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  • The Reception of Carlos Chávez’s Horsepower: A Pan-American Communication Failure
  • Christina Taylor Gibson (bio)

On March 31, 1932, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Philadelphia Grand Opera premiered Carlos Chávez’s symphonic ballet, Horsepower [H.P. or Caballos de vapor].1 The performance was directed by Leopold Stokowski, choreographed by Catherine Littlefield, and featured sets and costumes by Diego Rivera. Advance publicity touted a Pan-American plot about North-South cooperation, Rivera’s illustrations for the tropical fruit costumes, and Stokowski’s research trips to Mexico. Articles about the production indicated that the ballet’s “South” was a primitive utopia, complementing similar images of Mexico in the popular press. The publicity excited the imaginations of editors and writers throughout the country; over sixty-five articles about the event appeared in at least thirty-five different publications.2 As a result, the seats sold out well in advance of the premiere. Philadelphia and New York critics reported that audience members traveled across the eastern seaboard despite a thunderstorm in order to attend.3

Given the high profile of the H.P. premiere, it is surprising that music scholars have not given it more attention. Much of the research about the event has been by scholars in other areas, including dance historians Nancy Brooks Schmitz and Sharon Skeel, and art historian Jeffrey Belnap; these scholars have not focused on Chávez’s music, but on Catherine Littlefield’s choreography and Rivera’s décor.4 Among music scholars, examinations of H.P. invariably occupy a portion of a larger study; the most significant examples include Oliver Daniel’s chapter [End Page 157] on the premiere in his biography of Stokowski, Robert Parker’s article about Chávez’s compositions for the ballet, and Robert Stevenson’s article about Chávez in the U.S. press. A brief but powerful analysis is provided in Leonora Saavedra’s dissertation, “Of Selves and Others: Historiography, Ideology, and the Politics of Modern Mexican Music.”5

In biographies and other comprehensive studies of Chávez, scholars routinely de-emphasize the H.P. premiere, focusing instead on other events considered more central to his career, such as the 1936 live broadcast of Sinfonía India on CBS and the 1940 performances for the Museum of Modern Art exhibit, “Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art.”6 Yet in many ways the 1932 premiere marks the beginning of Chávez’s U.S. career.7 It was the first time his work had been presented in a large orchestral hall in the United States, and the first time he had received widespread attention in the national press. Moreover, the H.P. score, premiere publicity, performance, and subsequent reception provide an excellent lens through which one might examine cultural exchange between the United States and Mexico in all its thorny complexity.

One of the paradoxes to confront in the H.P. premiere is the dissonance between the positive pre-performance publicity and the mixed post-performance reception. Reviewers concurred: “It was more of a sensation before it began than after it was over.”8 Chávez admitted to a reporter for the Mexican newspaper Excélsior that one part of the production had been weak: Catherine Littlefield’s choreography.9 Frida Kahlo, Rivera’s wife, put it most bluntly in a letter to a friend: “It turned out to be a porquería . . . because there was a crowd of insipid blonds pretending to be Indians from Tehuantepec and when they had to dance the zandunga they looked as if they had lead instead of blood. To sum up, a pure total cochinada [piggery].”10

Chávez and Kahlo were not the only observers to complain about the choreography; perhaps most tellingly, John Martin, the dance critic for the New York Times, who had enthusiastically promoted the premiere, found it lacking in several respects.11 In other venues, both the music and the visual elements to the ballet received positive reviews. For example, in the weeks before the premiere, Rivera’s costume and set designs were on display at a Philadelphia museum where they were admired. Audiences and reviewers lauded the initial presentation of the fourth movement of H.P...

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