Grupo de los cuatro

(Group of the Four) is the name adopted by a group of four young Mexican composers in 1935, who organized together with the aim of propagating new music, particularly their own. History Carlos Chávez, who had replaced Antonio Castro Leal as director of the Mexican Conservatorio Nacional de Música in 1928, set about revising the curriculum to increase the emphasis on writing music in all styles. In 1931, he received approval from the Secretariat of Public Education to inaugurate a course in free composition, at first titled Class of Musical Creation, later renamed Composition Workshop. The first students enrolled in this class included some older members, such as Vincente Mendoza, Candelario Huízar, and Silvestre Revueltas, but also three young students under the age of twenty, Daniel Ayala, Salvador Contreras, and José Pablo Moncayo. They were joined the next year by another pupil of their age group, Blas Galindo. Early in 1933 Chávez abandoned the directorship of the Conservatory to assume the job of Chief of the Department of Fine Arts, a position he held for barely a year, after which he regained directorship of the Conservatory in May 1934. However, he only remained until Decem