La noche de los Mayas

La noche de los Mayas, symphonic suite by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, composed for a film of the same name in 1939. Revueltas died a year later. The task of preparing an orchestral suite from the film music fell to Revueltas’s compatriot José Ives Limantour, who premiered the suite in 1961 in Guadalajara. This broader reimagining of the original film score preserves the composer’s native Mexican rhythms and colourful use of exotic instruments.

Revueltas simply evokes the spirit of the early Mayas in La noche de los Mayas; only one genuine Maya melody is used. Particularly noteworthy is the percussion section, which includes a variety of ethnic instruments well outside the scope of European orchestral tradition. In addition to timpani, bass drum, snare drum, and xylophone, Revueltas included such instruments as bongos, congas, and tom-toms, as well as rattles, guiro (a notched or grooved gourd), caracol (conch shell), and tumkul (a kind of log drum).

The orchestral suite has four movements. The first, “Noche de los Mayas,” opens the piece with a rapt, dreamlike mood. Tempos quicken for the second movement “Noche de Jaranas,” with a lively fandango-like dance of complicated 5/8 and 6/8 metres. The third movement is the nocturnelike “Noche de Yucatán,” where the suite’s one actual Maya melody is woven into the score. In the final movement, “Noche de encantamiento” (“Night of Enchantment”), Revueltas presents a dramatic and powerful scene, with wildly shifting metres driven blazingly forward on a fleet of percussion.