String Quartet No. 3 (Revueltas)

String Quartet No. 3 is a chamber-music work written in 1931 by the Mexican composer and violinist Silvestre Revueltas.

Silvestre Revueltas in 1930

History

Revueltas composed his Third Quartet in the same year as his Second, 1931, and the Cuarteto Clásico Nacional gave the first performance on 2 September 1931 (Espinosa Barco 2015, 102). Although the score was announced in 1958 as being "in preparation for sale" (Southern Music Publishing Company, Inc. 1958), it was only finally published in 1995, fifty-five years after the composer's death and several decades after his other three quartets (Baldassarre 2015, 463).

Analysis

The quartet is in three movements:

1. Allegro con brio
2. Lento, misterioso y fantástico
3. Lento–Allegro

This work is regarded as "the best, most solid, and profound" of Revueltas's Quartets. The second movement, marked "mysterious and ghostly", contains references to the third movement of Béla Bartók's Fourth Quartet, which was written just three years earlier (Helguera 1999).

Discography

• Cuartetos de cuerda de Silvestre Revueltas. String Quartets 1–4. Cuarteto de Cuerdas Latinoamericano (Jorge Risi and Aron Bitrán, violins; Javier Montiel, viola; Alvaro Bitrán, cello). Recorded in the Sala Carlos Chávez, Centro Cultural Universitario, June 1984. LP recording, 1 disc: analog, 33⅓ rpm, stereo, 12 in. Voz Viva de México: Serie Música Nueva. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984. Reissued as Silvestre Revueltas: Los cuartetos de cuerdas, second edition. LP recording, 1 disc: analog, 33⅓ rpm, stereo, 12 in. Voz Viva 337–338. Serie Música nueva MN-22. [Mexico City]: Voz Viva, 1987.
• Silvestre Revueltas. Música de feria: The String Quartets/los cuartetos de cuerda. Quartet No. 1; Quartet No. 2, Magueyes; Quartet No. 3; Quartet No. 4: Música de feria. Cuarteto Latinoamericano. Recorded April 9–10, 1993, at the Carnegie Free Library, Carnegie, Pennsylvania. New Albion NA062CD. Classical Music Library. San Francisco: New Albion Records, 1993. Reissued as Revueltas String Quartets Nos. 1–4. Hong Kong: Naxos Digital Services Ltd., [2009], streaming audio (online resource).
• Martínez Bourguet String Quartet Plays Silvestre Revueltas. String Quartets 1–3 and Música de feria. Martínez Bourguet String Quartet (Pablo Arturo Martínez Bourguet and Ekaterine Martínez Bourguet, violins; Alessia Martínez Bourguet, viola; César Martínez Bourguet, cello). Recorded in the summer of 2006 in the Sala Carlos Chávez, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. CD recording, 1 disc: digital, 4¾ in., stereo. MB Producciones [s.n.]. [Mexico]: MB Producciones, 2007.

References

• Baldassarre, Antonio. 2015. "Negotiating History, Nation and the Canon: The String Quartets of Silvestre Revueltas". In Communication Music: Festschrift für Ernst Lichtenhahn zum 80. Geburtstag/Festschrift for Ernst Lichtenhahn’s 80th Birthday, edited by Antonio Baldassarre and Marc-Antoine Camp, 453–78 . Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-3-0351-0806-4; ISBN 978-3-0343-1625-5.
• Espinosa Barco, Blanca. 2015. Silvestre Revueltas y Carlos Chávez: Frente a Frente. California: Windmills Editions. ISBN 978-1-312-99658-8.
• Estrada, Julio. 2012. Canto roto: Silvestre Revueltas. México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica; Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. ISBN 978-60 7-16-0951-9.
• Helguera, Luis Ignacio. 1999. "Silvestre Revueltas", translated by Asa Zatz. La Vitrina (30 January). Website of the Mexican Council for Arts and Culturem (archive from 24 March 2005, accessed 30 January 2016).
• Leclair, Charmaine Françoise. 1995. "The Solo and Chamber Music of Silvestre Revueltas". PhD diss. Eugene: University of Oregon.
• Southern Music Publishing Company, Inc. 1958. [full-page advertisement], Notes, second series, 15, no. 3 (June): 374.

Further reading

• Bitrán, Arón. 1996. "Los cuartetos de Silvestre Revueltas". Pauta 16, nos. 57–58 (January–June): 30–35.
• Madrid, Alejandro L. 2001. "¿Influencias o elementos de retórica? Aspectos de centricidad en la obra de Silvestre Revueltas". Heterofonía: Revista de investigación musical, no. 122 (January–June): 19–38.