Ernesto Elorduy

Ernesto Elorduy Medina was a Mexican composer and pianist, born in Mexico City in 1853 and dying in the same city in 1913. His significance lies in combining the European training of the nineteenth century with a personal idiom rooted in the popular music of his country.

In 1871 he set out on a tour of Europe with his brother, a journey that stretched on for nearly twenty years. He lived in Hamburg for several years, where he worked with Raff and Clara Schumann and took some lessons from Anton Rubinstein, to whom he dedicated his first composition, the waltz A orillas del Elba. After travelling to the Balkans and Turkey in 1880, an experience that left its mark on his later work, he lived in Paris from 1880 to 1884 and then served as Mexican consul in Marseille, Santander and Barcelona.

He returned to Mexico in 1891 and gave three successful recitals of his own works, becoming the first Mexican composer-performer to do so. His zarzuela Zulema and the Marcha heroica, written for the installation of the Bell of Independence in the National Palace, achieved great popularity. Between 1901 and 1906 he taught at the Conservatorio de México.

His one hundred short pieces for piano, such as mazurkas, berceuses and songs without words, owe a great deal to Chopin and Schumann, but their distinctive character comes from uniting these models with the rhythms of Mexican dance, especially the habanera, or with Oriental evocations, as in the Serenata árabe.