Revista Musical Mexicana

The Mexican music journal Revista Musical Mexicana [RIPM code RMX] was published monthly in Mexico City from January 1942 until March 1946, with Gerónimo Baqueiro Foster as its head editor. Each issue consists of twenty pages alongside four pages of advertisements which precede and conclude each issue. A typical issue commences with a selection of biographical articles, followed by educational articles and ending with a review section regarding recent or forthcoming cultural events in the country.

The journal’s main objective was to promote objective criticism concerning musical activities in Mexico, including conservatories, symphonic orchestras, military bands, operas, and academies. The journal highlights topics related to the history of folkloric music, introducing research articles by noted musicologists such as Salomón Kahan, Ermilo Abreu Gómez, Daniel Castañeda, and Otto Mayer Serra. Other scholars who also collaborated were Miguel Ángel Menéndez, Sonia Verbitzky, Rodolfo Halffter, Matilde de la Torre, Ezequiel de la Isla, Luis Sandi, Andrés Henestrosa, Esperanza Alarcón, Rafael Bernal, José Moreno Villa, Francisco Rodríguez Marín, Carlos Jiménez Mabarak, Guillermo Robles, Manuel Revilla, Ángel Salas, Sergio Lifar, Ignacio Altamirano, Domingo Santos, Raymond Duval, Juan Rejano, Juan Liscano, and Alfonso del Río.

In the decades of the 1930s and 1940s Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas offered significant support to cultural life in the country and encouraged the development of the arts. During this time, a fresh interest emerged in discussing and investigating the origins of folkloric music in Mexico and the rest of Latin America. As such, there was much cultural exchange, in which collaborations between Mexican music critics and musicologists from abroad created a new stimulus in the cultural scope. In this context, an emerging curiosity and eagerness for cultural and musical research, Gerónimo Baqueiro began a productive musicological career, ultimately producing more than six thousand articles published in sixty different journals and music magazines throughout his life. His concerns towards objective musical criticism, and his previous collaborations as editor of some of these magazines, eventually led him to the creation of his own music journal, Revista Musical Mexicana.

Gerónimo Baqueiro Foster (1892-1967), born in Hopelchén, Campeche, was a composer, musicologist, critic, teacher, and orchestral conductor. During his academic tenure, his output profoundly impacted Mexico's musical and artistic history. Additionally, his extensive library and the establishment of a specialized archive focusing on Mexican theater, folklore, and popular music significantly enriched the cultural landscape. Amongst his most prominent contributions was his field research published under the title "Geografía de la Música en México," where he compiled a sizable amount of newspaper articles on the country’s music and culture. During his life he served as main editor of several other Mexican music journals including El Sonido 13 and Música. Gerónimo Baqueiro Foster’s writings in the Revista Musical Mexicana are mainly educational, discussing music theory with articles that present a detailed formal and harmonic analysis on some of the most representative Mexican folkloric music, as well as conservatory life in critical and review articles about groups such as Cuarteto de México and Coro de Alumnos del Conservatorio Nacional de Música. He also contributed extensively to the orchestral and concert reviews in the section “Por el mundo de la música” of Revista Musical Mexicana.

A significant figure who regularly appears in this journal, including as a topic himself, is Carlos Chávez, a composer, conductor and one of the most influential music educators in Mexico during the twentieth century. During the period of the Revista’s publication, he was the music director and conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional, the first fully consolidated symphony orchestra in the country. Another frequent collaborator in the journal is Esperanza Alarcón, pianist and singer of Mexican origin. A scholar of Mexican music and a music critic, she was the sister of pianist Tomás Alarcón. 

Of particular interest are the various articles dedicated to the study of Mexican indigenous music and folklore, bringing new methods of analytical thinking into the topic. Andrés Henestrosa offers his essay "Música mestiza de Tehuantepec," which investigates the primitive songs of the Zapotec civilization. Other articles that focus on this topic are given by authors Daniel Castañeda, Baqueiro Foster, Rafael Bernal, and Nicolás Slonimsky.

In the section “Biografías de músicos mexicanos” by Manuel Revilla and Ignacio Altamirano, the writers examine the life and musical production of Mexican musical figures such as Julio Ituarte, Antonio Valle, and Melesio Morales. Different articles of biographical nature are also offered in the journal, like “Carlos Chávez: una monografía crítica” by Otto Mayer Serra, and “El cantar de Silvestre Revueltas” by Alfonso del Río.

Articles in this journal also discuss issues related to folkloric music in Spain and its influence and legacy in Mexican culture. Matilde de la Torre and Ermilio Abreu Gómez offer several essays on this topic discussing the origins end evolution of some of the earliest Spanish musical forms, including flamenco and zarzuela. Other essays included provide translations of publications by renowned music scholars such as Vincent D’Indy, Edward R. Terry, John Kirkpatrick, Harry Schumer, Newton Freitas, and Igor Boelza.

The journal also includes a section written by Salomón Kahan entitled “Ecos,” which discusses the musical life in The United States, as well as cultural exchange between foreign artists in Mexico. A section that was incorporated in the later years of the journal is “Notas e informaciones,” compiled by Esperanza Alarcón, which contains short newspaper excerpts published in the national press on concerts, events and other cultural activities at the time.

This RIPM Index was produced from copies of the journal held by the Library of Congress, the Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical “Carlos Chávez” (Cenidim) in Mexico City, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.