A composer, pianist, and music educator, Manuel Maria Ponce (1882-1948) put Mexico on the musical map in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Andres Segovia wrote to Ponce in a letter in December 1929, "to sum up, your work is what has the most value for me and for all musicians who hear it."1
Manuel Maria Ponce, known as one of the key composers of guitar music, also composed music for almost every instrument and for nearly every variety of media and genre: prelude, fugue, mazurka, gavotte, lied, voice and orchestra, duo, trio, quartet, choir a capella, symphonic work, and concerto.2 Yet, unknown to all was that Ponce was first and foremost a pianist who composed over seven volumes of music for the piano.
Examining works for piano spanning Ponce's whole life, this document focuses on their origins and stylistic development. Written in two parts, Section One offers two chapters: the first contains a brief history about Mexico leading up to the Revolution of 1910, and its effects upon the socio-political atmosphere during Ponce's lifetime; the second outlines Ponce's biography and his search for innovative musical techniques.
Section Two presents Ponce's changing piano styles alongside a discussion of Ponce's compositional life, through selected piano works in four chapters. The first and second chapters discuss a young composer exploring Western compositional techniques and aspiring to bring Mexican tunes to the concert stage.
The key stages of Ponce's compositional life lie in the latter years of his work. The third and fourth chapters introduce important piano works that demonstrate the maturation of his compositional styles. Revealed in these works is Ponce's nationalistic fervor in his use of Mexican themes integrated with Western compositional techniques. Numerous musical examples are included in the discussion of the selected works. The Appendix includes a list of all the piano works in each compositional stage as well as a list of known recordings and their catalogue numbers. Overall, this document hopes to serve as a summation of Ponce's working life: foremost as a composer for piano.
1Miguel Alcazar, ed. 1989, The Segovia-Ponce Letters, Trans. By P. Segal (Columbus, Ohio: Editions Orphee), 13.
2 Manuel M. Ponce, Complete Solo Piano Works of Manuel M. Ponce, Hector Rojas (México; Sony Music Entertainment, 1988): 5.