JFM/Silvestre Revueltas’s Redes: Composing for Film or Filming for Music?

On May 12, 1936 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, Silvestre Revueltas directed the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional in a concert version of the music he had recently composed for the film Redes which would premiere just two months later, on July 9 at Mexico City’s Cine Principal. Of nine film scores composed by Revueltas, two—Redes (1934– 1935) and Música para charlar (1938)1— were also conceived as concert music in the form of symphonic poems. Of the two, Redes is of greater interest, not only due to its musical qualities, but also because of its historic significance within the particular confluence of aesthetic and political references of the time, which were highly significant in the history of art in Mexico.