” of himself; indeed, all of the harmonic and textural attributes in this work reflect his absolute dedication to reaching into the depths of texts. In the Gloria, the result is in turn meditative, joyful, exuberant, and mystical.

L'Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France dirigé par Mikko Franck et le Choeur de Radio France

---

Judith Eckelmeyer ©2025