Manuel Maria Ponce's Biography

Manuel Maria Ponce was born in 1882 in Fresnillo, Zacatecas. He was a distinguished Mexican composer. Born in a small provincial Mexican town to modestly prosperous parents who gave him his first piano lessons, his natural talent soon outstripped the educational potential in Mexico so he traveled to Europe to continue his studies.

In 1901, Ponce entered the National Conservatory of Music, already with a certain prestige as a pianist and composer. There he remained until 1903, the year in which he returned to the city of Aguascalientes. In 1904 he went to Italy for advanced musical studies at the School of Bologna.
Between 1906 and 1908 he studied with Martin Krause at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, Germany. so he moved to Italy and Germany to complete his studies.

Ponce was the first to give Mexican music both a national identity and an international stature - he put Mexico on the musical map. He successfully bridged the three worlds of folk, popular and classical music - a rare achievement among composers. The variety of his compositional styles reflects his extended periods of study in Europe as well as his devotion to Mexican music and culture.

Although he was a pianist, Ponce became best-known for his numerous guitar works, written for his close friend Spanish guitar virtuoso Andres Segovia. His piano output of over ninety pieces spans his entire career, and includes early salon-style character pieces, neo-Baroque preludes and fugues, nationalistic rhapsodies, and French Impressionist/neo-Classic works. His pupil, Carlos Chavez (1899-1978), stated about him: “It was Ponce who created a real consciousness of the richness of Mexican folk art”.

He returned to Mexico where he taught piano and music history at the National Conservatory of Music from 1909 to 1915 and from 1917 to 1922. He spent the intervening years of 1915 to 1917 in La Habana, Cuba.

In 1912 he composed his most famous work "Estrellita" (little star), which is not a normal love song, as is usually thought, but "Nostalgia Viva" (live nostalgia). In the same year, Ponce gave a memorable concert of Mexican popular music in the "Arbeau Theater" which, though it scandalized ardent defenders of European classical music, became a landmark in the history of the national song.

With valuable activity promoting music of the country and writing melodías like "Estrellita", "A la orilla de un palmar", "Alevántate", "La Pajarera", "Marchita el Alma" and "Una Multitud Más", Ponce gained the honorific title Creator of the Modern Mexican Song. He was also the first Mexican composer to project popular music onto the world stage: "Estrellita", for example, has been part of the repertoire of the main orchestras of the world and countless singers, although quite often the interpreter ignores the origin of the song as well as its author.

Ponce wrote music for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra. His piano and guitar works outnumber those dedicated to other solo instruments within the set of pieces we know. His guitar music is a core part of the instrument's repertory, the best-known works being Variations and Fugue on 'La Folia' (1929) and Sonatina meridional (1939). He also wrote a guitar concerto Concierto del sur, dedicated to his long-time friend and guitar virtuoso Andrés Segovia. Variations on a Theme of Cabezón was his last work written in 1948, a few months before his death. It is unclear whether the variations are indeed based upon a theme by Antonio de Cabezón or if the theme was the work of Ponce's teacher, the organist Enrico Bossi.

Manuel Ponce died in 1948. Not long before, he received the "National Arts and Science Prize". In his honor there is a board of recognition by the state of Aguascalientes at the base of the column of The Exedra, next to the fountain from a spring dedicated to this musical poet, in the city of Aguascalientes where he grew up and first studied music.