Xochipilli (Chávez)

Xochipilli, subtitled "An Imagined Aztec Music", is a short composition for four wind instruments and six percussionists by the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez, written in 1940.

[1] In connection with an exhibition titled Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art, held in May 1940 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the president of MoMA, Nelson Rockefeller, commissioned Chávez to assemble a programme of music for daily presentation, under the title Panorama of Mexican Music.

In addition to arrangements of popular Mexican music from the recent past, Chávez composed Xochipilli-Macuilxóchitl to showcase pre-Columbian Aztec instruments.

At this time he shortened the title to Xochipilli, and added the (English) subtitle, "An Imagined Aztec Music".

[4] Xochipilli is scored for ten players: piccolo, flute, E♭ clarinet, trombone, and six percussionists playing a variety of instruments, many of Aztec origin: teponaztli, huéhuetl, omichicahuaztli.