Arturo Márquez at a press conference in 2016. Wikimedia Commons

Revised on October 24, 2020

The orchestra I play in is working on Danzon no. 2, by Arturo Márquez. Since I have written quite a bit in this blog about building an audience for new “classical” music, I am very proud to present this fairly recent (1994) crowd-pleaser by a Mexican composer who is a little younger than I am.

Who says composers have to be dead in order to write good music? (Well, my father always said that, and I’m sure plenty of concert goers agree with him.)

Márquez, son of a mariachi musician and grandson of a folk musician, was born in 1950 in Álamos, Sonora, Mexico. His family moved to La Puente, California (near Los Angeles) in his late childhood. He continued his musical training, there, playing trombone in junior high school and high school. He also took violin and piano lessons.

Returning to Mexico, he studied composition at the Taller de Composición of the Institute of Fine Arts of Mexico and also piano and theory at the Mexican Conservatory of Music. He also studied privately in Paris with Jacques Castérède and returned to the US to earn the MFA in composition from California Institute of the Arts. He studied composition there with Morton Subotnik, Mel Powell, Lucky Mosko, and James Newton.

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Mexican orchestras frequently performed his music (including a series of Danzons), but it was little known elsewhere. In 2007, Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel included Danzon no. 2 on the program of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra’s tour of the United States and Europe. As a result, many other orchestras performed it. It has practically become a second national anthem in Mexico. It also spread Márquez’s fame far beyond Mexico. He is now one of the leading Mexican composers of classical music.

The danzón as a popular dance

Playing the clavés. Wikimedia Commons

The danzón was born in Cuba. On New Years 1879, Cuban composer Miguel Falide introduced a song called “Las alturas de Simpson” that combined the French contredanse, known in Cuba since the 1790s, with African rhythms.

The dance that song inspired soon became the official national dance of Cuba. It arrived in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula soon thereafter and traveled to other places in the country. It especially exploded in popularity there when Mexican movies of the 1940s featured it.

Rhythmically, the danzón is based on a repeated rhythmic pattern called a clavé. It is often played on an instrument called a clavé.

In the most frequent clavé pattern, one measure has three notes and the other two. It can start on either the three-note measure (forward clavé) or the two-note measure (reverse clavé). The instrument consists of two cylinders of hardwood, one striking the other. The latter is held lightly in the player’s hand.

Couples dance the danzón in an upright posture, strutting arm in arm with swaying steps. Unlike the tango, it started as an elegant dance that stressed the importance of image and posture. It also features a “rest” during the refrains.

Ironically, Cubans have nearly lost interest in their national dance. Without Mexican involvement, it may have completely disappeared. Veracruz maintains a tradition of the danzón very close to the Cuban original. In Mexico City, on the other hand, it has evolved by taking elements of other dances. The danzón must not have become well known everywhere in Mexico, however. Márquez was apparently not familiar with it until 1993. In 1994, he composed the first three of eight danzóns.

Márquez’s own program note for Danzón no. 2

The idea of writing the Danzón No. 2 originated in 1993 during a trip to Malinalco with the painter Andrés Fonseca and the dancer Irene Martínez, both of whom are experts in salon dances with a special passion for the danzón, which they were able to transmit to me from the beginning, and also during later trips to Veracruz and visits to the Colonia Salon in Mexico City.

From these experiences onward, I started to learn the danzón’s rhythms, its form, its melodic outline, and to listen to the old recordings by Acerina and his Danzonera Orchestra. I was fascinated and I started to understand that the apparent lightness of the danzón is only like a visiting card for a type of music full of sensuality and qualitative seriousness, a genre which old Mexican people continue to dance with a touch of nostalgia and a jubilant escape towards their own emotional world; we can fortunately still see this in the embrace between music and dance that occurs in the State of Veracruz and in the dance parlors of Mexico City.

The Danzón No. 2 is a tribute to the environment that nourishes the genre. It endeavors to get as close as possible to the dance, to its nostalgic melodies, to its wild rhythms, and although it violates its intimacy, its form and its harmonic language. It is a very personal way of paying my respects and expressing my emotions towards truly popular music. Danzón No. 2 was written on a commission by the Department of Musical Activities at Mexico’s National Autonomous University and is dedicated to my daughter Lily.

Some final observations

Danzón no. 2 begins with an extended legato melody played on clarinet, accompanied by the clavé. The melody recurs throughout the piece in varied forms played by different instruments. It is not always present, however. Neither, for that matter, is the clavé. Frequent shifts in dynamics provide another structural element. Very soft sections often prepare for much louder music. The piece likewise exhibits changes in tempo.

By this time, there are at least eight recordings of it, including three by Dudamel and the Simon Boliver Youth Orchestra.  More than half a dozen of Márquez’s other works are also available.

I notice that the score and parts are available on rental only. I wonder if that practice on the part of so many publishers actually deters performances of attractive new music?

Sources:

Cuba’s national dance ‘danzon’ lives on… in Mexico / Global Times. November 5, 2017
Program note by Duluth Symphony Orchestra 2016 Young People’s Concert
Program note by US Marine Band. June 4, 2015