Salvador Contreras

Salvador Contreras

Works for Cello

Sonata (1933), for cello and violin.

Sources:

  • García Jiménez, T. G. (2014). Between Assimilation and Resistance of Western Musical Culture: Traces of Nationalism on José Pablo Moncayo’s Viola Sonata. [Doctoral Project, The School of Music of the Texas Tech University]. Retrieved from https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/2346/58950/GARCIA-PROJECTPAPER–DMA-2014.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

  • Furman Schleifer, M., and Galván, G. (2016). Latin American Classical Composers, A Biographical Dictionary. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

  • Redacción notus (2016, february 17). Salvador Contreras un artista cueramarense de talla mundial. Notus. https://notus.com.mx/salvador-contreras-un-artista-cueramarense-de-talla-mundial/

  • Stevenson, R. (2001). Contreras, Salvador. In Grove Music Online. Grove Music. https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.06382

Salvador Contreras

Mexican composer, violinist, and composer, born November 10, 1910/1912, died November 7, 1982.

Born in Cuerámaro, Guanajuato, Mexico, Salvador Contreras’s compositional style incorporates neoclassical elements. He attended the Conservatorio Nacional de Música of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and studied with renowned musicians such as Silvestre Revueltas (violin) and Carlos Chávez (composition and conducting).

Contreras, along with Daniel Ayala Pérez, Blas Galindo, and José Pablo Moncayo, founded the “Grupo de Jóvenes Compositores” in 1935, which later became the “Grupo de los Cuatro;” this group was dedicated to programming new music, including their own compositions. In 1941, Contreras’s Piece for String Quartet (1936) premiered at the 18th Festival for Contemporary Music in a chamber concert at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

After playing violin in various local orchestras for over a decade, Contreras joined the Orquesta Nacional of Mexico in 1946. In 1955, he left his position at the Orquesta Nacional of Mexico to conduct the opera orchestra supported by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. A few years later, Contreras became a professor of violin and harmony at his alma mater, the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, where he was also the orchestra director. By 1966, Contreras had moved away from the locally colouristic pieces that defined his earlier work to explore serial techniques.

In 1978, eleven years after Contreras retired from teaching, Zen-on Music in Japan published his Tres movimientos para guitarra (1963); this was the first time one of his works was published. Contreras died in Mexico City in 1982.