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"La circulación de música y músicos en la Europa mediterránea (ss. XVI-XVII)," in Artigrama, Revista del Departmento de Historia del Arte de la Universidad de Zaragoza, no. 12 (1996-97), 11-312. Review by Paul R. Laird, University of Kansas An international villancico conference, "Secular Genres in Sacred Contexts?: The Villancico and the Cantata in the Iberian World, 1400-1800," took place from 1-4 July 1998 in London (see report below). The conference demonstrated many things, among them the growing importance of the Universidad de Zaragoza as a Spanish musicological center. This impression is enhanced by this issue of Artigrama, an attractively produced journal from the university's Departamento de Historia del Arte. The head of the journal's editorial committee is María Isabel Alvaro Zamora. She notes in her "Presentación" the journal's tradition of including a monographic section on a single topic; previous such sections have been on restoration, museums, and film. Here are collected fifteen essays on the circulation of music and musicians in Mediterranean Europe between 1400 and 1800. The remainder of the volume includes thirty-two other articles and summaries on aspects of the history of art in Zaragoza and the surrounding region. That the Departamento de Historia del Arte produces such a volume every two years (before 1989 it was an annual) is a testament to extremely active scholarship. In the area of music history a major personality at the Universidad de Zaragoza is Juan José Carreras, whose work and that of his students was crucial in this issue of Artigrama, and in the recent villancico conference. The "Introducción" to the monograph was written by Carreras and José Máximo Leza, profesor ayudante at the Universidad de Salamanca. Together, they are listed as the monograph's coordinadores científicos. Carreras and Leza name as the models for this study, among others, Iain Fenlon's roundtable "Produzione e distribuzione di musica nella società europea del XVI e XVII secolo" at the 1987 International Musicological Society congress in Bologna and the European Science Foundation's project entitled "Musical Institutions and the Circulation of Music and Musicians in Europe 1600-1900." Applying these large themes to Iberian music between 1400 and 1800, Carreras and Leza introduce the volume's most important topics, such as musical relations between Spain and Italy. Scholarship represented in the monograph emanated from several different symposia and projects involving the Universidad de Zaragoza, the Fundación Santa Teresa in Avila, the Department of Music of Royal Holloway College, University of London, and the Italian scholars Dinko Fabris, Lorenzo Biancoli, and Anna L. Belina. The volume's contents reflect a healthy mixture of contributions by both well-known scholars and those new to the field. Tess Knighton's essay on "Transmisión, difusión y recepción de la polifonía franco-neerlandesa en el reino de Aragón a principios del siglo XVI" examines the use of Franco-Netherlandish polyphonic works in Aragonese institutions. Her specific focus is how works by Ockeghem, Josquin, and Compère might have reached Zaragoza and Tarazona Cathedrals, and how the music was used during the sixteenth century. The importance of this repertory in Spain has been known for years, but Knighton provides very specific information, including fascinating description of the Iberian reception of Compère's "Ave Maria." Silvia Castelli, a doctoral student at the University of Florence, contributed the brief "Las relaciones musicales entre el Gran Ducado de Toscana y la corte española a finales del siglo XVI (1597)," describing a gift of musical instruments and stage designs to the future Philip III. Her primary sources are ambassadorial dispatches that include engrossing political and aesthetic details. The theme of Italian influence on the Iberian peninsula continues with "Entre Nápoles, Barcelona, y Viena. Nuevos documentos sobre la circulación de músicos a principios del siglo XVIII" by Andrea Sommer-Mathis of the Kommission für Theatergeschichte in Vienna. From extensive archival work, Sommer-Mathis synthesized a fascinating account of prominent Italian and Austrian musicians working at Archduke Charles' court in Barcelona between 1705 and 1713. To this article is appended a list of musical and theatrical productions in Barcelona between 1705 and 1711 prepared by Daniele Lipp. "La formación de la orquesta de la Real Cámara en la corte madrileña de Carlos IV" by Teresa Cascudo, a doctoral student at the Universidad de Zaragoza, includes useful consideration of the instrumentalists of the Royal Chamber between 1789 and 1808, illuminating what it meant to be a royal musician during the period. There are no subdivisions of articles in the music section of Artigrama, but the next six essays deal with theater music and Italian musical influence in Spain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Juan José Carreras wrote "<<Terminare a schiaffoni>>: La primera compañía de ópera italiana en Madrid (1738/39)," a detailed account of this important event in the history of Spanish opera. Spanish composers had written many Italianate operas in Madrid, but this was the first Italian opera company to actually perform in the capital. José Máximo Leza fills in more Spanish operatic history in his "Francesco Corradini y la introducción de la ópera en los teatros comerciales de Madrid (1731-1749)," focusing on the first of several eighteenth-century Italian musicians to dominate Madrid's musical life. Gian Giacomo Stiffoni, another doctoral student at Zaragoza, wrote a description of a later Italian musician in Spain in "La música teatral de Nicolò Conforto (Nápoles, 1718 - Aranjuez, 1793). El estado de la investigación." Andrea Bombi, profesor asociado at the Universidad de Valencia, describes the Valencian celebration of the tercentenary of San Vincente Ferrer's canonization in 1755 in "Música italiana en Valencia en el siglo XVIII." The celebration's specific musical details are known, and Bombi places them in the context of Italian music in Valencia. Dinko Fabris, professor at the Conservatorio di Musica "Niccolò Piccini" in Bari, Italy, offers "España y los españoles en el teatro napolitano del siglo XVII," a consideration of the comedia dell'arte character "Capitano Spagnuolo," especially in the 1673 Neapolitan melodrama Il Disperato innocente by Francesco Antonio Boerio. Amparo Martínez Herranz, a profesora asociada at the Universidad de Zaragoza interested in architecture of theaters, cabarets, and related institutions, wrote "La Casa de Farsas del Hospital de Nuestra Señora de Gracia en Zaragoza (1590-1778). De corral de comedias a teatro a la italiana." She traces the history of a theater built by the Hospital to finance its activities. The last five articles of the monograph concern church music. Alvaro Torrente, Research Fellow at Royal Holloway College, contributed "Cuestiones en torno a la circulación de los músicos catedralicios en la España moderna." While admitting that little really is known about the hierarchy of religious musical chapels, Torrente shows that the chapel in Salamanca, although regional, was important because there was also a chair of music at the Universidad de Salamanca. "<<Sólo Madrid es corte>>. Villancicos de las Capillas Reales de Carlos II en la Catedral de Segovia" is by Pablo-L. Rodríguez, another doctoral student at the Universidad de Zaragoza. Rodríguez analyzes the use of villancico texts from Toledo and Madrid by Miguel de Irízar, the Segovian maestro de capilla from 1671-1684, providing direct evidence of the importance of Madrid's royal institutions in determining Spanish musical taste. The article also includes a small musical appendix. Miguel Angel Marín, a graduate student in music at Royal Holloway College, also looks at dissemination in his "<<A copiar la pureza>>. Música procedente de Madrid en la Catedral de Jaca." Marín analyzes a group of nineteen compositions that came from Madrid, showing how an archive was assembled. His appendices include manuscript facsimiles and watermarks. Yet another doctoral student at Zaragoza, Giulia Anna Romana Veneziano, contributed "Un corpus de cantatas napolitanas del siglo XVIII en Zaragoza: problemas de difusión del repertorio italiano en España." She looks at a group of cantatas by Niccolò Porpora and Leonardo Vinci in a Zaragozan archive, symboling the constant interchange between Italy and Spain. The appendix includes manuscript descriptions and musical examples. "<<Y que toque el Abuè>>. Una aproximación a los oboístas en el entorno eclesiástico español del siglo XVIII" is by Zaragoza doctoral student Joseba-Endika Berrocal Cebrián. She traces the oboe's introduction into Spanish religious chapels, part of the Italian musical influence. The article includes a number of fascinating illustrations. Artigrama is a paperback and 752 pages in length, but its binding appears meant for the long haul. Illustrations are produced clearly and the text is readable. Abstracts are provided in Spanish and English; some of the English versions could have been proofread better. All articles are worthwhile, including some excellent work by graduate students. This is an important collection for anyone interested in Spanish music before 1800. It can be obtained from the Departamento de Historia del Arte, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Zaragoza, Pedro Cerbuna, no. 12, 50009 - Zaragoza, or fax at 011-34-7-676 2114.
Paul Murphy An annotated Spanish/English edition of José de Torres's Reglas generales (1736) is to be published in the coming year by Indiana University Press. Torres's treatise, translated and edited by Paul Murphy, Assistant Professor at Eastern New Mexico University, first appeared in 1702 with the title Reglas de acompañar en órgano, clavicordio, y harpa con solo saber cantar la parte o un baxo en canto figurado. It comprises three sections, which Torres calls tratados (treatises), and thereby divides thoroughbass instruction into the subjects of rudiments, accompaniment with consonant chords, and accompaniment with tied and untied dissonant chords. In this first edition Torres uses scored realizations of figured basses to explain the method for deriving accompaniments from unfigured basses. A second, revised edition, which adds a fourth tratado to explain the method for accompanying in the Italian style, was issued in 1736. The second edition not only exhibits a reformatted and enlarged text, but contains the first use in Spain of two-stave keyboard notation. All of the scored examples from the first edition are rewritten, typographically, in keyboard notation, i.e., one note for the left hand is written in the bass clef and three notes for the right hand are written in either the soprano or the treble clef, with both staves connected by a brace. The thoroughbass theory presented in the first three tratados of the second edition of Reglas generales was first presented by Torres in 1702, that is, before many of the most influential pre-Rameau eighteenth-century thoroughbass treatises, specifically, Saint-Lambert's Nouveau traité (1707), Gasparini's L'armonico pratico (1st ed., 1708), and Heinichen's Neu erfundene und gründliche Anweisung . . . des General-Basses (1711). Although instruction in the art of deriving an accompaniment from a bass line appeared in Spain long before Torres's treatise with works such as Juan Carlos Amat's Guitarra española (Lérida, 1626), in which arabic numerals are used as chord symbols, and Gaspar Sanz' Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra española (Zaragoza, 1674), in which the realizations are notated in guitar tablature, Reglas generales enjoys the significant distinction of being the first work in Spain to deal specifically and completely with thoroughbass accompaniment at the keyboard. Because of its emphasis on keyboard accompaniment and what Torres describes as the "rigorous Spanish style," this treatise, unlike any that had appeared before it in Spain, approaches thoroughbass from a contrapuntal as well as a harmonic perspective; this is a perspective that, unlike the guitar treatises of the same period, considers chord inversion and voice leading in the realization of the bass. It is also the approach shared by most of the influential eighteenth-century thoroughbass treatises from Italy, France, and Germany. José de Torres y Martínez Bravo (c. 1670-1738) is a remarkable figure in Spain's musical history whose life included service in the Real Capilla de Madrid, a vast output of musical compositions, achievements as a printer and editor, and significant influences as a music "theorist." In more than fifty years of his professional association with the Real Capilla, Torres held the positions of organist (eventually, Organista Principal), rector of the Colegio de Nños Cantóricos, and Maestro de Capilla. Thus, Torres served in the Spanish Real Capilla in several capacities: composer, practicing musician, and instructor of music. Torres's compositions, while occasionally retaining certain features of Spain's prima-prattica tradition, such as identification by modal rubrics, cadential organization according to psalm-tone differentiae, and limited use of paraphrased plainchant cantus firmi, also demonstrate a Baroque conception of harmony and dissonance, and a preference for characteristically Baroque accompanimental ensembles. Through La Imprenta de Música, the printing establishment he founded in Madrid in 1700, Torres made available in Spain an unprecedented number of works, including contemporary Spanish and French compositions, and contemporary and traditional Spanish theoretical treatises. Further, his technological advancements in the way music is printed allowed him to initiate the typographical production of figured basses and the notation of keyboard music in two staves. As a teacher of music, Torres is primarily concerned with practical explanations of musical concepts to aid in thoroughbass instruction. Accordingly, Reglas generales excludes the "ostentación " found in Kircher's and Cerone's theoretical discussions. Nevertheless, he borrows from a diverse group of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Spanish and Italian theorists, including Francisco Correa de Arauxo, Andrés Lorente, Pablo Nassarre, Lorenzo Penna, and Francesco Gasparini. |
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