Symphony No. 3 (Chávez)

Chávez had evidently met former U.S. congresswoman, ambassador, publisher, playwright, and journalist Clare Boothe Luce in Florence at some point in the late 1940s.

In February 1950 Luce came to Mexico City for a week of cultural exploration, and on 18 February 1950 wrote on a scrap of newspaper a commission for a musical work (initially envisioned as a piano concerto), "for Ann Clare Brokaw the most beautiful and sad and gay thing you ever wrote that has her lovely face and my broken heart in it".

Brokaw, who had died as the result of an automobile accident in 1944 at the age of nineteen, was Mrs. Luce's only child, from her first marriage.

[7][8][9][10] Thanks to the efforts of his friend Aaron Copland, Chávez was able to secure a contract with Boosey & Hawkes in 1955, and the Third Symphony was the first of his works published by that firm.

This Allegro is the main focus of the symphony because of the solidity of its formal structure and its greater length than the other movements.