Otto Mayer-Serra

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Otto Mayer-Serra (1904 in Barcelona, Spain – 1968 in Mexico City), was a Spanish-Mexican musicologist known for being one of the first musicologist to write a systematic study of 20th century Mexican music.

Life[]

His father was a German of Jewish origin and owned a big glass company. After the Christal night in 1938 he earned a fortune by replacing many of the broken windows and was allowed to emigrate to Spain with his family, His son Otto Mayer had worked at the Berlin Radio together with Hermann Scherchen in 1930. He was later adopted by the Spanish family Serra in 1934 when he became Spanish citizen. Mayer-Serra studied music in Barcelona, although his music education came from the German and French school. While living in Barcelona he became a music critic and during the Spanish Civil War he worked in the music department for the support of the Generalitat. In 1937 his Cancionero Revolucionario Internacional (International and revolutionary Songbook) was published, in which he collected many revolutionary songs of the time by composers such as Silvestre Revueltas and Halffter. He joined the music magazine ¨Música¨, which had an important support from the official Spanish government. There he published the first Spanish articles on the concept of Music Sociology En torno de una Sociología de la Música. Along with Rodolfo Halffter he suffered the bombing of Figueras (Girona), where he lost part of his work. During that period he wrote in other magazines like Hora de España. In 1939 he and his sister moved to Mexico, where they were acquanted to Lev Trotsky 1939-40

and Anna Seghers 1941-47.  There he worked as musicologist  and music critic in the journal ¨Últimas Novedades¨ and in the magazine ¨Tiempo¨ and founded his own music magazine, Mus-Art (?) as well as in programming concerts.  He was artistic director of the Orquesta de Jalapa.  One of his first writings was Silvestre Revueltas, su vida y su obra (Silvestre Revueltas, his life and work) was published in the magazine ¨Hoy¨ in Mexico City.  Música y músicos de Latinoamérica (Music and musicians of Latin America) became his most important work and is one of the leading source for Latin American music studies. In Mexico 1960 or earlier he married a Swedish woman, miss Lovén and had two or three children.

Sources[]

• Casares, Emilio. Diccionario de la Música Española e Hispanoamericana. Sociedad general de autores y editores.

Told by my mother-in-law, who was Ottos cousin in Mainz 1985. Met his children in Mecico City, April 1987; they didn't know they were Jewish. Met Ottos sister in Berlin DDR 1988, she had joined the communist party and moved to Dresden after the war. She also died there.

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