page_title: Esquinas
section_title: Analysis
hierarchical_section_title: Esquinas / Analysis
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration from book, Face To Face With The Mexicans. Illustration name is self-explanatory.
context_page_description: Esquinas is an orchestral composition by the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, written in 1931 and extensively revised in 1933. The first version is in two movements with a duration of about 11 minutes in performance; the second is variously described as being in one or in three movements with a total duration of about seven minutes. The scores of both versions are dedicated to Ángela Acevedo.
context_section_description: The original version of Esquinas consists of three movements, the second and third of which are played without a break:
  Lento sostenuto—Allegro moderato ma agitato—Andante—Vivo—Lento sostenuto
  Allegretto
  Allegro
  Esquinas offers an early example of Revueltas's Mexican popular-musical modernism, "whose themes are shattered at the moment of their birth, a struggle that does not permit its features to be heard emerging, decomposed, barely sketched and acclimated" (Estrada 2012, 60).
  In the second version of the work, Revueltas discarded the vocal part in the first movement of the original. Although it is difficult to be certain about the composer's reasoning, it was most likely a purely practical consideration. There are several difficulties with the part. First, it comes to only 24 bars in all, consisting of four very short, widely separated outbursts. Second, the required registers exceed the normal range of a typical vocal tessitura, creating problematic technical difficulties. Third, the actual function of the singer is not clear: is she a soloist, or should she be regarded as a sort of "supplemental instrument" in the orchestra? In turn, where should the singer be placed on the stage, and how should the melodies be sung, since there are no words and the composer has provided no indication for vocalization (Kolb Neuhaus 2011, 131n165)? It has been suggested that the soprano voice may represent the score's dedicatee, Ángela Acevedo, with whom Revueltas had been living since 1930 and would marry in 1932, and to whom he also dedicated the scores of Ventanas, Parián, and Caminos (Estrada 2012, 65, 168).
  The presence of a vocal part in the first version, however, suggests "In a direct and very natural way, the evocation of the sung street cry leads to the interpretation of two other cries of Esquinas, which call attention to themselves because, among other reasons, they are enunciated by a female voice. The unusual way of incorporating the voice (since she is neither a soloist, nor is part of the orchestra, and her participation is brief and sporadic) appears to be explained by its communicative function serving the composer to highlight or underline certain musical elements he considered significant" (Kolb Neuhaus 2011, 131).
  It has been proposed that the musical construction of Esquinas is based on the cries of Mexican street vendors who once populated the urban landscape (Kolb Neuhaus 2011, 103). Revueltas does not quote actual street cries, but rather imitates certain of their stereotypical aspects. The incorporation of these characteristic features merely suggests a semantic marking, enabling or enhancing their identification as a musical sign of cultural origin (Kolb Neuhaus 2011, 123).
caption: Street vendor
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