Carlos Chávez, who had replaced Antonio Castro Leal as director of the Mexican Conservatorio Nacional de Música in 1928, set about revising the curriculum to increase the emphasis on writing music in all styles.
The first students enrolled in this class included some older members, such as Vincente Mendoza, Candelario Huízar, and Silvestre Revueltas, but also three young students under the age of twenty, Daniel Ayala, Salvador Contreras, and José Pablo Moncayo.
However, he only remained until December of that year, following the change of regime when Lázaro Cárdenas became president.
For this purpose, they organized in 1935 (on the initiation of Contreras) as the Grupo de Jóvenes Compositores (Group of Young Composers), and gave their first concert under this name on 25 November 1935.
[6][7][8][9] A newspaper review of this concert, published two days later, referred them as the "Grupo de los Cuatro", with deliberate reference to the Russian "Mighty Five" and French "Les Six",[10] and they adopted this as their name for their following concert on 26 March 1936 at the Teatro de Orientación.