PREMIO DE MUSICOLOGIA SAMUEL CLARO VALDES 2000

PRESENTACION
El Instituto de Música de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (IMUC), ha convocado a concurso para la adjudicación del Premio de Musicología Samuel Claro Valdés 2000. Este premio está destinado a distinguir monografías inéditas sobre música, músicos y audiencias en América Latina, considerando toda expresión musical y todo período histórico.

VEREDICTO
El Jurado de la segunda versión del Premio, se reunió en el Instituto de Música de la Universidad Católica el 28 de Septiembre de 2000 y confrontó sus evaluaciones realizadas en forma independiente con tres meses de antelación, discutiendo las virtudes y defectos de cada trabajo recibido.  Los juicios resultaron altamente coincidentes, lo que facilitó la decisión del tribunal, que fue tomada en forma unánime, otorgando el Premio de Musicología Samuel Claro Valdés 2000 a la monografía "Zuola, criollismo, nacionalismo y musicología" de Bernardo Illari, de Argentina. El Premio consiste en un Diploma de honor, U$ 2000, y la publicación del texto en la Revista Resonancias del Instituto de Música de la Universidad Católica de Chile número 7, que saldrá a circulación en noviembre de este año.

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Historia General de Guatemala

     The 'Historia General de Guatemala' is a six-volume, over 5000 page history of the country, divided into six of its main historical periods. These range from the pre-Hispanic Mayan to the present time, and chapters have been written by 160 specialists of different backgrounds and nationalities. 
     In 1991, since I had contributed the chapters on music for each of the six volumes, I was asked by the editors of that monumental initiative --the 'Asociación de Amigos del País' ('Society of Friends of Guatemala', established as early as 1794!)-- to organise and conduct a concert of Guatemalan sixteenth- and eighteenth- century music that was attended by the most important leaders of the country. The concert was very successful, and so the editors and myself came up with the idea to provide each one of the volumes with a CD that would give the readers a dimension of depth in their perception of each one of the historical periods. 
        In 1992 we did volume III (1701-1821), titled 'Capilla Musical', with a number of villancicos and some string 'tocatas', which I had transcribed from the original manuscripts, and which we recorded in extremely hard conditions. In 1993 followed vol. IV (1821-98) titled 'La Sociedad Filarmónica', with José Eulalio Samayoa's Seventh Symphony, one of his Masses, a set of violin & orchestra variations by José Escolástico Andrino, and some chamber pieces by Samayoa, Andrino, and Sáenz. 1995 followed vol. II 'Coros de Catedral', with cathedral polyphony by Pedro Bermúdez, Hernando Franco, and Gaspar Fernandez, along with some anonymous pieces and songs from the missions. These first three CDs we did with my Ensemble Millennium, which I had founded in 1992 with my wife, the Argentine singer Cristina Altamira. 
        In 1997 we recorded vol. V with orchestra, marimba, band, chorus, and piano music from 1898-1945 on 'Ecos de antaño'. And in 1999 I did vol. VI, 'Senderos' ('Paths: From the Revolution to Peace'), which is an
anthology of 1945 to the signing of Peace in 1997, beginning with a symphonic band poem celebrating the 1944 Guatemalan Revolution, and concluding with my own 'Obertura para un nuevo milenio' ('Ouverture for a New Millennium'), for orchestra.
         Vol. I, also 1999, was of course a challenge: no scores extant, only references to extrapolate from: iconography, references by the first conquerors and missionaries, and linguistic and ethnomusical remnants. So I decided to compose an electroacoustical picture of what the music may have been, including chants collected in the jungle some thirty years ago, and then completed the album with present-day music collected in the field. 
     Vol. VII, titled 'Milenio' ('Millennium') is a 'best of' type of album, a selection of one or two works or pieces from each of the previous volumes. This is the one I intend to send you, to give you a general idea of musical evolution during Guatemalan history from the Mayan Pre-Classic to the present. In all of the recordings I employed only Guatemalan musicians (with the exception of my wife Cristina Altamira, who sang all the mezzo parts and solos), so they would become aware of their own past musical glory, and
because it seemed to make sense. 
        The series was introduced as such to the public at a concert I conducted in the crammed full National Theatre on August 19, 1999. The CDs are on no commercial label--a well kept secret indeed--but are only sold by the 'Asociación de Amigos del País' with or without the handsome history books.
        So, that's the story of the first series on Guatemalan music history.

Dr. Dieter Lehnhoff
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NEW PUBLICATION RELEASED

Professor Paul Murphy has kindly permitted the publication of the information that follows.  Copies of his newly-published volume will be available at the National Meeting in Toronot.  Special thanks to Professor Murphy for sharing this information with the Study Group.  This is indeed an important new publication.

José de Torres's Treatise of 1736, Paul Murphy, ed., Indiana University Press, 2000.

     In the year 1700 José de Torres y Martínez Bravo opened a print shop in Madrid called La Imprenta de Música.  It became the first Spanish publishing house devoted entirely to music printing and was guaranteed success through Torres's receipt of a royal license granting him the exclusive right to publish all Spanish works relating to music for a period of ten years.ⁱ   An especially important work published at La Imprenta de Música in the first years of the eighteenth century was Torres's own thoroughbass manual for keyboard instruments and harp. 
     The first edition appeared in 1702 with the title Reglas de acompañar en órgano, clavicordio, y harpa con sólo saber cantar la parte o un baxo en canto figurado.  The work contains three separate tratados (treatises), each of which pertains to a particular component of thoroughbass instruction: rudiments, accompaniment with consonant chords, and accompaniment with tied and untied dissonant chords.  In the first edition of the treatise Torres uses open-score 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 keyboard notation printed typographically on two staves.  All of the open-score examples from the first edition are rewritten in keyboard notation: 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. 
     Although the practice of thoroughbass accompaniment was common in Spanish theater, dance, and cathedral music from the first part of the seventeenth century, no keyboard thoroughbass treatise had been published in Spain before that of Torres.  However, instruction in the art of deriving a guitar accompaniment from a bass line had appeared in Spain long before Reglas generales; in fact, it had been taught in Spanish guitar tutorials for more than one hundred years earlier.ⁱⁱ   Nevertheless, Reglas generales  is the first work in Spain to deal specifically and completely with thoroughbass accompaniment at the keyboard.  Perhaps 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 perspective that, unlike the guitar treatises of the same period, considers chord inversion and voice-leading in the realization of the bass; this is the approach found in most of the influential eighteenth-century thorough-bass treatises from Italy, France, and Germany. 
     The instruction found in Reglas generales is carefully limited to what the beginning musician must know when learning thoroughbass accompaniment. Torres's discussions are, in the context of early-eighteenth century Spanish theory, carried out with remarkable efficiency and brevity.  Given the focus of his treatise, Torres naturally dem-onstrates a concern for harmony rather than counterpoint.  Whereas most theorists of the period devote chapters, sections, and entire works to the art of counterpoint, Torres avoids the subject altogether; significantly, the term contrapunto appears nowhere in Reglas generales.  Even with his interest in harmony, Torres has no need to invoke acoustical and mathematical discussions of harmony–a feature common in Spanish theoretical treatises throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  His interest, rather, lies in extracting harmonies from the melodic movements of the bass.  In this regard, Torres can be considered to be among the most modern of the early eighteenth-century theorists of Spain, and can also be included in the larger body of European "thoroughbass theorists" of the first half of the eighteenth century. 
     Torres's second edition (1736) is presented here primarily because of its expanded instruction, the historical sig-nificance of its keyboard notation in two staves, and the inclusion of a fourth tratado explaining the method of accompanying according to the Italian style.  The text of the first, second, and third tratados in the 1736 edition essentially reproduces that presented in 1702, although the wide, two-column format of the second edition contrasts with the narrow one-column format of the first edition.  Many of the first edition's numerous short chapters, however, are grouped together and treated under subheadings of larger chapters that comprise several pages in the second edition.  Approximately four-fifths of the text found in the second edition is drawn directly from the first. 
     Given that during the thirty-four years between the publication of the two editions Torres had not significantly revised his theoretical orientation regarding accompaniment in the estilo riguroso de España, the second publication date of Reglas generales may obscure its historical significance.  The first three tratados first presented by Torres in 1702, predate many of the most influential pre-Rameau eighteenth-century thoroughbass treatises.

ⁱⁱ The earliest surviving copy of Juan Carlos Amat's Guitarra española presents arabic numerals used as chord symbols.  An original edition, printed in Lérida in 1626 and now preserved in the Newberry Library, reproduces both the printing license, granted by the Bishop of Barcelona and dated 5 July 1596, and a dedicatory letter by Amat dated 10 August 1596, thus suggesting that the book–and the arabic numerals–had been printed for the first time that year.   The first printed evidence of a figured bass notation that presents arabic numerals used to indicate intervals above the bass appears in Gaspar Sanz's engraved Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra española of 1674, in which the realizations are notated in guitar tablature.  For a detailed discussion of Amat's treatise see Thomas Christensen, “The Spanish Baroque Guitar and Seventeenth-Century Triadic Theory,” Journal of Music Theory 36, no. 1 (1992): 1-42.