Waltzing Through Time: The Enduring but Unacknowledged Legacy of Mexican Composer Juventino Rosas

By Thomas May | From the July-August 2024 issue of Strings Magazine

“Sobre las Olas” (“Over the Waves”) might seem ready-made for our listicle-addicted era—contending for a spot on the latest roundup of “waltz melodies everybody knows” or even of “the world’s most famous tunes.” But the fact that so few would be able to identify its composer, Juventino Rosas, indicates how lagging classical music programming in Europe and North America has been when it comes to acknowledging the creative legacy of Latin America.

The point is underscored by the fact that Rosas’s composition, part of a set of five waltzes published in 1888 in Mexico City, was (and even still is) occasionally attributed to Johann Strauss, Jr. Along with the ability to write melodies that have become perennially popular, what Rosas did share with Strauss was the perspective of a violinist-turned-composer; both figures likewise grew up in musical families (though Strauss’ father initially tried to quash the son’s urge to become a musician).

Otherwise, Rosas’ circumstances differed drastically. José Juventino Policarpo Rosas Cadenas—to give his full name—was born to an indigenous Otomí Mexican family in 1868 in a village in Guanajuato located in the central part of Mexico. (It was renamed in his honor in 1939 as Santa Cruz de Juventino Rosas.) His father, Juan de Jesus Rosas, had made a career of playing harp in a military band and encouraged the talent displayed by his children. Taught by Juan de Jesus, Juventino became a violin prodigy and was joined by his brothers Manuel (guitar) and Patrocinio (singer) to form a traveling band. Together, with their father on harp, they performed at festivals and other celebrations.

In 1875, the family headed north to Mexico City in search of improved opportunities. Equipped with a simple fiddle from the countryside, the child Juventino played folk tunes and popular songs in the streets of the densely populated barrio known as Tepito, then notorious for its poverty and crime. He found a niche playing violin and singing at the Church of San Sebastián Martir Atzacoalco in Tepito. Juventino also became adept at improvising with local musical ensembles, enjoying early popularity thanks to his rousing violin solos.

Rosas was only 15 when the orchestra touring with the opera diva Ángela Peralta engaged him for what turned out to be the star soprano’s final tour in 1883. During a stop in Mazatlán for a performance of Il trovatore (with which the so-called “Mexican Nightingale” had made her debut in 1860), Peralta and many of those in her troupe succumbed to a yellow fever epidemic sweeping the city. (The soprano and Rosas are now buried in the same cemetery—Panteón de Dolores—in Mexico City.)

The deaths of his parents left the young musician on his own. Rosas settled in Mexico City and was able to study at the National Music Conservatory. This background provided him with what he needed to feel equally at home in popular and elite circles. Rosas made his living as a freelance violinist playing professional orchestra gigs and in theaters; other jobs included directing military bands. He also formed a duo with his friend Pepe Reina, a master of the 18-string, mandolin-like bandolón.

At the same time, Rosas was writing and publishing a prolific output of waltzes, mazurkas, polkas, and similar salon pieces. According to the Chilean composer and musicologist Juan Orrego-Salas, these have “no recognizable Amer-indian flavor”—tapping into indigenous folk music was not part of Rosas’ agenda. The genres in which he excelled found widespread popularity in Mexico of the Porfiriato era—the last quarter of the 19th century and first decade of the 20th under President Porfirio Díaz’s long-standing reign—and reflected a new taste for European imports, especially for what was in style in Paris.

Ironically, Mexico’s victory over the French on May 5, 1862, at the Battle of Puebla helped pave the way for General Díaz to come to power following the collapse of the Second Mexican Empire in 1867. For a celebration marking the Battle of Puebla, Rosas composed “La Sonámbula” for violin-bandolón and performed it with his duo partner, Reina. Díaz was in attendance and signaled his delight.

The casino owners Vicente Alfaro and Calixta Gutiérrez de Alfaro, important arts funders, commissioned Rosas to write a festival piece in the mid-1880s, which resulted in “Sobre las olas” (dedicated to Calixta). The specific origins of its inspiration are shrouded in lore. According to whichever account you credit, Rosas was listening to water passing by while writing at his kitchen table, or perhaps he was relaxing at the edge of a tree-shaded stream outside the city or in the Rio Magdalena in Mexico City, where the movement of the water took shape in his imagination as a flowing melody. Naturally, a love story is included among the legends, suggesting that the composer was inspired by watching the sister of a friend with whom he was in love bathing in the river.

The waltz became known by orchestras in Mexico City. It was transcribed for piano and given the name it carries today. Rosas sold the rights to publish “Sobre las olas” and another piece for a pittance to the leading publisher Casa Wagner y Levien. Their distribution network helped make the waltz an enormous international success. In 1888, Rosas was also commissioned to write a waltz for Doña Carmelita Romero Rubio, the wife of President Díaz. The “Carmen” waltz graced the program presented for the president’s birthday and further extended the composer’s fame.

But it is the afterlife of “Sobre las olas” in particular—a work simpler and more direct in style than most of his other compositions—that has guaranteed immortality to the music of Rosas. Its adaptability to countless different genres, contexts, styles of presentation—with or without words—is genuinely remarkable and has made Rosas one of the most recorded Mexican artists of all time. Sounding perfectly in place on Viennese waltz programs by renowned orchestras, the piece has also attracted singers across many strands of popular culture, including Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and Willie Nelson. The tragically short, Bohemian life of its composer has also inspired several films using the waltz’s title: the ranchera actor/singer Pedro Infante played Rosas in the 1950 biopic directed by Ismael Rodríguez.

“Sobre las olas” exemplifies “the relationship between music created for high-status patrons and performers in elite venues with music heard in the contexts of the theater, circus, ballroom dancing, and other entertainments that brought large crowds of people together across social and economic class divisions,” writes Janet Sturman in her survey, The Course of Mexican Music.

Rosas was well aware of his success far beyond Mexico as well. Yet fortune eluded him. His wife, Juana Morales, left the musician in 1890—he commemorates her in the melancholy dance Juanita, Op. 22—and his ongoing problems managing finances forced him to sell precious possessions, such as a piano that had been gifted to him by Díaz. Rosas sank into an alcoholic depression that weakened his system.

On a tour playing violin with a zarzuela company, Rosas traveled to Cuba in 1894 but fell seriously ill outside Havana, where he was sequestered in a clinic, his death there at the age of 26 robbing posterity of so much potential. His remains were exhumed and returned to Mexico in 1909. Rosas lies buried in the Panteón Civil de Dolores, Mexico City’s largest cemetery, in the famous Rotonda de los Personas Ilustres (“Rotunda of Illustrious Persons”). Meanwhile, the melody of his “Sobre las olas” continues to echo around the globe.