{"id":1315,"date":"2020-06-09T22:08:03","date_gmt":"2020-06-09T22:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.briandowdy.com\/v2\/?p=1315"},"modified":"2025-05-04T16:10:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T16:10:40","slug":"jose-pablo-moncayo-huapango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.briandowdy.com\/v2\/2020\/06\/09\/jose-pablo-moncayo-huapango\/","title":{"rendered":"Jos\u00e9 Pablo Moncayo – Huapango (1941)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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As a composer, conductor, educator, pianist, and percussionist, Jos\u00e9 Pablo Moncayo built a legacy in Mexican music at a young age. In his few decades of study and professional activity, he produced numerous works for piano solo, chamber music with piano, other mixed chamber ensembles, symphonies and shorter works for orchestra, and the opera La mulata de C\u00f3rdoba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a skilled young pianist, Moncayo entered the Concervatorio Nacional de M\u00fasica in 1929, where studied with Hern\u00e1ndez Moncada. The school\u2019s director was then Carlos Ch\u00e1vez, perhaps the most foundational figure in early 20th century Mexican musical nationalism. Ch\u00e1vez began a composition class at the conservatory around 1930, and among the first of its students were Silvestre Revueltas \u2013 another of Mexico\u2019s best-known composers \u2013 and the young Moncayo. In 1932, Moncayo met the most iconic figure of American musical nationalism \u2013 Aaron Copland, whom Ch\u00e1vez had invited to Mexico for a chamber music festival. The relationship between Ch\u00e1vez and Copland would be pivotal to Copland\u2019s own stylistic development, ironically infusing what we think of as Copland\u2019s \u201cAmerican sound\u201d with rhythmic and melodic characteristics of Mexican popular music. A decade later, just as Copland crossed the border to visit Ch\u00e1vez, Moncayo attended the Berkshire Music Festival (now know as Tanglewood) upon invitation from Copland and Sergei Koussevitsky. However, if one hears similarities to Copland\u2019s Rodeo in the final section of Huapango, they should not assume that the younger composer was influence by his American elder \u2013 Rodeo was premiered the year after Huapango.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moncayo\u2019s Huapango was premiered in 1941 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, by Carlos Ch\u00e1vez and the Orquesta Sinf\u00f3nica Nacional de M\u00e9xico, and is based upon a popular style of Mexican music by the same name. The huapango style encompasses diverse instrumental possibilities \u2013from a trio of stringed instruments to a large mariachi ensemble replete with strings, percussion, brass, and vocals. It is often accompanied by a dance style called zapateado, and the name huapango may derive from cuauhpanco, a Nauati (Aztec) word meaning \u201con top of the wood.\u201d Moncayo\u2019s work employs the full spectrum of orchestral sound \u2013 strings, winds, brass, a large percussion array of Latin and European instruments alike, and even a prominent harp. Huapango\u2019s complex rhythmic structure and joyful melodies evoke the instrumental, vocal, and dance elements of the huapango style, making it Moncayo\u2019s most popular and beloved works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a composer, conductor, educator, pianist, and percussionist, Jos\u00e9 Pablo Moncayo built a legacy in Mexican music at a young age. In his few decades of study and professional activity, he produced numerous works for piano solo, chamber music with piano, other mixed chamber ensembles, symphonies and shorter works for orchestra, and the opera La […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1316,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"disabled","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.briandowdy.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.briandowdy.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.briandowdy.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandowdy.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandowdy.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandowdy.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1790,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandowdy.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions\/1790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandowdy.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.briandowdy.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandowdy.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.briandowdy.com\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}