Today is the birthday of Mexico’s multitalented Carlos Chávez. I just wrote about Chávez last month, in relation to a set of his complete recordings made for Columbia Records, now reissued on Sony Classical. Gringo that I am, I posted about it on Cinco de Mayo, a holiday that I understand is a much bigger deal here than it is in Mexico. Anyway, here again are my thoughts, if you’re interested. (More below.)

In posting about the set, I remark upon Chávez’s late, atonal, wholly wackadoodle, but undeniably fascinating ballet “Pirámide” (1968). But in doing so, I neglect to mention his earlier, indigenous ballet, “Los Cuatro Soles” (“The Four Suns”), from 1925. The latter treats another “primitivist” subject (all the rage after Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”), with four catastrophes ending a different epoch (symbolized by each of the four suns) in the history of the Nahua people. Listen to that drum at 10:23!

Poised somewhere between the artifice of Stravinsky and the spirit of Villa-Lobos, the work is unmistakably Chávez. It’s not going to make anybody’s hit parade, but you can tell it’s the same guy who went on to write “Sinfonía India” (1935-36).

And as I noted before, the latter work pointed the way for Aaron Copland’s western ballets. Copland was at work on “El Salón México” at the same time. Chávez would conduct the world premiere of Copland’s watershed piece in Mexico City. He also gave the first performance of Copland’s “Short Symphony,” after it was declared unplayable (because of its complexity) by Leopold Stokowski, Serge Koussevitzky, and others.

Chávez was an important musician in so many ways. Without him, art music in the United States might have developed very differently.

You’ll find links to “Sinfonía India” and ““Pirámide” at the bottom of my original post.

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Carlos Chávez!