by Carol A. Hess
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, Ohio

More than sixty scholars and teachers representing literature, art history, general history, history of science, and, most notably, the music of Spain and Latin America assembled this summer at Rutgers University for three weeks of intensive study under the auspices of the Aston Magna Academy. This institution has flourished since 1972, and, as a branch of the NEH-funded Aston Magna Foundation for Music and the Humanities, enjoys a long-standing tradition of integrating musical performance with interdisciplinary study. Under the capable and friendly management of Artistic Director Raymond Erickson and Associate Director Sally Sanford, both of whom (miraculously) played and sang in public concerts in addition to executing their administrative responsibilities, the Academy provided a singular opportunity. Where else could the dedicated Hispanicist hear the vihuela in concert, sing in Quechua, dance the jota, and discuss the wit of Sor Juana Ynés de la Cruz or the splendor of Velásquez with like-minded colleagues? By engineering this event, Erickson, Sanford, and their thoughtful staff proved themselves true supporters of Spanish and Latin American culture.
A typical Academy day consisted of two hour-plus lectures, several master classes, and musical lecture-demonstrations, with concerts or extra-curricular activities occupying evening hours. Not surprisingly, IHMSG members constituted a strong presence, either as guest faculty or participants. Louise Stein, for example, elucidated the features of the comedia nueva, the most significant genre in seventeenth-century Spanish drama. In its mixing of comic and tragic elements, the comedia reflects the tendency towards the hybridization in siglo de oro opera, as found, for example, in the light burlesquing of elite values typical of early zarzuela, or the combining of music and spoken dialogue (the former for gods and the latter, along with the singing of common romances, for mortals). In describing both the historical background and the musical style of siglo de oro opera, Stein offered her insights into the works that Tomás Torrejón y Velasco, composer of the first New World opera, might have heard while still in Spain. Related remarks on opera, literature, and the solo vocal music of Hidalgo were contributed respectively by James Middleton, whose Baroque opera company "Ex Machina" produced Torrejón's La Púrpura de la Rosa for the October 1994 AMS meeting in Minneapolis, Angela Dellepiane (New York University), and mezzo-soprano Judith Malafronte, whose recent CD, ¡Ay amor!, was chosen Disk of the Month by CD Review. Aston Magna participants thus gained a deeper understanding into the nature of Spanish seventeenth-century opera, its audience, its relationship to Italian opera, and even its political significance.
Indeed, so visceral was this enhanced appreciation that when the extended jácara from La Púrpura de la Rosa, "No puede amor," was informally performed by Aston Magna musicians in class one day, participants spontaneously broke into the jácara rhythm, clapping and stamping enthusiastically for several minutes. Another cause for brio? A videotape of "Ex Machina"'s Minneapolis performance is now available for only $20.00, a boon to those of us who have been making do with the old Clemencic recording for our Latin American music classes. (For further information, contact James Middleton at 1160 Raymond Ave. #3, St. Paul, MN, 55108.)
Craig Russell identified another angle of the "cross-cultural connection:" the potential impact of Mexican sacred music on American music studies. In pointing out that unlike Boston, Philadelphia, or any other northern center, Mexico City maintained a standing orchestra by 1734, Russell sought to broaden the scholarly vision of eighteenth-century "American" music, which has traditionally emphasized the Eastern colonies. His extensive handout and bibliography will be appreciated by anyone teaching or researching Sumaya or Ignacio de Jerusalem, and his entertaining and innovative pedagogical approaches gave participants not only methodological food for thought but a hearty laugh besides. As if providing a setting for this glorious music, architecture historian Catherine Wilkinson Zerner (Brown University) had earlier whetted our appetites in her discussion of the modeling of the Mexico City cathedral after Seville (the largest cathedral in Europe) and the extent to which stylistic hybridization in Mexico may have affected Philip II's architectural vision of Spain. 
This need to expand our view of American music is equally apparent when the Spanish missions of Alta California are taken into account. Musical life there peaked from around 1769-1800, and all twenty-one missions supported orchestras and choirs. (By 1833 the missions were secularized; by 1850 all belonged to the United States.) As William Summers explained in his lecture, these resources, coupled with the long tradition of Catholic church music, resulted in a style quite distinct from the more austere Protestant counterpart in the Northeast. Having researched mission music in both California and the Philippines, Summers is currently exploring the presence of opera seria and its corresponding sacred contrafacta at Mission San Antonio de Padua in Central California. Another Americanist, John Koegel, is currently working on nineteenth-century popular Hispanic music; by popular demand, he presented to the Academy some of his findings on musical life in the American Southwest.
Participants were grateful to IHMSG member Michael Noone, who organized informal readings of polyphonic choral music by Victoria, Guerrero, and various New World composers (although it was agreed that the name of the ad hoc ensemble, "Noone's Goons," might not make it on the performing circuit). Another extracurricular activity was castanet class, taught by a colorful figure known simply as "Matteo," whose career as a castanet virtuoso spans decades. Thanks to him and Nancy Heller of the Spanish Dance Society of America, many Academy participants can now proudly perform basic jota and seguidilla steps while accompanying themselves on the castanets. For others the allure of the dance floor was eclipsed by the stage: in the auto sacramental enacted in the exotic setting of the Rutgers dormitory quad, Academy participants had the chance to display their theatrical charisma. Particularly memorable was the performance of IHMSG member Emilio Ros-Fabregás, whose interpretation of the role of the Anti-Christ would have put Bela Lugosi to shame. 
Other lecturers on Spanish and/or Latin American music included Maricarmen Gómez of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. An authority on Spanish Renaissance and medieval music, Gómez raised the question of mysticism in the music of Golden Age polyphonists, a notion first advanced by Henri Collet in 1913. Reviewing the output of the escuela andaluza (Morales, Pedro de Escobar, Peñalosa, Guerrero, and Navarro), she also called attention to the esteem in which many of these composers were held abroad; Guerrero in particular enjoyed a wide international reputation, especially in the New World. Likewise, the masses of the next major figure in Spanish polyphony, Victoria, had to be recopied by 1640 in the Mexico City cathedral due to excessive use. Gómez's remarks on mysticism were particularly meaningful in the context of three art history lectures by Edward Sullivan of New York University. Taking as a starting point the well-known works of Zurbarán, Sullivan contrasted their stark religiosity with the more mundane emphasis of Golden Age still lifes, the humble material objects of which nonetheless exude an aura of sanctity. 
Gómez's bibliographic overview of the ensalada included differing views on its presumed links to the beginnings of Spanish lyric theater. Although she concluded that the ensalada did not evolve from theatrical origins, Gómez emphasized that even answering this perplexing question in the negative tells us a good deal about the early Spanish stage, and referred to instances of the ensalada ensalada in plays by Gil Vicente and theatrical works by Sánchez de Badajóz. 
Another noteworthy guest, Gerard Béhague (University of Texas, Austin), gave in the first of his three lectures an overview of Latin American sacred music from the colonial period. His talk included some fascinating and little-known recorded excerpts, such as the three-movement sinfonia with fugal finale composed around 1760 by Antonio Sarrier, reminiscent of early Mozart. The manuscript of this work was found at the escoleta de música , the school established for orphaned girls at Morelia in 1738. Apparently its archive is filled with similar treasures. In his second lecture, a treatment of Inca and Aztec music, Béhague acknowledged Robert Stevenson's work in this area, and reiterated the point that the Indians could not have learned Gregorian chant and polyphony so quickly in the absence of an existing sophisticated musical culture. Literary parallels of native aptitude were offered by Raquel Chang-Rodriguez (New York University). Through her outline of the transition from oral to print culture, participants saw how native and European mentalities both clashed and overlapped in the humanistic schools founded for the Indians at Santa Cruz and Michoacán and in the writings of native chroniclers Garcilaso and Juan Poma de Ayala. 
Béhague's third lecture, "Music Beyond Church and Palace," focused on the Andean patronal fiesta of the Virgen del Carmen. Asserting that a complete picture of Latin American music must reach beyond manuscript sources, Béhague showed video footage shot at Paucartambo (northeast of Cuzco), and outlined the syncretic overlaps between twelve Inca festivals (based on the lunar cycle) and the Christian liturgical year. Ethnomusicologist John Schechter (University of California, Santa Cruz) took a similar approach: in his overview of the velorio del angelito (wake for a dead child) he showed how this unusual Valencian ritual assumed Incaic accretions in its Quechua setting.
Lynn Matluck-Brooks (Franklin and Marshall College) and dancer Alan Jones offered both an historical view and a live performance of Spanish seventeenth-century dance. Matluck-Brooks emphasized the interpenetration of the three primary contexts for dance (church, society, and theater), while Jones gave a riveting performance of a jácara , one based (with certain modifications) on the step vocabulary of Esquivel Navarro (Discurso sobre el arte del dancado [sic], Seville, 1642). A narrated public performance depicting life in a seventeenth-century dance school for Spanish gentlemen brought delight both to Academicians and to the greater community.
Other highlights included a spirited rebuttal of the Black Legend (Sally Nalle, William Peterson College), an overview of the seventeenth-century scientific world view (Michael Mahoney, Princeton University), and discussion of the women writers and artists Clarinda, Amarilis, Jesusa Sánchez, Josefa de Ayala, and Sor Juana. Space does not permit a detailed description of master classes by Andrew Laurence King (harp, role of the continuo), Richard Savino (Luís Milán, the vihuela), John Dornenburg (Diego Ortíz), Aston Magna director Richard Stepner (the chaconne), Emilio Moreno (the Baroque violin in Spain), Paul Hillier (songs of Luís de Milán), Sally Sanford (Cerrone's influential El Melopeo , written in Spain), Ray Erickson (keyboard improvisation), and others. Particularly memorable concerts included vocal performances by Paul Hillier and Andrea Fullington, an evening of eighteenth-century harpsichord music by harpsichordist Lionel Party, Donald Joyce's thoughtfully conceived performance of Spanish and Mexican organ music from the Catedral Metropolitana, and Richard Savino's sensitive vihuela playing. Friendly and animated conversation about all these events proved a meaningful part of the program as well; indeed, the most apt summation of the Aston Magna spirit was offered by Ray Erickson, who as master of ceremonies at the closing event, offered the following succinct but eloquent toast: "To knowledge, to wisdom, to the art of music--to a good time!"
Participants came away from Aston Magna with considerable intellectual booty: material for several courses, addresses of new friends and professional acquaintances, the assurance (often elusive) that others believe Hispanic music to be a viable field of study, and fresh impetus for new research. Particularly enlightening were insights gained from the many discussions between university professors and high school teachers, for awareness of the challenges unique to the secondary level and how these relate to college teaching can only enhance higher education. Given current concern over the educational system in the United States one would imagine that encounters like the Aston Magna Academy would win the support of policy makers in Washington. But the one sour note in the whole event was uncertainty over the fate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, on which the Academy must rely. One can only hope that supporters of Aston Magna and similar educational programs will make their views known as vociferously as possible to those who have been entrusted to listen.

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