Manuel Ponce

Ponce composed Estrellita in 1912 and incorporated Mexican popular music into his concert works. He studied in Mexico, Italy and Germany, taught at the National Conservatory, and in middle age went to Paris to work with Paul Dukas. The friendship with Andrés Segovia produced a body of guitar music: the Concierto del Sur, the Sonata romántica, the Sonata clásica, and variations on La Folía. Orchestral and chamber works, piano music and songs stand behind them. He died in Mexico City in 1948. Born at Fresnillo in Zacatecas in 1882 and brought up in Aguascalientes, he studied in Mexico City from 1900, then in Bologna at the Martini conservatory from 1904 and in Berlin with Martin Krause between 1906 and 1908. He taught at the National Conservatory, lived in Havana from 1915 to 1917 and later returned to teaching in Mexico, and in 1947 he received the Mexican national prize for science and the arts. His Concierto del Sur was first performed by Segovia in Montevideo in 1941.