Nueva Espaņa: Close Encounters in the New World
Selected Samples
- "Deus in adjutorium /Domine ad adjuvandum / Gregorian/ Ragin and Les Amis de la Sagesse" (879K )
- "Deus in adjutorium--Domine ad adjuvandum / Pedro Bermudez (Mexico ca.1650)/ Camerata and Schola Cantorum with shawms, sackbuts, and continuo" (585K)
All files are in mp3 format
The Age of Exploration! In our school days, we were told it was a time of heroes, and of high adventure. Later, we came to understand what terrible suffering and injustice the Spaniards had wrought in their drive for fame, glory, and riches. Nowadays, our renewed awareness of the Conquest's dark side has eliminated forever the too-simple, clichéd images of the old school books.
This [concert], nonetheless, has a different case to make: it pleads for attention to the meeting places of light and beauty that did indeed exist in those terrible, hard centuries. The Indians (and, shortly thereafter, the African immigrants) were at once drawn to the music they heard from the Spaniards. And the Europeans were fascinated, and often influenced, by the astonishing, new sounds of other cultures.
So enthusiastic was the Indians' response to European polyphony, and to the playing of guitars, harps, flutes, shawms, and sackbuts, that the newly built churches were soon full to overflowing with skilled, enthusiastic native musicians, singing praises to the Christian Lord with every means at hand. The choirmaster/composers generally came from and were trained in Spain (Seville was an especially important center of musical diffusion towards Nueva España.) But most of the performers (and some composers), were born and bred in the New World. They were, in the main, people with brown and black skins. Time and again, visitors from Europe would note, with wonder and admiration, the skill and dedication of the New World's musicians.
Virtually all the surviving repertoire from the colonial period (with the exception of a few guitar tablatures) is sacred religious music. Music of European origin was often performed in the New World -- several such examples are included in our program. Most often, though, when polyphonic music was wanted, the choirmasters of the new cathedrals composed music afresh. There were, generally speaking, two kinds of stylistic models for the new pieces: the contrapuntal, neo-"renaissance" idiom you will hear in the Latin motets, and a more "baroque," vernacular style employed in the villancicos. Both kinds of writing had their roots in Spanish music; both were admitted into church services.
And both styles -- one restrained and conservative, the other youthful and even insolent -- can astonish us! Renaissance-type polyphony was composed and sung in Spain (a European region in a time warp) through the eighteenth century, and also in the Spanish colonies (a time warp within the time warp). The beautiful Lamentations of Lienas sound to our ears like they were written in the 1550's; their actual date of composition was probably about a century later.
The villancicos incorporate dance-like rhythms, catchy refrains, and reminiscences of Iberic folklore. Most fascinating of all, they search out and assimilate dimensions of popular life and indigenous music-making in the New World. Texts can be in Castillian, or in one of the many languages current in Nueva España: Quecha, Nahuatl, Galician, Portugese, Afro- Spanish.
The presence of a vigorous black musical culture this early in the New World's history may come as a surprise. In fact, there has been an African element in Spanish music since the Middle Ages. What gives the listener an immediate rush of pleasure -- the enormous rhythmic energy of the New World villancicos -- creates a substantial headache for the music historian. Did these characteristic rhythms come from a medieval, arabo-andalou substratum, or from the New World's contact with black Africa, or (most likely) from some combination of both?
Although the music of Nueva España existed in its own, protected sphere, it is by no means "primitive" and technically awkward like the New England anthems of Billings or Read. These composers were solidly trained, skilled, and open minded. The best of them deserve to be ranked with their leading contemporaries in Europe; a neglected master like Araujo could compose circles around any number of Old Country second-stringers.
The music of Nueva España, emerging now after centuries of dormancy and neglect, is a source of pride and joy for Americans North and South, a precious extension of the European and African musical heritage, and a witness to human possibility on our small, turbulent planet.
These notes are © by Joel Cohen