Juventino Policarpo Rosas Cadenas

Juventino Policarpo Rosas Cadenas (1868-1894)

Juventino Rosas

Juventino Rosas in his younger years

Juventino Policarpo Rosas Cadenas was born on January 25, 1868, in the Mexican state of Guanajuato In a little village known today as Santa Cruz de Juventino Rosas. His father, Juan de Jesus Rosas, was a man of the earth, a peasant who served his country playing the harp in a military band. He taught his three children to play musical instruments and sing. Young Juventino learned the violin, Manuel the guitar, and Maria Patrocinio sang while Dad strummed the harp. Together, the family formed a popular band that, in the typical fashion of Mexican village life, performed at fairs and played regional music at dances and festivities in the Santa Cruz area.

In 1875, the Rosas family set out on foot to seek a better life in Mexico City. 400 kilometers away. Juventino was by then seven years old and an accomplished violinist, playing folk tunes and songs on a crude fiddle bought in the mountains.

 

 

A dance piece dedicated to the President General Porfirio Díaz
Dance dedicated to the President General Porfirio Díaz

They settled in a quarter called Tepito, one of the most crowded and dangerous areas of Mexico City, on a street ominously called Amargura (Bitterness). At first, Juventino played with the family on neighborhood streets, and later he began to jam with other local bands. In a few short years, he became quite popular, playing with equal ease at street parties or in high society gatherings and ballrooms where his violin solos delighted all. But soon, just like a waltz, his life began to spin out of control.

At the age of 18, he had already accomplished what other musicians took a lifetime to achieve. Young Juventino had already played in and lead some of the biggest bands in Mexico. He played for diva Angela Peralta, the Mexican Nightingale, during her last national tour and won wide public acclaim when he soloed on his violin at the National Theater for President Porfirio Diaz. Juventino studied at the Music Conservatory and, like his father, he also played in a military band.

National Theater
National Theater in Mexico City

His accomplishments included composing the battle hymn Cuauhtémoc and some salon pieces such as Ensueño Seductor, La Cantinera, Sueño de las Flores, Te volví a ver and, apparently during that same time, the waltz "Over the Waves." By then he had also lost all his family and known the joy and heartbreaking pain of love; he had lived through the misery of indebtedness, loneliness, and the anguish of alcoholism...

Genius, virtuosity, fame, and glory alternated like acrobats in his life with poverty, pain, bitterness, loneliness and alcohol until his premature death in 1894 in the Cuban city of Surgidero de Batabanó, far from the land that gave him birth.

Doña Carmen Romero Rubio de Díaz
Doña Carmen Romero Rubio de Díaz, muse of "Carmen"

By the Spring

Some say that Juventino Rosas composed his masterpiece after a party in the village of Contreras south of Mexico City. Others say that it was in Cuautepec, not far from the Basilica of Guadalupe north of Mexico City, after he had deserted from the military band in which he played. Only one thing is certain: he composed Over the Waves in a forest while sitting at the edge of a stream under the shade of an elder tree. It was in such a setting that this young, enamored musician found inspiration to write the work that would immortalize him.

Originally called Close to the Spring, its name was later changed because its chords evoked images of a boat gently rocking on the ocean rather than those of a murmuring stream. He dedicated his composition "to Dame Calixta Gutierrez de Alfaro, patron of the arts" and offered it to his benefactress on her saint's day, delighting all those who heard this beautiful waltz for the first time.

Success followed our musician, but his debts pursued him. With his newest work barely reaching popularity, Rosas decided to sell the rights together with those of a Spanish chotis piece called Lazos de Amor to music publishers Casa Wagner y Levien, for the sum of 45 pesos. Under their management, Over the Waves, or Sobre Las Olas, in Spanish, became an immediate commercial success. Published in various editions, it earned Casa Wagner y Levien more than 100,000 pesos, and since then was forever incorporated into the sublime pages of Mexico's musical repertoire.

Rotunda of Illustrious Men in Mexico City
In 1909 the remains of Juventino Rosas arrived in Mexico and since 1939 they lay in the Rotunda of Illustrious Men in Mexico City.

Titled Over the Waves in English and Ueber den Wellen in German, it crossed the Atlantic to the Old Continent, the birthplace of waltzes, where its melancholy notes took root in everyone's heart and where still few know that this enchanting melody is a gift from a Mexican composer named Juventino Rosas.

Further reading:

  1. Barreiro Lastra, Hugo: Album Musical de Juventino Rosas, Mexico: Gobierno del Estado de Guanajuato, 1994. ISBN: 968-6170-70-0
  2. Álvarez Coral, Juan. Juventino Rosas. Su vida y su obra. Mexico: Sociedad de Autores y Compositores de Música, 1972.

https://www.puertovallarta.net/fast_facts/over-the-waves-juventino-rosas

 

Full Name: 
Rosas, Juventino
Birth Date: 
1868-01-25
Decease Date: 
1894-07-13

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Artists