Iberia & America Music of 6th-Century Spain and New Spain BLUE HERON Iberia & America Scott Metcalfe, director & organ I Pange lingua gloriosi Lydia Heather Knutson Michael Barrett with verses , 3 & 5: metrical chant from Toledo Cantoral (c. 544) Carol Schlaikjer Allen Combs Marilyn Boenau, bajón verses 2 & 4: Francisco Guerrero (528–99) Aaron Sheehan Olav Chris Henriksen, vihuela verse 6: Juan Urrede (fl. later 5th century); quinta vox by Cristóbal de Morales (c. 500–53) Daniela Tošić Mark Sprinkle Takaaki Masuko, percussion II Martin Near Glenn Billingsley Et factum est postquam · Morales Paul Guttry (Lamentations, first lesson at Matins on Holy Thursday) III Salté de los cielos · Gaspar Fernandes (c. 570–629) · LK MN AS OCH TM Iberia & America: Music of 6th-Century Spain and New Spain Vaya la princesa · Fernandes · coplas CS Saturday, April 6, 2005 at 8 pm & Sunday, April 7, 2005 at 3 pm First Church in Cambridge, Congregational IV Conditor alme siderum Saturday’s concert is being recorded for future broadcast on WGBH, 89.7 FM. chant verses , 3 & 5: Toledo Cantoral verses 2, 4 & 6: Guerrero upcoming events intermission A benefit for Blue Heron: Les chansons du printemps V An evening of 5th-century French songs for May Day and other days, by Dufay, Binchois, Busnoys, De los álamos vengo, madre · Juan Vásquez (c. 50–c. 560) · LK DT AC GB OCH and others, with Lydia Knutson, Aaron Sheehan, Mark Sprinkle, and Paul Guttry, voices, and Scott Por mi vida, madre · Vásquez · CS DT MB PG OCH Metcalfe, vielle. Hors d’oeuvres, music, and conversation about chansons, performance practice, Pues que no puedo olvidarte · Ginés de Morata (fl. 6th century) · LK DT AC OCH TM and more. VI Saturday, April 30, 2005, from 5 until about 7:5 Fantasia que contrahaze la Harpa · Alonso Mudarra (ca. 50–580) · vihuela solo, OCH The French Library, 53 Marlborough Street, Boston Falalalán, falalalera · Anonymous · MN AS MB PG OCH TM Seating is limited. Tickets are available at the door today, or contact us Dime robadora · Anonymous · LK CS MS OCH at (67) 924-750 or [email protected]. VII Blue Heron at the Boston Early Music Festival: a festive late-night concert! Fantasia · La Bella Franceschina · Gagliarda Lombarda Music for the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I: Music by Josquin, Isaac, Senfl, and La Rue, from Luys Milán (ca. 500–after 560) · vihuela solo, OCH the repertoire of the Imperial chapel and the songbooks of Marguerite of Austria. VIII Wednesday, June 5, 2005, at p.m. Claros y frescos ríos · Anonymous · MN DT AC St. Cecilia’s Parish, 8 Belvidere Street, Boston Si la noche · Anonymous · AS MS PG For more information or to order tickets, contact the Boston Early Music Festival IX at (67) 868-BEMF, or visit www.bemf.org. Salve regina a 5 · Hernando Franco (532–85) NOTES In the second decade of what European Chris- elements mixed in. Nor was Christianity itself, sical styles, themselves a hybrid of European and and finally moving to Mexico City in 575, where tians counted as the sixteenth century, a civilisa- we ought to remember, native to Europe, but American characteristics. We are very pleased to he was maestro de capilla at the Cathedral until tion with large and breathtakingly beautiful cities, of Middle Eastern origin, spread across the Old present the U.S. premiere of a set of Lamentations his death in 585. Copied into choirbooks in both extensive trade networks, ancient and sophisti- World by Romans. It was transmitted to Mexico by Cristóbal de Morales. These were recently re- Guatemala City and Puebla, his Salve regina for cated agricultural techniques, a religious system by Christians from a land known variously in the discovered in a badly damaged choirbook in the five voices bears all the hallmarks of Spanish sa- overseen by a specially-trained class of priests, an past as ha-Sefarad or al-Andalus, a land which archives of Toledo Cathedral by Michael Noone cred polyphony—rich sonority, flowing melody, elaborate calendar of somber and spectacular -li its sixteenth-century Christian rulers were at- and have been reconstructed by him based on and emotional intensity—tinged by Franco’s dis- turgical ritual characterized by ornate costumes tempting, in the face of historical reality and a versions in a choirbook in Puebla, Mexico, and in tinctive sense of harmony and dissonance. and music, monumental religious architecture, long tradition of coexistence (however uneasy), an intabulation for vihuela published by Miguel brilliant accomplishments in the arts, a complex to define as a homogeneous, pure, Catholic and Fuenllana in his Orphénica lyra of 554. The two The balance of the program consists of selections political system featuring many interdependent European nation. hymn settings by Francisco Guerrero are also re- from the wonderful repertoire of sixteenth-cen- levels within a heirarchy topped by one supreme cent finds, from a Toledo choirbook which docu- tury Spanish song. By turns comic, swaggering, leader, a tremendously expansive cultural en- The Spaniards brought their own music with them, ments Guerrero’s apprenticeship with Morales in sweet, rhythmically dazzling, and heartbroken, ergy balanced by a tragic sense of the futility of and the Franciscans used it deliberately as a evan- Toledo in the mid-540s. In these hymns the poly- these gems, I think, speak for themselves. human endeavor in the face of divine will, and gelical and catechetical tool. The friars translated phonic verses alternate with the swinging triple a distinct inclination to violence, encountered, the basic texts of the catechism into Nahuatl, the meter of Spanish mensural chant. Finally, a brief word about performance practice. on its eastern shores, a few representatives of a lingua franca of the Aztec dominion, and taught The participation of instruments with voices in surprisingly similar civilisation from far across them to the natives sung to plainchant melodies, Although a number of remarkable works prepared liturgical polyphony took hold in Spain more the waters. Thus did the Aztecs or, as they called or set to indigenous melodies and meters by na- in the sixteenth century by friars collaborating vigorously than elsewhere on the continent (the themselves, Mexica, discover the Spaniards. In tive masters of song. (It is a tragedy that none of with natives document pre-conquest culture, present tendency to exclude instruments entire- August of 52 the Spanish conquistadors, allied this repertoire survives.) With their own musi- these scholars seem never to have attempted to ly from Renaissance polyphony is, in any case, to the many native peoples who detested the cal-religious traditions forcibly suppressed, the notate the actual sounds of native music, and so something of an exaggerated reaction against Mexica and their domination in Mesoamerica, Indians applied their musical creativity and skills we do not have today anything that would permit the indiscriminate inclinations of a generation won a military victory at horrendous cost, the to European music as singers, players, dancers, us to reconstruct Mexica music-making before or so ago). This practice flourished on Mexican Mexica tlatoani or chief speaker, Cuauhtemoc, composers, and instrument makers. They found the Spaniards arrived. Nor, indeed, do we know at soil, where polyphony in the 530s seems to have surrendering only after months of seige, famine, in the new type of music something that satisfied present all that much specific about music in the been accompanied by trumpets, shawms, flutes, and pestilence, by which point seven-eighths of them, even as they discovered, or created, within first decades of New Spain. But church archives in drums, and bells, at least on occasions like Cor- the great city of Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco had been the imposed religion, a locus for their own ec- Mexico and Guatemala are full of both sixteenth- pus Christi processions. There is no question that systematically leveled by the Spaniards. Within static spirituality. In the process they transformed century European prints and slightly later copies instruments took part in secular music-making, a few years the first Franciscan friars arrived to music, religion, and the Spanish culture that as- of sixteenth-century repertoire, including large although here we are making some informed undertake what they understood to be a vital step pired to replace their own. amounts of music by Morales and Guerrero, the guesses about precisely how. Our use of organ, towards the inauguration of a millenial Christian preeminent Spanish composers of the era, along- bajón—an instrument found in the closet of paradise on earth, the conversion to their “True This program casts a glimpse at the riches of six- side the works of a few European musicians who virtually every church in Spain from the early Faith” of the entire population of what was to teenth-century musical life in Spanish-speaking emigrated to America. The earliest of these of real decades of the century onwards—vihuela, and them a New World. lands on both sides of the Atlantic. We sample sa- distinction was Hernando Franco, a contempo- percussion is meant to convey something of the cred and secular music, including two sacred but rary of Guerrero’s. Franco was born in Galizuela colorful sound world this music originally inhab- This is the beginning of the modern nation of non-liturgical villancicos by a Portuguese immi- de la Serena, near Badajoz, in 532. He is recorded ited. Mexico, a land whose intense religiosity, like ev- grant to America, Gaspar Fernandes, whose dash- as a choirboy at Segovia Cathedral in 546, and erything