Síguenos

Andante, history and poblanas variations in three movements. Three parallel musical movements, three characters: the Casona Elexalde, the city of Puebla de los Ángeles and Universal Music through the history of the great composers. Written by Diana Sierralta Quevedo, this fictionalized historical account narrates five hundred years of sacred and profane music, love stories, rites and myths, daydreams, colors and textures, dance and poetry.

The reader will deliberately find thin turquoise lines in this story. When they appear, it means that the story of the Casona in which the Hotel Andante is housed is being narrated.

It was the year 1532 when, by means of a Royal Decree, the Queen of Spain, Isabel de Portugal, wife of Carlos V and daughter-in-law of the late Isabel la Católica, provided: “... Spanish Christians have populated a town called Puebla de los Ángeles, which is between Cholula and Tlaxcala. Therefore, by the will that the Emperor, my lord, and I, that the said People be ennobled and increase and others are encouraged to live in it, it is our mercy and will that from now on it is called and instituted City of the Angels ”.

Apparently the reasons were several: one was to create a safe bridge between the port of Veracruz and Tenochtitlán; the other, to give their own lands to the Spaniards who had not managed to obtain encomiendas.

Be that as it may, the legend, which is always a favorite reason in the stories of magical towns, tells that the city was traced in the dream of Julián Garcés, a Franciscan friar who saw angels descending from heaven with golden threads on hands. The foundation was carried out in the Cuetlaxcoapan valley, which means "where snakes change their skin." Land coveted by three indigenous peoples, neighboring two extinct macro civilizations, fed by three rivers, then shaded by the highest bell towers in viceregal America, and eternally protected by angels. Thirty-three men, a widow, and some Franciscan monks attended the inaugural event.

Some new readings assure that the founding of the "City of Angels" obeys a vision of Saint John narrated in the Apocalypse: the heavenly city. That utopia is a kind of gold ribbon that links cities like Jerusalem, Rome and Puebla. And it would explain the care that the founders put into creating one of the most beautiful cities in the Spanish colony and, probably, in the world.

This, our city, named with a provisional name that the stubborn use of its inhabitants made definitive, appears on the horizon guarded by four volcanoes. The enamored warrior Popocatépetl who watches, torch in hand, the eternal dream of Princess Iztaccíhuatl; lovers who one day knew their skin and whose love cut short the war. The skilled transmuter Malintzin: princess, slave, and lover of the most powerful man of the Conquest of Mexico. And the Citlaltépetl, a powerful illusionist, who covers everything with his blue mist.

His coat of arms represents a city with five golden towers on a green field crossed by a river. On each side, two angels dressed in white, purple and gold, whose divine mission is to take care of her in all her ways. The shield was approved and signed in 1538 by the founding queen herself.

Consolidating the foundation of the city would take Spaniards, Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians more than five decades and a change of location. Perhaps the incentive of not paying taxes for the next thirty years was what attracted the first settlers. Or maybe it was the sense of freedom and equality that the Angelopolitan utopia offered that did the magic of attracting them.

Juan Ochoa de Elexalde, friend and companion of the Extremaduran Hernán Cortés, would later arrive in the new city. Of Basque origin, he was a supplier of horses and other services to the Spanish Crown during the initial years of the Conquest. In payment for this, Juan Ochoa obtained a neighborhood letter from the city in 1538, appointment of mayor in 1546 and a viceregal house - today Hotel Andante - that adjoined the old houses of the City Council.

The particular intertwining of our history takes us hand in hand from one continent to another. So we come and go from Puebla, or from Europe, like wandering adventurers; with music as an inseparable lover and companion and all the senses summoned. The intellect in the suitcase and our humanity as the only compass. We will see paradoxes, causalities and ironies arise in all events and happenings. The complicity between music, the Andante and the city, will be a caress for our spirit while the fatigue of travelers lulls us.

During the following years many things would be founded and built in Puebla: schools, churches and chapels. The auspices of Augustinians, Dominicans and Jesuits decorated the city with images of the Virgin of Los Remedios and the Immaculate Conception. Thus, the vocation of the city as a city dedicated to exalting the Catholic faith was clearly established.

At the same time, Europe was looking for a way to adapt to the new Protestant times without losing faith. In 1555, an Italian musician named Giovanni da Palestrina found an expressive path that, while satisfying the guidelines of the Council of Trent, allowed him to use melodic, graceful and elegant lines that contributed to the understanding of biblical texts without losing the sophistication of polyphony. Palestrina achieved with his compositions what seemed impossible, the balance between the profane and the divine.

Our city was also in search of that harmony, which, at that time, showed in every corner the mixture of the sacred and the mundane. In 1560, the ceramics from the Spanish population Talavera de la Reina, daughter of Islamic art, were forgetting their Iberian and Dominican origin to become Poblana with their hearts on fire.

The Society of Jesus founded, in 1578, the Colegio del Espíritu Santo —which would later be known as the Carolino building— just four blocks from our house that, that same year, had a new location number and a street with a name: casa No. de la Calle de los Mercaderes - current north avenue.

In 1606, Don Juan died and his brother, Don Baltazar Ochoa de Elexalde, was the owner of the city, a position of great honor and prestige.

Sometimes, in the stories that have to do with inspiration, there are conductive threads that are not as obvious as the golden thread of the ball of Monteverdi's. Threads that link one event to another, as a kind of guide in the labyrinth of man and his psyche. Threads that mark a before and after. Thus, what happens afterwards has all of that, since an artistic aftermath that our senses recognize as "Baroque" would begin to emerge with more force.

In its beginnings, the musical Baroque moves with the smoothness without breaking of a ribbon at whose tip vibrates the diatribe between harmony and the Monteverdi word - at the end of the Renaissance -, continues with the refinement and moderation of Corelli and ends in his stage early with the youthful genius of Purcell.

The Baroque, like our city, was just beginning to "warm up" in search of its maturity. Thus, in the arrival of the bishop and later viceroy of New Spain, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, who would contribute like few others to outline the identity of Puebla as a seedbed of culture and knowledge. Proof of this is the founding of the first printing press in Puebla, the second in Mexico and the third in Spanish America.

In 1681, our house, which was already owned by the Augustinians who acquired it from the Ochoa de Elexalde family sometime between 1633 and 1653, was sold to Don Pedro de Balcácer, a gentleman with a reputation as a wealthy and resourceful person. The house was in obvious danger of collapsing and of taking the two adjoining houses with it; its moth-eaten beams denounced the age of the construction.

Now it is necessary to make a trip: Europe, 1685. In this year Scarlatti was born in Italy; Händel and Johann S. Bach in Germany. Bach, who lived his childhood lulled by a whole family of musicians, would give us the Goldberg Variations. For the next several years Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Händel and Bach, each somewhere in Europe, would do the valuable childhood internship. A stage of life to which a part of their spirits would always be connected through creativity.

In Puebla, the inexorable time that had attacked the first foundations of our house, marked the end of the existence of one of its most famous characters. In 1688, on the eve of the Holy Kings, the “China poblana” died, called Mirrha at birth and baptized by the Jesuits as Catarina de San Juan. Despite being neither Chinese nor Poblana, but a beautiful Indian princess turned slave, virgin widow, nun without vows, Catholic, poor and devout, she was buried in the sacristy of the Church of the Society of Jesus.

In Europe an indecisive Bach played at times to "counterpoint" between the intellectual depth, the technical perfection or the artistic beauty that emanated from his genius. From that harmonious and fruitful coming and going, Jesus, the joy of men, and the Brandenburg Concertos would be born. Vivaldi, who well knew that calm comes after The Sea Tempest, with the excuse of walking like The Gardener under the bright summer sun or the fresh earth of spring bathed with the dew of the night, discovered that all instruments they can live together in a melody without protagonists. He discovered that the entire orchestra in unison can serve to highlight the instrument that at times stands as a soloist.

Before Haydn is born and old enough to take us to the Paris or London of his symphonies, let's get back to the tip of the ribbon that leads to Puebla. Let's see, from the “Cerro de Belén”, our city that greets the new century with a population of 68,000 inhabitants, a new Jesuit college and two new bridges: one over the Atoyac River; the other, the still existing “Puente de México”.

In 1714 they inaugurated the Audiencia building —where today the Municipal Palace stands. The construction that originally existed lacked brilliance and comfort, and contrasted with the aspirations of the Angelopolitans who at that time saw the south tower of the Cathedral rise.

In life and death deals, Puebla was not doing well; in 1737 it was struck by a pre-Columbian plague called matlazahuatl, more ferocious and deadly than the diseases brought by the Spanish. The epidemic, which mainly affected the indigenous population, struck two years after heavy rains and only in high-altitude cities. It produced many deaths and the abandonment of the cultivation areas, which in turn caused terrible famines in all the cities of New Spain, with Puebla being one of the most affected.

In spite of everything, life went on and the Dominican nuns built the Santa Rosa convent and the Society of Jesus founded the San Javier college for indigenous missionaries. Forty-eight brotherhoods were registered and, in 1760, the Principal Theater, the oldest theater on the continent, was inaugurated under the name of “Corral de Comedias”.

In the years 1758, 1763 and 1764, Captain Don Santiago de Barquiarena acquired from Don Pascual de la Mata his part of the house, and from the Augustinians the portion that was still property of the order. Thus, the entire house became the exclusive property of Don Santiago, who rebuilt it and also introduced underground pipes, after petitioning the city council for the right to water.

The old house of Juan Ochoa de Elexalde underwent a complete remodeling during the 18th century until it was as we see it today. According to the customs of the time, the ground floor was rented for business purposes; on the second floor —called “mezzanine” and lower than the others—, the servants and guests were housed; and the owners lived on the third level. It is possible that, as a result of this remodeling, the main entrance currently opens onto Street 2 Oriente.

In 1767 the Jesuits were expelled from all the territories of the Spanish Crown; Due to this, all the temples, convents and buildings that belonged to them passed into the hands of the government or other religious orders that used them according to their criteria. Consequently, the educational and religious panorama of the city was modified. In 1813, when the order was able to return to New Spain, the colonies were in the process of independence.

At this point in the story, history is about to give us some of those causalities that fortune generates: Haydn and Mozart. Both Austrians, the first was born in 1732; the second, in 1756. Haydn was Mozart's mentor. And Mozart, source of exuberant genius for Haydn. One dies abruptly and the other extremely long-lived. Each one, in his own way, favors with his talent and molds with his magic who was to be born in 1770: Beethoven. The first, being his teacher; the second, as his confessed inspiration.

As if he knew in advance that his time was short, Mozart would take advantage of the experience of other musicians and reach a maturity very early that ranged from light and elegance, to darkness and passion. His work gives us a humanity redeemed by art and reconciled with nature and the absolute. Between 1782 and 1791, Europe listens to Mozart, like Sherezada, Stories of Dream and Charm in The Rape from the Seraglio, the Tragicomedy in The Marriage of Figaro, the funny drama of a dissolute punished in Don Giovanni, or a wonderful and mythical opera in The Magic Flute. Shortly after this luminous display of talent and joy, Mozart died at the age of thirty-five.

At a completely different pace, as if Haydn knew he was going to have time to feel tired and old, from the age of fifty-three he would live his most prolific period. He would then compose the Paris and London Symphonies. He would dismiss the old century with Creation and greet the new with The Seasons; taking his time, in both works, to address weighty issues such as the meaning of life and the goal of humanity. Themes that represented his personal attempt to integrate the sublime into music.

A little over 250 years after the founding of the city, the Angelopolitans had become accustomed to the material bonanza, to cobbled and cobbled streets, with lanterns that illuminated them, to theaters, schools and beautiful churches. But they also had something only seen in fairy tales: an appetizing edible house.

Despite so much tranquility, nature claimed its moment of prominence: the region was hit by a terrible frost that destroyed the crops, turning food into a precious commodity. A fire destroyed all the stalls in the Plaza Mayor and left the merchants with no place to sell their merchandise. A deadly smallpox epidemic ravaged the city. The end of the century caused little optimism: the city's population count was only 56,900 souls; 11,000 less than a hundred years ago.

The end of the century was propitious to invoke the protection of the ancient gods, unearthed and exhibited in 1790 on the occasion of the works in the Plaza Mayor - today the main square - of Mexico City. A deity found by chance was Coatlicue, goddess of fertility, woman, moon and night, also called Tonantzin, and venerated by the natives as the mother of all on the Tepeyac hill, since long before the arrival of Hernán Cortés, in 1519 and his Guadalupana devotion.

A few years later, in 1797, the melancholic Schubert was born who, in the midst of his romantic madness and his haste to live a short life quickly, would become the creator of the most famous musical greeting to the Virgin. A harmony that, with its majesty, would make Tonantzin, Guadalupe, and all the invocations venerated in any corner of the world, unite in the same Mary, mother of all.

Legends usually unite woman, night and moon, in a symbolic triad that tells us about an unusual event. Sometimes that triad also joins in to tell us the story of a sonata. This legend places Beethoven walking down a street in Bonn. The great composer, searching for the origin of a music he has heard, arrives at the humble house of a girl who plays it on the piano. Noticing that the little girl is blind, he wants to know how she has learned to play. She replies that she has done it by listening to a neighbor perform Beethoven's music. When he in turn starts a melody, the girl cries with emotion when she recognizes him. He then offers to play something for her, but seeing the moonlight pass through the room, he decides to compose the Sonata by moonlight. From that moment arose, in 1801, this sad and beautiful movement.

The nineteenth century begins, and the following years can be defined as heirs of the Enlightenment, times of dizzying change throughout the world. Our house is no exception; it changes hands rapidly because the drastic transformation that was coming in New Spain was perhaps already being noticed. When its owner, Captain Don Santiago de Barquiarena, who left no heirs, died, it was acquired in 1801 by Don Joaquín González de la Borbolla. Twelve years later, in 1813, he sold it to Mrs. Josefa Núñez de Villavicencio.

In Europe, Napoleon Bonaparte, who writes his personal history and that of France, created the new society with his Napoleonic Code of 1804. Beethoven, his admirer, began to compose his Heroica in 1802. However, Napoleon's self-coronation so disappointed Beethoven that he withdrew the dedication and subtitled it: Heroic Symphony, composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.

France, closer to war than to its utopia of equality, invaded Spain in 1808. The king imprisoned in Bayonne, and without directives the viceroy in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the situation would be exploited by the independentists who in Chilpancingo, not far from Our city would convene the "First Congress of Anahuac" in 1813. It is the first time that these lands of nopal, snake and lakes, are called differently to the viceroyalty of New Spain.

Posterity is a kind of Olympus and each one finds his own way of getting there. Some do it through years of pilgrimage, seeking poetic and religious harmonies while unraveling life with passion, touching the religious vocation or dancing like gypsies from one place to another in a rhapsody of love and fame. Liszt was one of those romantics who played and played the piano, walked and walked from Weimar to Budapest, and from there to Rome, and back to Weimar, until his legs got tired. He was the first musician in history to embody in himself a kind of rockstar, active philanthropist and Franciscan monk; credible or not, all in one lifetime.

There is another type of romantic. The one who does not live quickly but intensely and a little whispering; the one who carries as his muse and companion the nostalgia for his distant Poland that only half of his heart will see again; that of love lost but not forgotten, and devotion to a woman with a man's name. That was Chopin, a friend of playing for a few so that they could appreciate the subtlety of his music. The first to write ballads and the reinventor of the studio. His silent will never named a work beyond its genre and number, leaving any association to whoever heard it.

The work of Wagner, born in 1813, synthesizes the poetic, visual and dramatic component of art. His particular conception is embodied in The Ring of the Nibelungs, a work that manages to weave together the most beautiful and profound symbols of Scandinavian mythology in a complex story, before they were made up by Christianity.

The Ring of the Nibelungs is a kind of manual to understand human nature. Man's greed for gold and power, represented in an almighty ring and a helmet of invisibility and transmutation, an authoritarian father who negotiates freedom in exchange for castles with furious giants, but daring to want nothing in return, who divides to win and that punishes the disobedience of children and others.

The man who flees from his destiny, but who is still reached by it through a sword that can only be removed by his hand but driven by love, a beloved Valkyrie daughter who, defying her father to protect the weak, saves the chosen one and it is condemned to sleep eternally kept inside a ring of fire.

Although the world, as mankind knew it, changed every day, people continued to live, marry, and cook. The children played and grew; young people were united in marriage; and the kitchens continued to fill with aromas, humble or elegant stews, dishes born of creativity, everyday life or chance, that will never be known.

Music and food tend to intertwine like the fine embroidery that young women wore when they went to marry Jesus and paraded in procession through Puebla as "crowned brides." A link is that, two "different" that come together to complement each other in harmony; only then is the best of each ingredient perceived. The chiles en nogada evoke a perfect marriage between the Spanish and the indigenous: the pre-Columbian chili, the taste of the pig arrived Iberian and adopted Poblano, the recently harvested Castile nut. If this illustrious marriage of two cultures were set to music, it should be a melody that evokes the joy of the monical cooks who perhaps once paraded as crowned brides. Something like the Wedding March composed in 1825 by Mendelssohn, inspired by a Shakespearean dreamlike summer night, perhaps at the end of August, with fairies, passionate lovers and a wedding banquet that, if it had been in Puebla, would surely have had this one as their main dish.

In order for the passengers to enjoy a comfortable and safe shelter while the stagecoaches were being repaired, the first “stagecoach houses” began to be established, and the Hostal de las Diligencias was opened located on Calle de los Mesones, on the corner of Calle de Anzures. —Today 8 Oriente and 4 Norte. This is one of the first hotel antecedents in the city, with the peculiarity that it was not called "inn", like all the establishments of the time, but "hostel".

Through our story we have seen how music calmed the Council of Trent, provide lessons in nature through the smooth flow of the seasons, marvel at the magic of divine creation, show us the disenchantment of man with the ideal of the hero, find harmony through years of pilgrimage or discreet seclusion.

In search of the connection between music and body, in 1825 the muse of dance found Strauss in Austria and inspired him to, when he grew up, make the common man's dance a waltz worthy of the Habsburg court, and from there to universality. Strauss was admired by Wagner and by Brahms who publicly regretted not being the composer of the waltz with which the Austrians say goodbye to the year that ends and salute the one that begins, the famous Blue Danube.

Regarded as the third "B", alongside Bach and Beethoven, Strauss's friend Brahms was a traditionalist and an innovator at the same time. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and techniques of baroque and classical composition. Brahms tried to honor the creative purity of his predecessors and bring it to the romantic language, creating in the process courageous approaches to harmony and melody, his work was the starting point and inspiration for a new generation of composers. And despite having such intellectual depth in his musical vision, he also lulls us with the tenderness of his Lullaby, which we have probably absentmindedly hummed without suspecting that it was composed by Brahms himself.

From 1828 to 1849, like Brahms, our already unified house remained firm on its foundations, although it changed owners with some rapidity. Upon the death of Mrs. Josefa Núñez de Villavicencio, her daughter, Mrs. María Josefa Meana de Sela, became the owner. In 1849, Don Andrés Sela y Meana inherited it from their mother and sold it to Doña Clara and Don Francisco Campero.

In 1835 Puebla continued to recover from the damage of the War of Independence. And a bit like Brahms, which honored the traditional but gave it a touch of modernity, the city responded to the new commercial challenges of the time. On the banks of the Atoyac River, in the old Molino de Santo Domingo, businessman Esteban de Antuñano establishes the first mechanized textile factory in the country, La Constancia Mexicana. The building is still standing, rescued and improved, and is home to a system of youth orchestras.

Tchaikovsky found in a children's story - the story of the ugly duckling that turns into a white swan with splendorous wings - the inspiration to create Swan Lake. But his personal story does not end when he manages to spread his wings in the court of Imperial Russia; Tchaikovsky received the highest awards, invited the best musicians in Europe to play in his country, and traveled the world conducting the best orchestras.

One of Tchaikovsky's guests to conduct in Moscow was his friend Dvorak, an admirer of Brahms and admired by him. The affinity between Dvorak and Brahms is reflected in his work. And, seen from a distance, both composers share the characteristic of visionaries, the ability to see possibilities where no one has seen them before.

Dvorak's style has been described as the richest recreation of a national language mixed with symphonic tradition. When he was in New York, he discovered African American music and understood its right to be part of the American musical identity. He had already done the same with Czech music, by including it in his works.

His symphony From the New World evokes the vastness of the Wild West, the untamed nature that in Europe had long been domesticated, the exoticism of an indigenous culture with its own totems and legends, the majesty of the Grand Canyon. The magnificence of the cultural richness of the lands that travelers from all over the world receive.

Some men live inspiration at the same rate that life unfolds. Others, seeking inspiration, find themselves in the wrong time and place; This is the case of Mahler who was born in 1860, and from his childhood he would develop a permanent feeling of exile. As he once said of himself: "always an intruder, never welcomed.

Mahler's life was a constant struggle against obstacles; the other directors considered him arrogant; he irritated the authorities of the theaters for which he worked; musicians found him dictatorial and despotic: Still, he is considered one of the best conductors in history. He knew no rest, no mistake that could not be overcome with practice; Even if that seemed like an obsession, he was willing to rehearse a thousand times and one more.

Mahler was valued in his time more as a conductor than as a composer. Today he is one of the greatest and most original symphonists that has ever existed. One of the musicians who announced and foreshadowed, in the most lucid and consistent way, the contradictions that would define the development of musical art throughout the 20th century.

There is a saying that goes: "What would these walls tell if they could talk." It would be interesting to imagine what its walls could tell about all the negotiations and agreements that they witnessed from 1860 onwards. In that year the brothers Dona Clara and Don Francisco Campero sold it to the former governor of the state of Puebla, General Cosme Furlong, who leased it to Don Julio Ziegler. Active characters in the history of the city: Don Cosme, brigadier general and protagonist of momentous events; Don Julio, merchant in the field of railways, trams and the sale of Puebla real estate. Both were talked about a lot at the time.

During the following two years, the country experienced a tense calm until, after a series of diplomatic disagreements, the French invasion of 1862 was unleashed. This led to the battle of May 5 in the hills of Loreto and Guadalupe, in the surroundings of the city of Puebla. There, the Mexican army, under the command of Ignacio Zaragoza, will obtain an important victory over the French army, led by the Count of Lorencez. Despite their inferior forces, the Mexicans defeated one of the most experienced and respected armies of the time. In the same year that France invaded Puebla, Debussy invaded France to one day give us all the tenderness treasured in his, the liquid sensuality of his and the liberation of dissonance, better known as Prelude to the siesta of a faun.

Subversive and rebellious Debussy offers sound forms close to improvisation that play with a mystical and oriental air. With him an unknown path would begin, but full of sonic hedonism, melodic freedom and overwhelmed intuition, so much so that there are those who consider this to be the beginning of modern music. Paradoxes have the charm of the inexplicable, Debussy, our guide through the unexpected and unbridled, portrays him in an opera. The Finnish Sibelius, born in, fearing modernity, invites his to convince us of the benefits of the structure. The same story summoned by two geniuses who flourish precisely in their differences.

Sibelius music is central to the formation of Finnish identity. Each of his symphonies took him a little further in his personal development as a composer. Most of his work is inspired by  , him, the famous epic poem that summarizes Finnish mythology.

No less esoteric and spiritual but with a different perspective, Holst can be considered the most comprehensive of composers in his approach to human mysticism. For him all religions are a kind of direct or indirect path towards musical expression. Among other pieces, he wrote Savitri, taken from the Rig Veda, of extraordinary expressive subtlety. Beni Mora inspired by the Muslim sounds of the Algerian land and one of Holst's most personal pieces. His best known work, The Planets, is inspired by a kind of reflection based on his own horoscope, where each planet has a distinctive character and neither steals color or hue from the other. Finally, the Hymn of Jesus takes inspiration from the apocryphal Gospel of Saint John.

History, sometimes, moves to the impulse of extremes, or with the accumulated energy of equals. Music is no exception; especially if we think that musicians, as humans absorb what happens in their environment and, with their particular sensitivity and through their artistic expression, are a powerful reflection of humanity's feelings and thoughts.

After Holst, a man who linked much of his work to spirituality was Ravel, born in France in 1875, an atheist who expressly requested that there be no religious ceremony of any kind at his funeral. Despite this, when listening to The Water Games it is difficult not to wonder how the sound of water falling in tiny silver threads can be reproduced without possessing a divine quality. Or how the feeling of comfort of a hug that comforts from the chords of the Pavana can be transmitted for a deceased infant, if it were not believed that heaven exists. And it is that Ravel was a very spiritual man. And perhaps, unknowingly, his religion was music.

The originality of Ravel's musical language is remarkable; it cannot be considered as absolutely modernist or impressionist. Like Debussy, he always refused to be called an impressionist because he considered that qualification was reserved for painting. He embodied the synthesis of various styles that were a bit crazy to later achieve a mature and particular style. As Viñes described it: “He is above all, very complicated, because he has a mixture of Catholicism typical of the Middle Ages and a touch of satanic impiety, but there is also a great love for art and beauty, which guides him and lead to react in a very innocent way ”. It is unlikely to find words that can better describe the essence of the musical spirit of Ravel, a discreet, reserved man, and little given to exhibition.

Taking up the idea of ​​the accumulated energy of equals, Ravel, from a Spanish mother, is inspired by her mother's land to create the sound of her Spanish Hour and her famous Bolero. Dvorak seeks, through the sounds of his ancestors, to promote musical nationalism. Bartók, born in 1881, and inspired by Ravel, decides to take the search even further and dedicates himself in his early years to traveling through the peasant areas of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, collecting and investigating typical Hungarian music which allowed him to carry out surprising discoveries. His most important discovery was to find evidence that the typical Hungarian music that had always been categorized as gypsy, was based on the pentatonic scale, which made it closer and similar to the traditional Asian music, typical of the areas of Central Asia, Anatolia and Siberia. This was a great discovery because it practically gave a new citizenship card to the music of his country.

Bartók reflects two trends that drastically changed the musical sound of the 20th century, the break with the diatonic harmony system, used by composers for the last two hundred years, and the revival of nationalism as a source of musical inspiration. In this search for indigenous sounds close to human spontaneity, Bartók experimented with Algerian and Turkish music. For several years, taking refuge from World War II, he worked at Columbia University in the research and recovery of traditional music from Serbia and Croatia.

In the search for sounds, already started by Dvorak and Bartók, Stravinsky takes a step forward and, hand in hand with Sergei Diaghilev, he incorporates ballet. Dance and costumes evoke Russia, its legends and culture. Stravinsky's work is very extensive, but there are three works that can be considered as beautiful examples of the union between music and ballet, The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of the Rite of Spring.

Masterfully, Stravinsky manages to keep the listener disoriented with frequent changes and unpredictable accents. The choreography reflects those repeated jumps and changes in harmony. For these reasons, The Consecration is considered the icon of 20th century classical music.

In 1881 Don Tomás Furlong Pisccietto, Don Cosme's son, sold the house to Don Antonio Rosales and Don José Dorenberg so that they could establish the haberdashery La Surprise, a company of the Rosales y Dorenberg society. In 1885 Don Antonio acquired the house for himself, but death surprised him and both the house and the haberdashery ended up being the property of Don José Dorenberg in 1886.

At the World's Fair in Paris in 1889, during the commemoration of the centenary of the storming of the Bastille, Debussy first heard the music of Gamelán, performed by an ensemble from Java. That experience marked a generation of musicians in terms of innovation; among them, the American Cage.

Poblanos are not given to living in anger. Despite having been at war with France thirty years earlier, they had no problem doing business with natives of that nation. Thus, Don José Dorenberg, who owned the house for only nine years, sold it in 1895 to “Lions Hermanos”, a society of French people from La Barcelonnette. In 1896, the Lions sold it to Don Pedro Tremari. In 1903 Don Antonio Gavito would buy it from the latter.

Just as the French celebrated the storming of the Bastille with a Universal Exposition that included the Eiffel Tower, the Mexicans remembered their Independence with another revolution. Aquiles Serdán is appointed by Madero to lead the rebellion against the reelection of Porfirio Díaz in Puebla. The battle between the police and the rebels lasted almost five hours and at the end of it Máximo and all the rebels who were on the roof of the house had died. Aquiles decided to hide in the basement of a room. In that place he remained for the next fourteen hours. Around two in the morning several shots were heard coming from the dining room area of ​​the house and upon arrival they found a dead man. When the lights came on, they realized it was Aquiles Serdán.

In the following years, the “Armed Peace” prevailed in Europe, which led, in 1914, to the First World War. The world felt different and the sources of inspiration sprouted differently as well. It seems that the men of the new century had the ability to see new things, or perhaps to see the same things as always but with an unprecedented vision.

New men who saw the old with newly opened eyes. The French Messiaen, who sought inspiration from Japan, Greece, India, Indonesian gamelan, and Catholicism, used to say that he perceived colors when he heard certain chords. And that the combination of those colors was fundamental in his compositional process; always, of course, in a mixture with the song of the birds, everlasting guests of honor in their inspiration.

Cage, a pioneer in indeterminacy, in the use of non-traditional instruments, does the unthinkable and seems to summon silence as its protagonist in his work 4'33 ". It is not just an exercise in lack of sound but a celebration life that runs at frequencies so low that the brain forgets to perceive and the spirit to enjoy. While in Estonia, Pärt gives sound to simplicity, either through the ringing of bells, or the simplicity of musical harmonies, the naive notes, without adornment, that do not change time. His inspiration arises, perhaps, from the sacredness of the Orthodox liturgy, his music caresses the place of the spirit where the human need to yearn resides, beyond time and space.

In 1932, while Messiaen premiered his work Four Symphonic Meditations in Paris, in Puebla, Doña María Concepción Gavito Noriega inherited the house from her father, Don Antonio Gavito. He would keep it under his control until 1947, when he alienated it in favor of Mr. Guillermo Vigil Escalera. Not long ago, Cage had released his Music for Marcel Duchamp.

Since 1947 our house has remained in the hands of the Vigil Escalera family. It was first owned by Don Guillermo; On his death, in 1958, it was inherited by Doña Concepción and, on her death in 2004, it was inherited by his daughters Concepción and Rosario, current owners, two vital, strong and beautiful women, with warm talk and easy laughter.

Our musicians walked and searched, Beethoven used to wander looking at the floor, perhaps investigating the reason for his deafness. Brahms walked looking for children to give them candy; Holst to find the freedom of his chest; Liszt did it in Weimar, Budapest and Rome looking for someone to give his wisdom to.

I make a brief stop to honor my very personal traveling companions: the musicians, reconciling accomplices; the Andante, creative madness in three acts with two intermezzos of tenderness; and Puebla, healing and protective energy that adopts me. Together with these masters of the journey, after obtaining the passport to go to feel, to dream and to create, I found not only what I wanted but also what I needed without knowing; here are the gifts my spirit keeps.

Five hundred years of sacred and profane music, love stories, rituals and myths, dreams, colors and textures, dance and poetry. A beautifully dreamed of harmony, composed, executed and directed by wonderful and imperfect men who also loved; they were happy or miserable; they lived the light or the darkness of uncertainty; they were parents, children, friends, lovers; they laughed; they cried; they got drunk, and borderline insanity. But after all, and above all, they followed the imperative of their hearts: they were musicians ... and travelers.

The Andante Hotel, owner of a place macerated for 475 years, custodian and perfect amalgamation between history and present, pleasant refuge for travelers, playful warmth for lovers, reflective rest that accompanies the joy of surrendering to sensations. Andante, a meeting space where the born - or forged - traveler people will remember that when they most enjoy coming back, is when they dreamed of returning while away.

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