Viola Sonata- J. P. Moncayo (Mexican composer)

 Click the play button!

    José Pablo Moncayo is one of the best-known Mexican composers, he was born in 1912 and died in 1958 at 46 years old. He was a pianist, percussionist, composer, and conductor. He entered the National Conservatory of Music at 17 years and in 1935 he formed the "Group of four" together with Daniel Ayala, Salvador Contreras, and Blas Galindo, a group of chamber music who wanted to spread Mexican music, especially their own works. In 1942 he studied with Aaron Copland at the Berkshire Institute. His work Huapango has been played by the best orchestras around the world, but other works like Tres piezas para orquesta, Amazicnac, Tierra de Temporal, and Bosques, are very interesting.

    Viola Sonata belongs to the Mexican nationalist repertoire, consists of three movements: I- Allegro moderato, II- Lento, III- Allegro. Cerda (1997) tells " his modal language is diatonalism, with a total absence of chromatism, combining neomodal elements in which predominate Doric and Aeolian". The work needs a certain technical level for its correct performance, It has been published by Ediciones Mexicanas de Música A. C.

    The date of creation of the Sonata is 1934, and of this work, the composer only wrote the general piano-viola part, but he didn't make the viola part. There is a recent edition made by Patricia L. Oropeza K. which contains corrections of mistakes that have other editions or the manuscript, like a change of keys, alterations, more use of the C key in the viola part, etc. In this edition, there is a section of comments where the edit wrote the changes that she made to the sheet music. 

    This beautiful performance is well played by violist Mikhail Zemtsov and pianist Irina Shiskina, and belongs to the CD "Vibraciones de México" for Naxos of America, and is one of the latest recordings of this work. 

Thanks for reading and see you next Monday for more Mexican music for Viola.

Luis Angel Chab Dzul

The edition of Patricia Oropeza, inside the free internet magazine Heterofonía (page 139):

http://inbadigital.bellasartes.gob.mx:8080/jspui/handle/11271/2599

https://www.gob.mx/cultura/prensa/jose-pablo-moncayo-figura-central-del-movimiento-musical-mexicano-en-el-siglo-xx

https://repositorio.unam.mx/contenidos/la-ejecucion-de-seis-obras-para-viola-de-seis-compositores-mexicanos-del-siglo-xx-439913?c=O322bN&d=false&q=*:*&i=1&v=1&t=search_0&as=0