Felipe de Jesús Villanueva Gutiérrez

Felipe de Jesús Villanueva Gutiérrez (5 February 1862 – 28 May 1893) was a Mexican violinist, virtuoso pianist and composer.

Villanueva remains one of the most well-known figures of the Mexican musical romanticism – flourishing during the historical period known in Mexico as the Porfiriato.

In 1873, Villanueva was accepted into the National Conservatory of Music under the director of the establishment, Alfredo Bablot.

However, he was later rejected from the conservatory, therein commenced studies in piano and harmony in private classes with the teacher Antonio Valle.

In 1876, at the age of fourteen, he entered as a violinist the orchestra of the Teatro Hidalgo directed by José C. Camacho, from whom he received composition lessons.

published pieces for piano: The Eruption of Peñol and The Arrival of the Cyclone, which became known among the Mexican public.

In 1887, he founded, together with Ricardo Castro, Gustavo E. Campa and other Mexican musicians – the Musical Institute – an official academy of the Group of Six, which transformed the musical education of Mexico with a fundamental contribution by Villanueva, who published works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Frédéric Chopin, and pianistic giants of his time, including Franz Liszt and Anton Rubinstein.

Professor José Ovando Ramírez in his book "Felipe Villanueva Gutiérrez, his time, his life, his work", refers to the fact that this illustrious musician and composer developed his work at that time in which Italian music predominated in musical preferences in Europe and America, including Mexico, coupled with certain reminiscences of the Viennese waltz that introduced an Austrian orchestra to our country in the time of the Emperor Maximilian.