Improvisation and Polyphony in Colonial Mexico

Home , Hernando Franco, Music of Mexico, Vicente Lusitano

Adam Salmond

Department of Music Research Schulich School of Music McGill University, Montreal

December 2015

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts in Musicology

Table of Contents

Abstract ii

Acknowledgements iv

Introduction v

Chapter 1: Historical Context 1

Chapter 2: Improvisation in Renaissance Europe 23

Chapter 3: Music and the Franciscan Mission 35

Chapter 4: Improvisation at Mexico City Cathedral 58

Chapter 5: Techniques of Improvisation in Mexican Compositions 82

Conclusion 110

Bibliography 116

Abstract

When Spain colonized Mesoamerica, it imported a European musical tradition that grew rapidly in the New World. Previous scholarship has traced the dissemination of composed European polyphony in New Spain, but has overlooked the concomitant emergence of an oral practice of improvising counterpoint. The tradition of improvised counterpoint, especially prominent in Spain, also developed in colonial Mexico. According to the chronicler Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola (1562 – 1631), the conquistadors sang Masses in improvised counterpoint as early as 1519. The Franciscan friar Jacobo de Testera wrote to Charles V in 1533 that the Nahua were learning to improvise in colleges established by missionaries. Finally, the records and legislation of Mexico City Cathedral testify to the practice of improvisation at New Spain’s foremost church. This study traces the development of contrapuntal improvisation in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Mexico, while also re-appraising the role of music in the colonization of New Spain. Chapter 1 begins by providing a historical context and by examining the discussions of music in mid-sixteenth-century Spanish debates over the legitimacy of enslaving Mesoamericans. Constructing an argument against slavery, Testera and the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas (c. 1484 – 1566) both highlighted the Mesoamericans’ mastery of European musical practices (including, in Testera’s case, improvisation) as evidence for their rationality and humanity. In order to provide a musical context for the study, the second chapter explains the tradition of improvisation as it appeared in Spain and the rest of Europe. Its third chapter investigates the musical pedagogy at Franciscan colleges for indigenous youth, and examines the small corpus of sixteenth-century Nahuatl polyphony. Next, this study outlines the evidence for improvisation at Mexico City Cathedral, tracing the appearance of the musical terms contrapunto and fabordón in the cathedral constitution and chapter acts (Chapter 4). The final chapter focuses on works of Hernando Franco (1532 – 1585) and the possibly indigenous composer Juan de Lienas (fl. c. 1617 – 1654), demonstrating the use of improvisatory techniques described by sixteenth-century theorists in their compositions (Chapter 5). The study concludes by offering a new perspective on the narrative of tyrannical Spanish domination (the so-called “Black Legend”) in scholarship on the Spanish Empire, seeking to problematize this narrative by arguing that music restored agency to Mexico’s indigenous peoples.

Résumé

Quand l’Espagne a colonisé la Mésoamérique, elle y a importé une tradition de musique européenne qui s’est rapidement épanouie au Nouveau monde. Les études antérieures sur ce sujet ont retracé la diffusion de la polyphonie européenne composée, mais elles ont négligé l’apparition concurrente d’une pratique orale d’improvisation du contrepoint. Cette tradition de l’improvisation, qui était particulièrement importante en Espagne au XVIe siècle, s’est également développée dans la colonie mexicaine. Selon le chroniqueur Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola (1562 – 1631), les conquistadors chantaient des messes en contrepoint improvisé dès 1519. En 1533, le frère franciscain Jacobo de Testera a écrit à Charles Quint que les Nahuas apprenaient à improviser la musique dans

iii des collèges fondés par les missionnaires. De plus, les archives et la législation de la Cathédrale Métropolitaine de Mexico témoignent de la pratique de l’improvisation dans l’église principale de la Nouvelle-Espagne. Cette étude retrace le développement du contrepoint improvisé au Mexique au XVIe et au début du XVIIe siècle tout en réévaluant le rôle de la musique dans la colonisation de la Nouvelle-Espagne. Le premier chapitre, qui donne le contexte historique, se penche sur les discussions sur la musique dans l’empire espagnol au milieu du XVIe lors des débats sur la légitimité de l’esclavage des Méso-Américains. Dans leurs arguments contre l’esclavage, Testera et le frère dominicain Bartolomé de las Casas (vers 1484 – 1566) ont tous deux invoqué le fait que les Méso-Américains maîtrisaient des pratiques musicales européennes (incluant l’improvisation, selon Testera) comme preuve de leur rationalité et de leur humanité. Pour présenter le contexte musical de cette discussion, le deuxième chapitre explique la tradition de l’improvisation du contrepoint telle qu’elle apparaissait en Espagne et dans les autres pays d’Europe au XVIe siècle. Le troisième chapitre examine la pédagogie musicale des collèges franciscains pour les jeunes autochtones et fournit l’analyse du petit corpus de polyphonie composée et notée en nahuatl au XVIe siècle. Ensuite, le quatrième chapitre présente des preuves de l’improvisation à la Cathédrale Métropolitaine de Mexico en faisant état de termes musicaux comme contrapunto et fabordón dans les actes du chapitre et la constitution de la cathédrale. Le dernier chapitre se penche sur les œuvres d’Hernando Franco (1532 – 1585) et du compositeur probablement autochtone Juan de Lienas (actif vers 1617 – 1654) en montrant l’utilisation des techniques d’improvisation décrites par les théoriciens de la musique au XVIe siècle. Je conclus en proposant un nouveau regard sur le discours du régime tyrannique de la Nouvelle-Espagne (la « Légende noire espagnole ») dans les études sur l’empire espagnol. Je remets en question cette vision en soutenant que la musique a redonné du pouvoir aux peuples autochtones du Mexique.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank first and foremost my supervisor, Julie Cumming, without whose knowledge, guidance, and support this study would not have been possible. This study grew out of a paper I wrote for a seminar at McGill University under Professor Cumming on Renaissance improvisation, and I would also like to thank the other students of that seminar, in particular Rory O’Connor, Alexis Risler, and Catherine Motuz, for their insights. Thanks also to Peter Schubert for his contrapuntal expertise. I am hugely indebted to John Lazos and Zacy Benner for their help with my research in Mexico City. Thanks also to Diane Lehmann Goldman for her advice and assistance in Mexico. Thanks to Salvador Adán Hernández Pech, Ruth Santa Cruz Castillo, Isaac Becerra Ramírez, and the other members of the MUSICAT project of the National Autonomous University of Mexico for their graciousness and help at the archives of Mexico City Cathedral. I would also like to thank José Juan López-Portillo for lending his invaluable expertise on all things New Spain. Thanks to Douglas Kirk and Craig Russell for their insights on Mexican music, and David Kendall for sharing his research on canto figurado. Thanks to Noel O’Regan and the Edinburgh University Renaissance Singers for their encouragement. Thanks to Alejandra Barriales-Bouche for her help with Spanish texts and translation. Finally, I would like to thank everyone who helped make McGill University a home, including many of the above-mentioned, but also Kyle Kaplan, Meg Parker, Emily Hopkins, Kristin Franseen, Tessa MacLean, Rachel Avery, Michael Turabian, Farley Miller, Michael Pecak, Erin Sheedy, Tom Beghin, and many more. This study was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and by the Early Modern Conversions Project of McGill University’s Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas. Any errors or shortcomings are entirely my own.

To Ginny Nixon.

Introduction

For this Hernando Cortés sent another embassy, which arrived in San Juan de Ulúa on Easter Sunday. They went to Teuthille, Moctezuma’s governor in that province, who was joined by Pitalpitoe and a large number of Indians carrying hens, various supplies, and pieces of gold. The governor made three bows to Cortés, who in turn, between the compliments that he made, invited him to remain for the solemnity of Easter. Fray Bartholomé de Olmedo celebrated the solemn mass, and helping the chaplain Juan Díaz were many soldiers with good voices and skilled in the singing of counterpoint. The Indians watched the ceremony and admired all that they saw.1

On the 24th of April 1519, three days after landing on the island of Ulúa in the Gulf of

Mexico, Hernán Cortés and his expedition held a Mass celebrating Easter Sunday.2 The

Mass, officiated by Fray Bartolomé de Olmedo,3 was performed in the presence of the local natives, “in order to awe and convert the indigenous peoples.”4 We will never know exactly how the music of the Mass sounded, but we are given some information by the chronicler Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola (1526-1631), who reports that Olmedo was accompanied by conquistadors “skilled in the singing of counterpoint” (canto de contrapunto). It is difficult to judge the accuracy of Leonardo de Argensola’s account: after all, it was published in 1630, more than a century after the events it describes.

Nevertheless, this phrase canto de contrapunto draws attention to the popularity and ubiquity of a musical practice that will be the focus of this study: the oral improvisation

1 Bartolomé Juan Leonardo de Argensola, Conquista de México (Mexico City: P. Robredo, 1940), 2 Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico: an Essay on the Apostolate and Evangelizing Methods of the Mendicant Orders in New Spain, 1523-1572, trans. Lesley Byrd Simpson (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1966), 17. 3 Ibid., 17. 4 Mark Pedelty, Musical Ritual in Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), p. 39.

vi of Renaissance music. According to Leonardo de Argensola, the music of Olmedo’s

Mass was sung extemporaneously – that is to say, improvised.5

This study begins to trace the exportation from Europe to New Spain of an oral tradition of contrapuntal improvisation, examining in particular the musical practices at

Mexico City Cathedral. In so doing, it reconsiders music’s role in the colonization and conversion of Mexico. Music was used both in the initial military subjugation of the

Mexica, and, more centrally, in the subsequent campaigns of Christianization – what

French historian Robert Ricard has called “the spiritual conquest of Mexico.”6 Not long after the initial conquest of the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlán, Spanish missionaries began establishing schools for the natives with a pedagogical emphasis on music. Cortés himself insisted that indigenous youths attend these schools,7 testifying not only to the importance accorded to music for the New Spanish Church, but also to its role in the entire colonial endeavour. As the first Bishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumárraga, stated to missionaries, music was “an indispensable aid in the process of conversion.”8

A great number of historical documents, both legal and personal, inform us about musical practice in the New World. While we should sometimes be skeptical of their face value contents, it is nevertheless tempting to see the broad history of European musical pedagogy in the New World as a success story, albeit one set against an often gruesome backdrop of colonization. Correspondence between the Spanish monarchs and mendicant friars attests both to the quality of New World musicianship, and to the extreme breadth of musical activity taking place during the first century of colonization. In fact, in 1556

5 On contrapunto and other terminology related to improvisation, see pp. 65-70 of this study. 6 See Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico. 7 Pedelty, Musical Ritual, 49. 8 Quoted as translated in Ibid., 49.

vii the church council felt forced to try to limit the number of indigenous musicians in colonial Mexico.9

But before making too much of music as a vehicle for inclusion, it is important to note that the New Spanish government grew decreasingly tolerant of indigenous musical influence over the course of the century. Pedro de Gante, one of the first Franciscans in

New Spain, sought to integrate Nahua song and dance into worship at the San Francisco monastery in Mexico City.10 Robert Stevenson argues that the vast majority of church musicians in Mexico were indigenous even as late as 1576.11 But those same 1556 ordinances limiting the number of indigenous musicians also restricted their right to dance, and banned the use of indigenous-sounding instruments like the flute in church services in favour of the organ.12 By 1592, Stevenson writes, the cathedral in Puebla allowed only “youths born of Spanish parents” into the choir.13 As Jésus Estrada and

Mark Pedelty speculate, “the mission of the church had changed from spiritual conquest to the maintenance of a well-established religious base.”14

This study is indebted to a long tradition of scholarship on music in New Spain.

Robert Stevenson and, more recently, Javier Marín López have written seminal works on the music of Mexico. Diane Lehmann Goldman’s dissertation on the Matins Ceremony at

Mexico City Cathedral touches briefly on the practice of improvisation, but her focus extends more broadly into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Mark Brill in his

9 Robert Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), 167-168. 10 Lorenzo Candelaria, “Bernardino de Sahagún’s Psalmodia Christiana: A Catholic Songbook from Sixteenth Century New Spain, Journal of the American Musicological Society 67, no. 3 (2014): 634. 11 Robert Stevenson, Music in Mexico (New York: Thomas Cromwell and Company, 1952), 80. 12 Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 168. 13 Stevenson, Music in Mexico, 86. 14 Pedelty, Musical Ritual, 52

viii dissertation links his musical discussion to questions of identity for both Spanish and

Native residents of the New World, but his analysis centres on Oaxaca Cathedral. On the other hand, Mark Pedelty and Kristin Dutcher Mann have written about music more broadly in the context of Spanish colonization. Scholars such as Ricard, Charles Gibson,

Lewis Hanke, Anthony Pagden and Luis Weckmann document the general history of

New Spain, while Samuel Y. Edgerton and Jaime Lara examine more closely the intersection of cultural and artistic exchanges with conversion.

A considerable amount of scholarship has thus been written about the musical history of New Spain. Yet technically detailed examinations of Mexican music often overlook its colonial implications, while Pedelty and Mann’s discussions of music’s cultural and political role in Mexico do not extend to the “notes themselves.” More can be done to bridge the gap between these two valuable topics of enquiry. Consequently, while my main purpose is to provide further technical insight into musical practices in sixteenth-century Mexico, I begin by considering the significance of this discussion within the broader context of colonial history.

Chapter 1 provides an historical overview of New Spain and highlights the role of music in the colonial encounter, looking especially at mid-century debates over the legitimacy of Mesoamerican slavery. Chapter 2 provides a musical context for this study by examining the tradition of improvised counterpoint in Spain and Europe. Chapter 3 looks at music in the sixteenth century missions and the musical pedagogy at Franciscan colleges in New Spain. Chapter 4 outlines the written evidence for improvisation at

Mexico City Cathedral. Finally, Chapter 5 looks for traces of this improvisation in surviving compositions from Mexico City.

A Note on Terminology

The term “Aztec” for the peoples of the Valley of Mexico began appearing in writings in the nineteenth century, and was probably derived from the name of their mythical homeland, Aztlán.15 In Nahuatl, the lingua franca of the Valley of Mexico by the sixteenth century, the Aztecs called themselves the “Mexica,” and I will use this term when speaking of their empire. As Edgerton describes, however, some peoples who spoke Nahuatl remained independent from the Mexica, such as in Tlaxcala. I will use the term “Nahua” to designate all native speakers of the Nahuatl language,16 and the term

“Mesoamerican” to designate all native peoples of New Spain, including those who did not speak Nahuatl such as the Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Otomí.17 Finally, many writers and chroniclers from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries use the Spanish term “indio” when referring to the native peoples of Mesoamerica. I will translate this term to “Indian” whenever quoting these authors.

15 Michael E. Smith, “The Aztlan Migrations of the Nahuatl Chronicles: Myth or History?” Ethnohistory 31, no. 3 (1984): 153. 16 Samuel Y. Edgerton and Jorge Pérez de Lara, Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 8. 17 Ibid., 9.

Chapter I: Historical Backgrounds

Overview

The historical background to my discussion of musical improvisation divides into three sections. In the first, I briefly discuss the initial encounter between the Spanish and the

Mexica, and consider the role of music in the conflicts between them, which culminated in the fall of Tenochtitlán in 1521. In the second section I provide an account of Spanish colonization in the aftermath of these battles. Finally, in my third section I conclude by suggesting two ways in which music embroiled itself in larger issues of colonialism and cultural exchange in sixteenth-century New Spain.

I. Encounter and Conquest

First Contact

The events leading up to Cortés’ expeditions in New Spain can be traced back at least a quarter-century before he arrived. Explorers had been travelling to the New World under the Spanish crown since Christopher Columbus’s discovery in 1492, when he undertook a journey to discover a western passage to the Orient. In 1493 Pope Alexander VI issued

Bulls of Donation granting the Castilian monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella sovereignty over, as Anthony Pagden describes, “all the lands they might discover in the Atlantic not

2 previously occupied by a Christian prince.”18 As a consequence of this bull, the Spanish kings came to serve as patrons of the church in New Spain, and were the beneficiaries of the tithes they collected. On the other hand, they were obligated to financially support ecclesiastical institutions and missionary work in the New World.19

Scholars such as Lewis Hanke have highlighted the “uneasy partnership” between the conquistadors and the church in New Spain,20 but it is worth noting that the legal basis of the conquest depended on the Christianization of the indigenous peoples. As the conquistador Diego Velázquez instructed Cortés: “bear in mind from the beginning that the first aim of your expedition is to serve God and spread the Christian Faith.”21

Throughout the sixteenth century, a series of vitriolic debates would take place both in the New World and in Spanish intellectual and political circles over how the Spanish should obey this imperative.

The Mexica Empire that Cortés and his expedition encountered was itself a conquering power, having taken over the central valley of Mexico in 1428.22 They controlled a territory almost as large as Spain, and with a population three times as large.23 Over one million people lived in the central valley when Cortés arrived, with almost two hundred thousand of those in the capital city of Tenochtitlán.24 As Edgerton points out, until the 1570s when disease and warfare wiped out more than three quarters

18 Anthony Pagden, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), 14. 19 John Frederick Schwaller, The Church and Clergy in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), 2-3. 20 Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1959), 10. 21 Quoted as translated in Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest, 16. 22 Pedelty, Musical Ritual, 5. 23 Edgerton and Lara, Theatres of Conversion, 8. 24 Pedelty, Musical Ritual, 6.

3 of Mesoamericans, Spanish immigrants numbered less than one tenth of a percent of the total population.25

Mexica society was strongly hierarchical. Moctezuma II ruled as emperor, but communities also had local governors, called tlatoque. As Gibson notes, this pre-existing social structure aided the Spanish in establishing their own administration. For example, they were able to set up district capitals (cabeceras) in towns where tlatoque lived.26

Moreover, early missionaries could specifically target Mexica leaders for conversion, with the expectation that the rest would follow suit.27 In contrast, missionary efforts in less hierarchical societies in the north were far less successful.28

Music and Warfare

Leonardo de Argensola’s account highlights the musical prowess of some of Cortés’s soldiers, but Cortés also brought professional musicians with him to the New World, and made use of them to impress the Mexica during his initial nonviolent sojourn in

Tenochtitlán.29 Disastrously, one failed campaign between 1524 and 1526 in Honduras to capture the rebellious conquistador Cristóbal de Olid saw four of the five instrumentalists get eaten by the rest of the company.30 Likewise, the Mexica employed dancers and

25 Edgerton and Lara, Theatres of Conversion, 6. 26 Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule (Stanford, CA: University of California Press, 1964), 33-34. 27 Ibid., 102. 28 Pedelty, Musical Ritual, 50. A full account of the history and culture of Mesoamerican peoples before European contact goes well beyond the scope of this project, but interested readers are encouraged to consult the work of scholars such as Miguel Léon-Portilla, Elizabeth Hill Boone, Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, and David L. Carrasco. 29 Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 154 30 Ibid., 222-223.

4 musicians to awe the Spanish. However, relations between the Spanish and the Mexica turned violent on the 30th of June 1520, when the conquistador Pedro de Alvarado interpreted a religious ritual as a declaration of aggression and attacked the participating

Mexica musicians.31

Music and sound took on military functions in the battles between the Spanish and the Mexica. As Mann records, when the conquistadors claimed new territory,

“volleys from Spanish guns rang out in chorus with ritual speech and song.”32 Mexica priests encouraged their soldiers with drums, while Cortés affixed bells to his horses to make them more intimidating.33 As Robert Stevenson comments, many of the earliest assessments of Mexica music are found in accounts of war.34 Stevenson cites a passage from the conquistador and chronicler Bernal Díaz:

As we retreated we heard peals of sound from the great cu where the idols of Uichilobos and Tezcatepuca were. They were beating a drum that had a most sorrowful sound, like an instrument of demons, and could be heard from two leagues away. With it were tambourines, conch shells, horns, and whistles. At that moment, as we learned later, they were offering the hearts and blood of ten of our companions to their idols.35

Stevenson cautions not to try to glean much from these appraisals, pointing out that the

Spanish could not have been objective in the midst of battle.36 However, this idea of

31 Pedelty, Musical Ritual, 11-12. 32 Kristen Dutcher Mann, The Power of Song: Music and Dance in the Mission Communities of Northern New Spain, 1590-1810 (Stanford & Berkeley, CA: Stanford University Press and the Academy of American Franciscan History, 2010), 71. 33 Luis Weckmann, The Medieval Heritage of Mexico, trans. Frances M. López-Morillas (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), 96. 34 Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 13. 35 Bernal Díaz, The True Story of the Conquest of Mexico, trans. and ed. Albert Idell (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1957), 364. 36 Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 15.

5 music as a military tool re-emerged among some members of the Hispanic Church in

Mexico, as I will discuss further on.

II. Conversion and Colonization

Mexican Society and Governance Post-Conquest

As Weckmann writes, the original discoveries of Columbus, viz. the Antilles, were integrated into the Kingdom of Castile. At the same time, the entire Spanish colonial enterprise was understood to be under the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles

V, the head of the universal Respublica Christiana.37 In Mexico, the Emperor was represented by a viceroy; the first, Antonio de Mendoza, arrived in 1535.38 In Spain,

Charles V also created a Council of the Indies in 1524 to advise him and to act as a supreme court for the colonies, and created a series of tribunals in New Spain called

Royal Audiencias.39 However, the Spanish formally recognized the existence of two distinct republics in the New World, one for the Europeans and one for the natives, and officially created a separate indigenous tribunal in 1592.40 As Marín López notes, this legal separation of Spanish and natives was often reflected in the demographic

37 Weckmann, The Medieval Heritage, 329. 38 Edgerton and Lara, Theatres of Conversion, 21. 39 Weckmann, The Medieval Heritage, 336-337. 40 David Tavárez, The Invisible War: Indigenous Devotions, Discipline and Dissent in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 63.

6 distribution of the colonies, with Spanish living at the centres of metropolitan areas and natives living on the outskirts of cities and in smaller towns.41

In the aftermath of the fall of Tenochtitlán, and before some parts of New Spain were conquered, Cortés began rewarding his conquistadors by giving them encomiendas.

The encomienda (taken from encomendar, to entrust)42 was a feudalistic institution in which Spanish men (henceforth encomenderos) were given the right to collect labour from a group of natives, ostensibly in exchange for a small wage and religious instruction. 43 Although Cortés had done this without Charles V’s permission,44 the

Crown was forced to accept begrudgingly the institution because it lacked the money to pay the conquistadors otherwise.45 However, the Crown and the encomenderos disputed whether this agreement included the rights to the land itself, and whether the encomienda should be a hereditary institution.46

Many chroniclers attest to the brutal life for natives under the encomienda.47

Weckmann notes that the relative abundance of available land meant that colonizers were more interested in controlling the natives as a workforce. Over the course of the sixteenth

41 Javier Marín López, “Música y músicos entre dos mundos: la Catedral de México y sus libros de polifonía (siglos xvi-xviii)” (PhD diss., University of Granada, 2007), 1:139-140, http://www.javiermarinLópez.com/documentacion/Libros%20como%20autor/Musica_y_musicos _dos_mundos_Tesis_Doctoral.pdf 42 Weckmann, The Medieval Heritage, 350. 43 Pagden, Spanish Imperialism, 34. 44 Weckmann, The Medieval Heritage, 350 45 Ibid., 73. 46 Ibid., 355. 47 Among the most famous and graphic of these accounts still in print is Bartolomé de Las Casas’ A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542). Not only did Las Casas object to the treatment under the encomiendas, but he disagreed with the basic premise of the institution. Appealing to the Spanish king in 1519, Las Casas argued that the encomenderos acted “as if rational men were pieces of wood that could be cut off trees and transported for building purposes, or like flocks of sheep or any other kind of animals that could be moved around indiscriminately, and if some of them should die on the road little would be lost.” Quoted as translated in Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians, 17.

7 century, a system of forced labour was developed for natives to work in construction, agriculture, and mining.48 Although the encomienda institution gradually disappeared, the warfare, exploitation and the catastrophic impact of European-borne diseases resulted in the deaths of ninety percent of Mesoamericans in the sixteenth century.49 Matthew

Restall has called it “probably the greatest demographic disaster in human history.”50

The Regular and Secular Clergy

The early critics of Spanish abuses in the New World were members of the missionary orders – Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and later Jesuits – who began arriving in the Valley of Mexico shortly after the conquest. The mendicant orders were a subset of the regular clergy, which took their name from the special law – or regula, in Latin – according to which they lived.51 Lara characterizes the missionaries as “street workers,” and they were the primary agents for the proselytization of the Mesoamericans.52 The

Franciscan friar Martín de Valencia, writing to Charles V in 1532, notes that each of the

Franciscan brothers had already baptized over ten thousand natives.53 However, these conversions did not result in the desired binary transition from pagan to Christian. As

48 Weckmann, The Medieval Heritage, 358. 49 Pedelty, Music in Mexico, 57. 50 Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 128. 51 Schwaller, The Church and Clergy, xiii. 52 Jaime Lara, Christian Texts for Aztecs (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 41. 53 Martín de Valencia et al to Charles V, 17 November 1532, in Cartas de Indias, 1:55. Hanke also notes that mass baptism was a source of controversy among the mendicant orders in the sixteenth century. See Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians, 21.

8 shall be discussed below, missionaries were also often unwitting agents of cultural and religious syncretism.

Although the conquistadors and friars would come to dispute the treatment of the

Mesoamericans, Cortés himself appealed to Charles V for missionary aid during the first years of his expedition.54 In April of 1521, Pope Leo X granted mendicants the right to begin converting Mesoamericans.55 Three Franciscans arrived in 1523; among them was an illegitimate relative of Charles V named Pedro de Gante, who would become the most influential missionary in New Spain in the Sixteenth century.56 Larger and more formal bands of missionaries began to arrive soon after. A group of Franciscans calling themselves the Apostolic Twelve arrived in the summer of 1524, walking barefoot some four hundred kilometers to Tenochtitlán.57 The first Dominicans arrived in 1526, while the first Augustinians arrived in 1533.58 For much of the sixteenth century, the

Franciscans were the most entrenched order in the Valley of Mexico: the Dominicans held territory further south and east, and the Augustinians north and west among the

Tarascan and Otomí.59 Over the course of the century, the missionaries built hundreds of monasteries (called conventos),60 while the Franciscan order also set up schools to instruct Nahua youths in European academic subjects and cultural practices (to be discussed in Chapter 3).

While the regular clergy focused on converting the Mesoamericans, the secular clergy (taken from saeculum, meaning “the world at large”) established churches for all

54 Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, 20-21. 55 Edgerton and Lara, Theatres of Conversion, 18. 56 Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, 20-21. 57 Edgerton and Lara, Theatres of Conversion, 19. 58 Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, 22-23. 59 Edgerton and Lara, Theatres of Conversion, 22-24. 60 Ibid., 37.

Christian residents of New Spain.61 As Norman Tanner records, the first bishoprics in the

New World were established in 1511 in Santo Domingo and Concepción de la Vega in

Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti), and in San Juan in Puerto Rico.62

The first bishopric in Mexico was founded in Tlaxcala in 1526,63 while the diocese in

Mexico City was founded in 1530. The Franciscan Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga was appointed as the first archbishop of Mexico.64

With its headquarters at Mexico City Cathedral, the New Spanish Church became one of the most important governing and administrative bodies in New Spain. The bishops of the Spanish colonies in the Americas met three times over the course of the sixteenth century to review and legislate about nearly all facets of colonial life.65 Aside from its legislative power, the church was responsible for overseeing education,66 and for the collection of the tithe.67 As previously mentioned, thanks to bulls from the papacy, this money ultimately went to the Spanish monarchy.68

Christianity in New Spain

Unlike Spanish governors, who were able to take advantage of pre-existing Mexica social structures, proselytizers did not benefit to the same extent from similarities between some

61 Schwaller, The Church and Clergy, xiii. 62 Norman Tanner, New Short History of the Catholic Church (New York: Burns and Oates, 2011), 187. 63 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:32. 64 Schwaller, The Church and Clergy, 6. 65 Stafford Poole, “Opposition to the Third Mexican Council,” The Americas 25 (1968): 111-114. 66 Schwaller, The Church and Clergy, 9. 67 Ibid., 3. 68 Ibid., 3.

Christian practices and elements of Mexica religion, today called teoyoism.69 While

Gibson identifies practices in teoyism such as “marriage, penance, baptism, fasting, and offerings,” he comments that they served different functions than they did in Spanish

Catholicism.70 Another challenge the missionaries faced was a language barrier between themselves and the Nahua. As Barry D. Sell documents, an alphabetized, writable version of Nahuatl emerged by the mid-sixteenth century.71 Even with this advancement, however, many missionaries expressed frustration in being unable to communicate effectively with their Nahua counterparts.72 As the Franciscan Alonso de Molina lamented in 1565, “Neither the [European] confessors can understand the [Nahua] penitents, nor the penitents the confessors.”73

Several Christian texts, such as manuals on doctrine by Molina and the

Dominican friar Domingo de la Anunciación (both published in 1565), sought to resolve the language problem by providing the Spanish and Nahuatl versions side by side.74 A large dictionary was also written in 1571.75 As Sell describes, these texts increasingly

69 Lara, Christian Texts for Aztecs, 7. 70 Ibid., 100. 71 Barry D. Sell, “‘Perhaps our Lord, God has Forgotten Me,” in Susan Schroeder, ed, The Conquest All Over Again: Nahuas and Zapotecs Thinking, Writing, and Painting Spanish Colonialism (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2010), 183. 72 It is also important to note that although Nahuatl was the most widely spoken language in Mexico, it was far from the only language in New Spain. 73 Alonso de Molina, Confesario Mayor, en lengua mexicana y castellana. (Mexico, 1565), 1-2. Book digitized by Google from the John Carter Brown Library, Accessed November 17th, 2015. https://archive.org/details/confessionarioma01moli. Sell records an even more condemning account from the Jesuit Father Pérez de Ribas in 1645: “If our preachers are explaining to [the Nahua] the supreme mysteries of our Holy Faith and they fail to use the reverential mode [in Nahuatl] – even if only in a single word or term – the Indians laugh at them. They consider them to be persons who speak their language very coarsely because they do not even understand the respect they should have for things holy and divine…[and] worthy of reference… the Mexicans are so attentive to this that even a four-year-old girl knows what language [register] she must use!” Quoted as translated in Sell, “‘Perhaps our Lord, God has Forgotten Me,” 187. 74 Ibid., 192. 75 Ibid., 185.

11 sought to incorporate input from the Nahua themselves, who advised on issues such as pronunciation and idioms.76 In some cases, however, the task of learning Nahuatl proved to be too great a challenge for some earlier missionaries. This is reputed to be what drove the sixteenth-century Franciscan friar Jacobo de Testera to develop a system of pictographs to explain Christian prayers to the Mexica.77 Ultimately, and regardless of whether they used pictographs or Nahuatl, any friar hoping to convert the Nahua had to frame his message in language and imagery that was accessible his audience.

Thus, it is not surprising that many scholars have identified a syncretistic nature in the Christianity of New Spain. In some cases, this kind of religious and cultural exchange was welcomed and even initiated by the missionaries: as mentioned, Gante invited the

Nahua to perform a traditional dance in front of the convent at Christmas.78 However, other members of the church sometimes expressed suspicion that the friars allowed the

Nahua to continue their pagan traditions under a superficial Christian veil.79

In the most basic cases, minor details of Biblical stories were changed to suit local circumstances. Lara records how the friar Bernardino de Sahagún decided to translate the parable of the Separation of the Sheep and the Goats (Matt. 25) as the Separation of the

Pigs in his Nahuatl sermon, on account of the paucity of goats and the abundance of pigs in New Spain.80 Other differences were more fundamental. As Gibson describes, the

Mexica saw the community of saints as a pantheon of gods rather than as intermediaries.

76 Ibid., 190. 77 Edgerton and Lara, Theatres of Conversion, 28. Edgerton provides an example of a Lord’s Prayer set in Testerian pictograph on p. 29. For more on Testera, see pp. 49-51 of this study. 78 Pedelty, Musical Ritual in Mexico, 48. 79 Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 164. 80 Lara, Christian Texts for Aztecs, 55.

Many interpreted Christ’s crucifixion through the lens of human sacrifice.81 Moreover, the cult of the Virgin Mary, who took the place of the fertility goddess Tonantzin,82 sometimes outstripped the popularity of Christ.83 Once again, a comprehensive account of Christianity in New Spain exceeds my scope. Suffice it to say that the religion was far from uniform in colonial Mexico, and often required considerable give and take on the part of those proselytizing.

As in Europe, music formed an integral part of worship in the New Spanish

Church. All of the pieces of music I will analyze in subsequent chapters of this study had both religious meaning and function within church services. However, neither the Church nor its musicians can be considered fully distinct from Spain’s colonial enterprise. Thus, in the final section of this chapter, I consider two ways in which music and musical practices intertwined with New Spain’s sociopolitical sphere.

III. Music and Colonization: Two Case Studies

Music and the Militant Church

Weckmann documents extensively how the Spaniards’ worldview, inherited from their

Medieval past, strongly coloured their reception of the discovery of the New World. In the imagination of European explorers, the Americas became a possible home for

81 Gibson, The Aztecs, 100. 82 D.A. Brading, Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1–2. 83 Weckmann, The Medieval Heritage, 164.

13 mythical sites like the Fountain of Youth, and for mythical creatures like mermaids.84

The identity of the Mesoamericans was also the subject of great speculation; many believed them to be “descendants of the lost tribes of Israel.”85 Some writers, including the ethnographer Bernardino de Sahagún, even suggested that the Garden of Eden could be found in the Americas, and that a new earthly paradise was to be established in the

New World.86 Throughout the sixteenth century, a belief in the inherent simple purity of the Mesoamericans remained a common strain of thought among mendicants, several of whom sought to create new native communities away from the vices of other Europeans.

Among the most famous of these was the Hospital Santa Fe, founded in 1532 by Vasco de Quiroga on the model of Thomas More’s Utopia.87

However, violent encounters between the Spanish and Mesoamericans also engendered a competing perspective on the natives as an enemy to be defeated.88

The friar and chronicler Géronimo de Mendieta compared them to the Arabs, while accounts of Cortés and his comrades drew on the imagery of El Cid Campeador, the hero of the Reconquista who drove Muslims out of Spain.89 Battles against the Mesoamericans became elevated to religious – even cosmic – warfare. Saint James was reported to be fighting with the Spaniards in the battle of Centla in 1519, while the Totonacs and even the emperor Moctezuma II were said to receive advice from the Devil.90

84 Weckmann, The Medieval Heritage, 33-63. So fervently did some explorers search for the Fountain of Youth that they bathed in every brook, lake and swamp in Florida, without success (Ibid., 34). 85 Ibid., 108. 86 Ibid., 21. On Sahagún, see p. 15, p. 37, and pp. 41-42 of this study. 87 Gibson, The Aztecs, 99-100. 88 Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians, 6. 89 Weckmann, The Medieval Heritage, 107-8. On Mendieta, see pp. 36-37 of this study. 90 See Ibid., “Intervention of the Supernatural in the Conquest: Santiago, the Most Holy Virgin, and the Devil,” chap. 11, 157-178.

Mónica Domínguez Torres in her book Military Ethos and Visual Culture in Post-

Conquest Mexico documents how some missionaries envisioned themselves as continuing this war on a spiritual level. It is important to note, as Lara does, that the mendicants “did not deny the ontological existence” of the Mesoamerican gods as mere superstition.91 Instead, they saw these deities as threatening demons, or incarnations of

Satan.92 Mendieta thus depicted his fellow mendicants as the knights of Christ:

Go, beloved children…and armed with the Shield of Faith, the Cuirass of Justice, the Sword of the Divine Word, the Helmet of Salvation, and the Lance of Perseverance, fight against the ancient Serpent that tries to make hers the souls redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, and win [those souls] for this Lord.93

Domínguez Torres also cites the first viceroy of New Spain, Don Antonio de Mendoza, who writes that the friars were greater conquerors than even the conquistadors:

Monasteries with friars were walls and castles within which the whole land was defended, because with their example and their sacred sermons and admonitions, [the friars] conquered the spirit of the Indians…Monasteries with holy men were more valuable than fortresses with soldiers in the towns.”94

However, the use of this militant language by the friars did not seek to set the

Spanish and Mesoamericans in opposition, but ultimately to unify them. Fray Domingo de la Anunciación’s Doctrina cristiana breve (1565), directed towards indigenous readers, characterizes conversion to Christianity as a kind of enlistment in an army:

As you know, it is a custom in our world that when there is war among men, every leader and captain…takes charge of his people, and rules and governs his soldiers, giving a suitable industry to those who are under his command. And because many

91 Lara, Christian Texts for Aztecs, 25-26. 92 Weckmann, The Medieval Heritage, 172. 93 Géronimo de Mendieta, Historica Eclesiastica Indiana, ed. Francisco Solano y Pérez-Lila (Madrid: Atlas, 1973), 1:126. Translated by Mónica Domínguez Torres, Military Ethos and Visual Culture in Post-Conquest Mexico (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013), 68. 94 Quoted as translated in Domínguez Torres, Military Ethos, 67.

times [soldiers] are mixed with one another, he gives them insignia [in order] to know them and distinguish them. In the same way (my son), our captain and redeemer Jesus Christ does with us, like the true soldiers and knights of His that we are, He rules us and governs us in this world, and He has signalled and armed us with the sign of the Cross, and with his admirable name Jesus, so that like his soldiers we fight in a manly manner, following his orders and mandate.95

This rhetoric also appears in one of the most famous books of music from sixteenth-century Mexico, Sahagún’s Psalmodia Cristiana (1583).96 Here figures such as

Saint Phillip, Saint James, Saint Martin and others are variously referred to as holy warriors or knights.97 Saint Anthony is compared to an eagle knight (quauhti) or jaguar knight (oceluti).98 Saint Francis is given weapons in a dream for “him and his warriors.”99

Meanwhile, according to Sahagún’s psalms, the Church and the Seven Sacraments exist

“so that you may defend yourself against your enemies.”100

The presence of this militant rhetoric in a book of chant suggests that music also played a part in the spiritual warfare of the missionaries. This argument is advanced by

Israel Álvarez Moctezuma, who unfortunately does not provide any sources for his claim.101 One notable symbol of a Christian “sonic warfare,” however, was the original

95 Domingo de la Anunciación, Doctrina Christiana breue y compendiosa por via de dialogo entre vn maestro y vn discipulo, : sacada en le[n]gua castellana y Mexicana, 1565, fol. 7v. Book digitized by Google from the John Carter Brown Library. Accessed October 22nd, 2015. https://archive.org/details/doctrinachristia00domi. Quoted as translated in Domínguez Torres, Military Ethos, 69-70. 96 For a recent discussion of this work, see Candelaria, “Bernardino de Sahagún’s Psalmodia Christiana: A Catholic Songbook from Sixteenth Century New Spain, Journal of the American Musicological Society 67 no. 3 (2014): 619-684. 97 Bernardino de Sahagún, Psalmodia Christiana, trans. Arthur J.O. Anderson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993), 327. 98 Ibid., 179. 99 Ibid., 299. 100 Ibid., 31. 101 Israel Álvarez Moctezuma, “Con toda la música y solemnidad. Esbozo de una historia de la cultura musical y la capilla catedralicia,” in Enriquez and Covarrubias, Coloquio Musicat, vol. 1: Música, catedral y sociedad., 71.

16 bell of Mexico City Cathedral, which, as a cathedral chapter act from 1536 indicates, was to be made by melting down one of Cortés’s cannons.102

The texts of Sahagún and Anunciación also make manifest an important distinction in the minds of regular clergy. Although the missionaries saw themselves as waging war on the Mesoamerican gods, they dissociated the Mesoamericans as individuals from their religious practices. Indeed, such a distinction seems absolutely vital for conversion to be possible. However, many Spanish, including the conquistadors turned encomenderos, argued instead that the inferior societies of the Mesoamericans were a direct result of the inferior innate characteristics of the Mesoamericans themselves. This debate, which centred on the inherent goodness of New Spain’s indigenous peoples, is what I turn to now.

Music and Slavery

In 1512, the Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos ignited a scandal when he denounced in a sermon the horrible mistreatment of the natives in Hispaniola by Spanish colonists. In the aftermath emerged a firestorm of debate about the relationship between the Spanish and the Mesoamericans and the legitimacy of the imperial mission as a whole. As Pagden points out, these concerns stretched back to the earliest years of the conquest, when Queen Isabel halted Columbus from selling Mesoamerican slaves until the legality of such a practice could be firmly established.103 Spanish occupation rested on papal bulls of donation, but doubt was raised over the papacy’s temporal jurisdiction

102 ACCMM, Actas de Cabildo, bk. 1, fol. 3v, MUSICAT 79000002. 103 Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 30-31.

17 in lands that had never previously been exposed to Christianity or been part of the Roman

Empire.104 The warfare against and servitude of the Mesoamericans thus lay on the shaky grounds that the Mesoamericans had a legal obligation to obey the Church and the

Spanish Crown.

Two years prior to Montesinos’s sermon, the Scottish professor John Mair had first proposed a justification for the servitude of natives in the Caribbean by highlighting theories of civil slavery and of natural slavery in the works of Aristotle.105 Whereas the civil slavery came about through state punishment or captivity in a just war, natural slavery occurred as a result of natural, rather than human, law. As Pagden describes,

Aristotle classified some men who were incapable of controlling their passions by their intellect. This failure meant that while they could follow instruction, they could not act rationally by themselves. Accordingly, nature had created these men to be mastered by men of superior intellect. As a benefit, however, the “natural” slave would become more fully human by following the instructions of his master and by imitating him.106

In Spain, the doctrine of natural slavery as a justification for the empire found its biggest proponent in the Aristotelian scholar Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (c. 1490 – 1573).

In a treatise called The Second Democrates; or, The Just Causes of War against the

Indians (1545),107 Sepúlveda argued not only that the natives of New Spain were natural slaves, but that, as Hanke writes, warfare against them was justified as a “necessary

104 Ibid., 37. 105 Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians, 14. 106 Pagden, The Fall, 38-43. 107 This translation is taken from Pagden, “Introduction,” in Bartolomé de Las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, ed. and trans. Nigel Griffin (Toronto: Penguin Books Canada, 1992), xxviii.

18 preliminary to their Christianization.”108 The scholar’s chief ideological opponent was the

Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, who had vigorously denounced the idea of natural slavery in 1519.109 Concerned over the ramifications of these arguments, Charles

V temporarily halted expeditions to the New World in 1550, and convened a junta of academics and advisors in Valladolid to hear the two sides.110

Las Casas’ arguments, which he called In Defence of the Indians and which he read word for word for five days in front of the judges, proceed through some sixty-three chapters against Sepúlveda’s position.111 As Pagden documents, one of the members of the panel later commented that Las Casas seemed to wish to disprove “everything that the doctor Sepúlveda had ever written.”112 In his first few chapters, Las Casas seeks to refute the assertion that the Mesoamericans, being barbarians, qualify as natural slaves. He points out that Aristotle distinguishes between the true barbarian and the circumstantial barbarian.113 In the first category were those men who, completely lacking reason, were incapable of self-government and prone to brutish acts.114 According to both Aristotle and Aquinas, claims Las Casas, this type of barbarian was very rare, since God had distinguished men from animals precisely through their intellect. To identify an entire continent of men as deviants was therefore tantamount to calling into question God’s abilities as Creator. 115

108 Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians, 30. 109 Ibid., 16. 110 Ibid., 13. 111 Daniel Castro, Another Face of Empire: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), 129. 112 Quoted in Pagden, “Introduction,” xxix. 113 Bartolomé de Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, trans. and ed. Stafford Poole (Dekalb, Ill: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974), 31. 114 Ibid., 32-33. 115 Ibid., 34-36.

Instead, Las Casas argues, the Mesoamericans are more appropriately identified in the second category, viz. barbarians by circumstance. These may be peoples who appear uncultured because of a lack of writing, or simply because they speak a foreign language.116 Historical examples of this, he writes, include the Greek and Roman civilizations respectively considering each other barbarians, and the Romans’ similar perspective on the Spanish themselves. However, this type of barbarian, being equipped with reason and self-government, does not qualify as a natural slave.117

Situating the Mesoamericans within this classification of “barbarians by circumstance,” Las Casas argues that the only thing lacking in them is the Gospel. But the rationality of the natives is readily apparent in the ease with which they master

European learning:

The Indian race is not that barbaric, nor are they dull witted or stupid, but are very easy to teach and very talented in learning all the liberal arts, and very ready to accept, honour, and observe the Christian religion and correct their sins (as experience has taught) once priests have introduced to them the sacred mysteries and taught them the word of God.118

A few sentences later, Las Casas clarifies what he means by liberal arts, and makes his first and only reference to music:

In the liberal arts that they have been taught up to now, such as grammar and logic, they are remarkably adept. With every kind of music they charm the ears of their audience with wonderful sweetness. They write skillfully and quite elegantly, so that most often we are at a loss to know whether the characters are handwritten or printed…[This is] what I have seen with my eyes, felt with my hands, and heard with my own ears while living a great many years among these peoples.119

116 Ibid., 30-31. 117 Ibid., 42-43. 118 Ibid., 43-44. 119 Ibid., 44.

Thus, for Las Casas, the natives’ musical abilities stands as direct evidence against any classification of them as sub-human. While Las Casas does not clarify precisely which musical practices they engaged in, elsewhere a similar letter by the Franciscan friar

Jacobo de Testera specifically alludes to natives improvising counterpoint.120

From a sixteenth-century Aristotelian perspective, improvisation would seem to be precisely the kind of intellectual activity that does not consist of merely following instructions. As such, if rationality is the true mark of a human being (as Las Casas himself argued121), then music becomes an opportunity to demonstrate one’s humanity.

The actual political or ideological outcome of the Valladolid debate has been difficult to determine. Las Casas seems to have won a small victory in that a publication ban on Sepúlveda’s book was upheld, and pre-existing copies were taken out of circulation.122 However, treatises on the issue of natural slavery continued to be written well into the seventeenth century.123 More indirectly, the Valladolid Debate probably strengthened the Spanish Court’s resolve to uphold controversial legislation it had introduced in 1542 that banned most forms of slavery124 and sought to curb abuse.

However, according to Las Casas, encomenderos found loopholes around these laws by

120 For Testera’s letter, see pp. 49-51 of this study. 121 Las Casas writes in his Apologetic History: “All the peoples of the world are humans and there is only one definition of all humans and of each one, that is that they are rational.” Quoted as translated in Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law and Church Law 1150-1625 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997), 273. 122 Castro, Another Face of Empire, 131. 123 See Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians, 89-92. 124 Weckmann points out that the Spanish continued to enslave some groups like the Chichimecs for a set number of years as a punishment for hostility. True abolition, he writes, did not occur until 1810. See Weckmann, The Medieval Heritage, 396.

21 selling the shirts on Mesoamericans’ backs and tacitly including the person wearing them in the transaction.125

Whether or not the Valladolid debate improved the lives of Mesoamericans under

Spanish rule, the arguments of Las Casas and others highlight the role that music played in shaping European views of the natives of the New World. This image shifted over time and by circumstance: Díaz’s denunciation of Mexica trumpet playing as “dismal sound” was no doubt shaped by its performance context in battle.126 Nevertheless, it seems to be safe to acknowledge a general trend, at least in letters from missionaries, toward praising the Mesoamericans’ talent and intelligence when discussing music in New Spain. One particularly explicit example is found in the chronicles of Mendieta:

Such other instruments as are played to give pleasure to the laity, the Indians make and play them all: small fiddles, guitars in two sizes, vihuelas, harps, and stringed keyboard instruments. The conclusion is that there is nothing that they cannot learn to do. What is more, only a few years after they learnt singing, they themselves began independently to compose.127

This discussion may in turn provide new insight into music’s great popularity in colonial Mexico. Scholars documenting the overabundance of musicians in New Spain have typically emphasized the tax benefits for members of the profession, an attitude

125 Bartolomé de Las Casas to Bartolomé Carranza de Miranda, August 1555, in Bartolomé de Las Casas, Obras escogidas: opusculos, cartas y memoriales, ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso, Biblioteca de autores espaňoles, (Madrid: Atlas, 1958), 110:434. See also Castro, Another Face of Empire, 141. 126 For Díaz’s quotation see p. 4 of this study. 127 Géronimo Mendieta, Historica Eclesiastica Indiana, ed. Francisco Solano y Pérez-Lila (Madrid: Atlas, 1973), bk. 4, chap. 14, 2:39-40. Quoted as translated in Mario E. Aguilar, “The Rituals of Kindness: The Influence of the Danza Azteca Tradition of Central Mexico on Chicano- Mexcoehuani Identity and Sacred Space” (PhD Diss., Claremony Graduate University and San Diego State University, 2009), 117. http://www.aguila-blanca.com/pdf-files/Mario%20aguilar-dissertation-2009.pdf

22 going back to the sixteenth-century Spanish Bishop Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenleal.128

But I suggest that music may have given Mesoamericans a renewed sense of personal agency. Anecdotally, this hypothesis seems to be confirmed by the fact that the first ever recorded strike in Mexico City was by musicians refusing to work without pay.129

However, much more scholarship is needed to bring to light Mesoamerican perspectives on music in particular and life under colonial rule in general.

In the absence of definitive conclusions, I hope to emphasize the importance of considering sixteenth-century Mexican music within its historical context. The above discussion has suggested two points of intersection between music and the conquest: first, that both the conquistadors and the clergy used music as a weapon in conquest and conversion; second, that music also provided an opportunity for natives to demonstrate their own rationality and agency. As this study turns its focus onto more technical aspects of musical practices in Mexico, let us remain cognizant that there was a great deal at stake in its performance.

128 Stevenson, Musicians in Aztec and Inca Territory, 167. 129 Pedelty, Musical Ritual in Mexico, 65.

Chapter II: Improvisation in Renaissance Spain and Europe

My investigation into the musical practices of colonial Mexico must be preceded and contextualized by a consideration of the European tradition that New Spain inherited.

This musical heritage was predominantly Spanish, with the Cathedral of Seville serving as a model for Mexico City Cathedral.130 Javier Marín López’s research into the musical libraries of the cathedral has also revealed copies of works by Josquin Desprez, Pierre

Colin, and other “international” composers.131 Rather than focusing on written compositions, however, I seek to stress here the emergence in New Spain of the oral improvisation of counterpoint, a musical practice ubiquitous throughout Renaissance

Europe.

The modern study of contrapuntal improvisation in the Renaissance goes back at least as far as Ernest Ferand in 1938.132 More recently, a host of scholars have set out to determine how Renaissance musicians were able to improvise, and the extent to which improvisation was used in day-to-day music-making: among these scholars are Margaret

Bent, Bonnie Blackburn, Anna Maria Busse Berger, Philippe Canguilhem, Denis Collins,

Julie Cumming, Giuseppe Fiorentino, Folker Froebe, Julian Grimshaw, Klaus Jürgen-

Sachs, Barnabé Janin, John Milsom, Valerio Morruci, Peter Schubert, and Rob

Wegman.133 Scholarship on improvisation has placed sixteenth-century Spain at the

130 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:29. 131 Marín López, “The musical inventory of Mexico Cathedral, 1589: a lost document rediscovered,” Early Music 36, no. 4 (Oxford, 2008): 579. 132 See Ernest Ferand, Die Improvisation in der Musik (Zurich: Rein-Verlag, 1938). 133 This list is, of course, far from comprehensive. This study will reference many of the above- named scholars in this chapter. For those not directly cited, see also Margaret Bent, “Res Facta and Cantare Super Librum,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 36, no. 3 (1983): 371-391; Bonnie Blackburn, “On Compositional Process in the Fifteenth Century,” Journal of the

24 forefront – many Spanish treatises discuss improvisation in detail, and other Spanish documents provide information about its use in churches and secular music-making. Thus far, however, no scholar has intently examined this practice as it emerged in New Spain.

The mere fact that improvisation did appear in the New World, however, strengthens the claim that it was fundamental to Renaissance musical practice.

Overview

In general, discussions of Renaissance improvisation divide into three categories: musical pedagogy, performance practice, and compositional technique. In this chapter I briefly summarize the scholarship discussing European Renaissance improvisation as it relates to these three subjects. First, scholars have described how the improvisation of counterpoint formed an integral part of the education of musicians. Second, they have examined how and when improvisation was used in the actual performance of music. Finally, they have analyzed how improvisational techniques aided composers and how they often served as building blocks for compositions.

American Musicological Society 40, no. 2 (1987): 210-284; Folker Froebe, “Satzmodelle des ‘Contrapunto alla mente’ und ihre Bedeutung für den Stilwandel um 1600,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie 4 (2007): 13-55; Barnabé Janin, Chanter sur le livre : Manuel pratique d’improvisation polyphonique de la Renaissance (15e et 16 siècles) (Langres: D. Guéniot, 2012); Klaus-Jürgen Sachs, “Arten improvisierter Mehrstimmigkeit nach Lehrtexten des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Basler Jahrbuch for Historische Auffuhrungspraxis 7: Improvisation in der Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Winterthur, CE: Amadeus Verlag, 1983).

I. The Oral Pedagogy of Counterpoint in the Renaissance

As Wegman has noted, modern musicians tend to think of counterpoint primarily as a written technical exercise for educating composers. The enduring image is of the young

Beethoven laboriously studying Johann Fux’s textbook Gradus ad Parnassum (1725) and having his first-species exercises corrected by Haydn.134 By the nineteenth century, counterpoint had become an academic exercise. In contrast to this, Wegman likens counterpoint in the Renaissance to a “living language,” fluid and familiar for even the youngest musicians.135

These musicians, who came from all social classes, learned and created counterpoint orally and extemporaneously.136 Wegman writes, “Even if almost everything we know about fifteenth-century [and sixteenth-century] counterpoint comes from treatises… it would be premature to conclude from this that the art presupposed literacy.” 137 The Flemish composer Adrian Petit Coclico, writing in his treatise

Compendium musices (1552), emphasizes that he learned music as a child from Josquin and “from no book.”138 A great number of music treatises distinguish oral improvisation from composition, even though both activities were fundamentally concerned with contrapuntal music. The Spanish theorist Juan Bermudo makes this clear in his treatise

Declaración de instrumentos (1555): “There is the art of counterpoint, and that of

134 Rob C. Wegman, “What is Counterpoint?” in Moelants, Improvising Early Music, 9-12. 135 Ibid., 14. 136 It should be noted that training as a chorister was not necessarily seen as a precursor to a musical career. In England, for instance, both of William Byrd’s elder brothers sang in the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral, but then went on to careers in business. See Kerry McCarthy, Byrd (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 10. 137 Wegman, “From Maker to Composer: Improvisation and Musical Authorship in the Low Countries, 1450-1500,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 49 (1996): 413. 138 Ibid., 416, 16n.

26 composition... Counterpoint is an improvised arrangement on a plainsong with varied melodies.”139

In recent years, musicologists have examined the curricula of musical pedagogy in the Renaissance. Jane Flynn has outlined the educational program of boy choristers140 in England in the first half of the sixteenth century. Boys as young as six were given lessons four times per day, both in music and in subjects like English, Latin, and moral conduct.141 Singing was taught to the boys in groups, and their curriculum followed a progression from elementary skills to more advanced ones.142 The first step for young choristers, even before learning to read, was to learn solmization syllables and to memorize musical intervals. Next, they would learn to read musical notation, and would learn to sing chant in both notes of equal value and in varied rhythms.

After having learned the fundamentals of music and musical literacy, English choristers learned the most basic kinds of improvisation, such as doubling the chant, also called the cantus firmus, in parallel sixths. This would allow the singer to preserve largely the same melodic motion as the chant, with the exception of cadences where they would move from a sixth to an octave. Finally, the most experienced choristers learned to improvise more elaborately, by spontaneously constructing a melody made out of

139 Juan Bermudo, Declaración de instrumentos musicales, 1555 edition (Kassel, DE: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1957), bk. 5, fol. 128r. Quoted as translated in Peter Schubert, “From Improvisation to Composition: three 16th-century Case Studies,” in Moelants, Improvising Early Music, 119. This definition of counterpoint clarifies that improvisation at its most basic level referred to a practice of adding countermelodies to a pre-existing line of plainchant. 140 Recent scholarship has also brought to light more information on the musical education of young girls in the Renaissance. See for example Colleen Reardon, “Cantando tutte insieme: Training Girl Singers in Early Modern Sienese Convents,” in Young Choristers, 650-1700. ed. Susan Boynton and Eric Rice (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2008). 141 Jane Flynn, “The education of choristers in England during the sixteenth century,” in English Choral Practice, 1400-1660, ed. John Morehen (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 180. 142 Ibid., 181.

27 consonant intervals that they were able to anticipate or “sight” against the cantus firmus – a technique known as descant.143 Thomas Morley (c. 1557-1602) describes learning this technique as largely consisting of repetitive trial and error, with the master of the choir correcting the improvising young choristers as they went.144

In sixteenth-century Spain, as Giuseppe Fiorentino has documented, musical education divided itself into three categories: Gregorian chant (canto llano), composed polyphony (canto de órgano), and improvisation (canto de contrapunto).145 An anonymous writing from Burgos in 1555 details how choristers learned music orally under the instruction of the chapelmaster, or maestro de capilla.146 As was the case in

England, choristers began by learning to sing chant. After four months, students began to learn the basics of singing composed polyphonic works, which required that they be able to read notation.147 After they had mastered singing from composed works, experienced choristers would then begin to learn improvisation.148 Bermudo explains that a responsible improviser should not only sight consonances against whatever cantus firmus note was currently sounding, but should also take into account the notes that follow it.

This meant that Spanish musicians understood a cantus firmus not as a series of notes, but

143 Ibid., 186. See also Anna Maria Busse Berger, Medieval Music and the Art of Memory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 144 Thomas Morley, A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music (London, 1597; Reprinted 1771), 136. Morley also comments, however, that improvisation was no longer prevalent in England by the end of the sixteenth century. Ibid., 250. 145 On Spanish musical terminology in the Renaissance see pp. 65-70 of this study. 146 Fiorentino, “Canto llano, canto de órgano, y contrapunto improvisado: el currículo de un músico professional en la España del renacimiento,” in Francisco de Salinas: Música, teoría y matemática en el Renacimiento, coord. Amaya García Pérez and Paloma Otaola González (Salamanca, ES: Universidad de Salamanca, 2014), 153-154. As Fiorentino comments, the maestro de capilla was often tasked with the entire education of the choristers, and as such Francisco Guerrero (1528 – 1599), one of the most distinguished composers of the sixteenth century, was also obligated to teach his choristers to read and write. Ibid., 149. Of course, Guerrero’s situation was not so different from J.S. Bach’s at the Thomasschule in Leipzig. 147 Ibid., 154. 148 Ibid., 156.

28 as a series of intervals. Consequently, choristers in Spain memorized formulae for improvising over all possible intervals.149

Unfortunately, neither the anonymous Burgos writer nor Bermudo define exactly how improvisation was taught, commenting that each teacher would have his own manner of doing so.150 However, Canguilhem points out the general trend in Spanish treatises of teaching counterpoint in systematic steps of increasing complexity, or

“species,” a tradition apparently unique to the Iberian world.151 The Portuguese theorist

Vicente Lusitano, considered the first published black composer,152 provides a good example of this kind of instruction.153 In a text titled Del arte de contrapunto, after teaching the rudimentary rules of consonant and dissonant intervals, Lusitano outlines how to sing against a plainchant note-against-note, and then progresses to two

(successive) notes against one in the plainchant. He proceeds in this way up to twelve notes in triple meter against one in the plainchant.154 After presenting the rules of this kind of counterpoint, Lusitano offers advice on how to make one’s melodies stylistically pleasing.155

Lusitano’s next section explains how multiple singers can improvise together, which he calls contrapunto concertado (“concerted counterpoint”). Here he outlines

149 Ibid., 157. 150 Ibid., 156. 151 Canguilhem, “Lusitano et la pratique du contrepoint chanté,” in Canguilhem et al, Chanter sur le livre à la Renaissance: Les traités de contrepoint de Vicente Lusitano, 9. 152 See Giordano Mastrocola, “Vicente Lusitano entre histoire et historiographie,” in Canguilhem et al, Chanter sur le livre à la Renaissance: Les traités de contrepoint de Vicente Lusitano, 41. 153 Canguilhem, Marie-Françoise Déodatt-Kessedjian, Véronique Lafargue, and Giordano Mastrocola recently transcribed a chapter, titled Del arte de contrapunto, from an unpublished manuscript by Lusitano that was later considerably redacted and published as his treatise Introdutione facilissima (1553). Canguilhem et al, eds., Chanter sur le livre à la Renaissance: Les traités de contrepoint de Vicente Lusitano (Turnhout, BE: Brepols, 2013). 154 Vicente Lusitano, Del arte de contrapunto, fols. 17v-24r, in Canguilhem et al, Chanter sur le livre à la Renaissance: Les traités de contrepoint de Vicente Lusitano, pp. 134-157. 155 Ibid., fols. 24v-38r, pp. 157-212.

29 different techniques for groups of three or four singers so that they can improvise together without making contrapuntal mistakes.156 The height of improvisational prowess, writes Lusitano, is the ability to improvise multiple parts at the same time, or to improvise against a polyphonic work.157 The techniques Lusitano describes are similar to the tasks given to candidates for the maestro de capilla position at Spanish cathedrals in competitions known as the examen de opposición. For example, as Canguilhem describes, would-be chapelmasters at Toledo Cathedral in 1604 were expected to be able to add a “vocal part to a duo, trio or even a quartet.”158

II. Improvising in the Church

Improvisation in the Renaissance was far from a theoretical pursuit: it played an important role in the daily music making of churches and cathedrals across Europe. It should come as no surprise that these institutions, having invested time and effort into teaching their choristers to improvise, expected to receive some practical benefit from it.

A number of Renaissance musical treatises testify to the use of improvisation in services, and praise the skill of the musicians. As Bermudo writes, “In the magnificent chapel of the most reverend archbishop of Toledo, Fonseca of good memory, I saw skillful singers make counterpoint, which if it were written down, would be sold as good

156 Ibid., fols. 38v-44r, pp. 213-229. Canguilhem notes, however, that Lusitano is exceptionally tolerant of dissonances compared to many other contemporary theorists. Canguilhem, “Lusitano et la pratique du contrepoint chanté,” 9. Moreover, when discussing one technique, Lusitano writes that singers employing it will “only rarely be in disagreement” (pocas veces descardaron). Lusitano, Del arte de contrapunto, fol. 41v, p. 221. I will discuss improvisational devices as they appear in Mexican polyphony in Chapter 5 of this study. 157 Ibid., fol. 44r, p. 247. 158 Canguilhem and Alexander Stalarow, “Singing Upon the Book According to Vicente Lusitano,” Early Music History 30 (2011): 57.

30 composition.”159

Wegman has recently brought to light a set of partbooks from 1574 by the

Udinese chapelmaster Ippolito Chiamaterò de Negri (c. 1535-40 – after 1592). In his preface, Negri claims that he had not composed the Introits that appear in the books, but rather that he transcribed them from the improvisation of his singers. As he writes,

“When I was formerly in the service of the honoured Duomo, people took no small delight in the music of the Introits, and rejoiced in seeing my choirboys rival with one another in the making of counterpoints all’improviso.”160 Wegman transcribes

Chiamaterò’s introit Resurrexi et adhuc tecum sum, from a Mass for Easter Sunday. He raises the issue of how the counterpoint of the piece seems too complex and free from errors to have been sung extemporaneously. Wegman speculates, however, that perhaps

Chiamaterò corrected minor errors in his transcription as one might correct colloquialisms when transcribing a spoken interview.161 In assessing the transcription,

Peter Schubert identifies the use of an improvisational technique known as contrapunto fugato, and speculates that singers might have been able to signal with hand gestures while improvising in order to alert each other of their intentions when necessary.162

159 Bermudo, Declaración, bk. 5, chap. 16, fol. cxxviii. Quoted as translated in Schubert, “From Improvisation to Composition,” 101. A similar quotation can be found from the Neapolitan theorist Scipione Cerreto (1551-1633): “I heard in the Pope’s chapel improvisation so elaborate, that if it had been made in writing it could not have been better than what the improviser had sang.” Quoted in Canguilhem, “Lusitano et la pratique du contrepoint chanté,” 26. 160 Quoted as translated in Wegman, “What is Counterpoint?” 50. 161 Ibid., 61-62. 162 See Schubert, “From Improvisation to Composition,” 97-102. Schubert specifically points to m. 6 of the transcription, wherein the improvising tenor descends below the bass cantus firmus, which “changes the consonance requirements” for the other singers (p. 101). For more on counterpoint and the hand, see Anna Maria Busse Berger, Medieval Music and the Art of Memory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 133. See also Canguilhem, “Main mémorielle et invention musicale à la Renaissance,” in Memory and Invention: Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Art and Music: Acts of an International Conference, Florence, Villa I Tatti, May 11, 2006, ed. Anna Maria Busse Berger and Massimiliano Rossi (Florence, Leo S. Olschki, 2009).

Beyond accounts by theorists and musicians, contemporary church records and legislation constitute a third source of information about Renaissance improvisation. In

Renaissance Spain, the term most typically associated with improvisation was contrapunto, but Fiorentino has also highlighted the use of the term discantus,163 while

Dianne Lehman Goldman has clarified that the widely used term fabordón refers to improvised homophony.164 Luis Robledo has traced the appearance of these terms in the

Calendarium capellae regiae, copied before 1568 for the court of Phillip II.165 The document, attached to the constitution of the Spanish royal chapel, describes in detail the music performed at the different liturgical celebrations. It distinguishes between four types of music: in tono (plainchant), in musica or canto de órgano (composed polyphony), contrapunto (improvised polyphony), and fabordón.166 Although the

Calendarium does not provide a comprehensive list of the religious services sung throughout the year, the frequent appearance of the terms contrapunto and fabordón indicates that a great deal of the music sung at the chapel throughout the year was improvised.

What did this improvised music sound like? This question occupies a number of musicologists today. Treatises and books like Lusitano’s Del arte de contrapunto contain countless examples of counterpoint that, according to their authors, resemble contemporary improvisation. Thus far, however, the Chiamaterò introits appear to be

163 Fiorentino, “‘Ad discantandum’: Instrumental Music and Improvisational Techniques in Spanish Musical Tradition of the Renaissance,” presentation at the Annual Medieval-Renaissance Music Conference, Brussels, July 6-9 2015. 164 Dianne Marie Lehmann Goldman, “The Matins Responsory at Mexico City Cathedral, 1575- 1815,” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2014), 22. ProQuest (1558186659). On fabordón, see pp. 69-70 of this study. 165 Luis Robledo Estaire, “La Musica en la Casa Del Rey,” in Aspectos de la Cultura Musical en la Corte de Felipe II, ed. Alfonso de Vicente (Madrid: Fundación Caja Madrid, 2000), 112. 166 Ibid., 163-4.

32 unique in purporting to record specific instances of improvisation at a particular cathedral. What is especially hard to know is whether (and how) singers were able to improvise complex music while still abiding by the rules of counterpoint. Peter Schubert notes that theorists like Gioseffo Zarlino (1517-1590) occasionally granted some leeway about breaking contrapuntal rules, especially in more advanced cases of improvisation such as adding a third voice to a duo.167 Contemporary church legislation, however, makes clear that musicians were to be held to a high standard. Mexico City Cathedral’s

1585 constitution instructs that a chapelmaster should be fined for the intrusion of any

“noticeable dissonances” into a service.168

Lusitano thus suggests some steps to ensure that the improvisation goes as smoothly as possible. First, improvisers must prepare for how they will treat the plainchant:

After counterpoint in one voice, one must learn how two, three, four or more improvisers can sing together; and for this, the first thing is they must decide on the mode of the melody over which they will sing, and to decide the order of the cadences.169

Next, the improvisers must make sure they are well acquainted with each other’s capabilities:

The second thing they must ensure is that the voices who improvise wait for each other, in order to have graceful counterpoint and not to be confused by disorder. This [understanding] is difficult to achieve in improvisation, no matter how talented the singers are, and it is important that they know

167 Schubert, “Counterpoint Pedagogy in the Renaissance,” in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, ed. Thomas Christensen (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 519. 168 Pedelty, Musical Ritual in Mexico, 58. On Mexico City Cathedral’s 1585 constitution, see pp. 70-74 of this study. 169 Lusitano, Del arte de contrapunto, fol. 38v, p. 213.

each other to know their respective limits, so that they can sing easily together.170

Once all this is achieved, Lusitano writes, the singers can choose which improvisational techniques and vocal combination they will use:

The third thing that they must know is which voices will improvise together, because there is a way of singing between the soprano and the tenor with the plainchant in the bass, and [for many other combinations].171

These passages in Lusitano highlight the human side of improvisation, but they also make clear how much preparation was needed.

III. Improvisation and Composition

Finally, although many Renaissance treatises focus on the distinction between improvisation and composition, some musicologists have highlighted the continuity between the two activities. As Cumming argues, studying improvisation gives us new insights into the compositional processes and choices of Renaissance composers, for whom improvised music could serve as underlying structures or building blocks for compositions.172 The ability to improvise polyphony would allow composers to work more rapidly and efficiently. In evaluating Heinrich Isaac’s (1450-1517) reputation for composing quickly, Jessie Ann Owens concludes from her analysis of his manuscripts that he could compose “without needing many written stages.”173 Cumming argues that

170 Ibid., fol. 38v, p. 213. 171 Ibid., fols. 38v-39r, p. 214. 172 Julie E. Cumming, “Renaissance Improvisation and Musicology,” Music Theory Online 19, no. 2 (2013). http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.13.19.2/mto.13.19.2.cumming.html 173 Jessie Ann Owens, Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition 1450-1600 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 274.

34 this would have been possible because of Isaac’s ability to improvise, although Owens herself does not draw this connection.174 It is important to note, however, that theorists did not see improvisation as merely a stepping-stone towards composition. In fact,

Lusitano, Bermudo and the Spanish theorist Diego Ortiz (c. 1510 – c. 1570) all comment that learning principles of composition will improve one’s ability to improvise.175

Bermudo writes: “it is good for [an improviser] to dedicate himself to composing polyphony, because then he will have in his memory the movements that each voice can make.”176

While this study concerns itself chiefly with oral improvisation rather than composed music in Mexico, the connection between the two is crucial for our attempts to reconstruct this oral tradition in any level of detail. Documents from church records and legislation in colonial Mexico demonstrate that improvisation took place, but the paucity of information about the availability of music treatises in New Spain in the sixteenth century makes it difficult to evaluate what kind of techniques were taught and employed.

New information in this regard may eventually come to light. In the meantime, the methodology of this study will be to examine the written music of the period to search for examples of improvisational techniques used in their composition. In turn, this may give us some sense of what devices were at the disposal of musicians in day-to-day musical life. Before we can get to this point, however, we must understand more fully the history of musical pedagogy in New Spain.

174 Cumming and Schubert, “The Origins of Pervasive Imitation,” in The Cambridge History of Fifteenth-Century Music, ed. Anna Maria Busse Berger and Jesse Rodin, in press (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 219. 175 Canguilhem, “Lusitano et la pratique du contrepoint chanté,” 22. 176 Bermudo, Declaración, bk. 5, chap. 26, fol. cxxxiv.

Chapter III: Music and the Franciscan Mission

As Leonardo de Argensola’s discussion of Olmedo’s Easter Mass reveals, the history of improvisation in colonial Mexico can be traced back even to the earliest days of Cortés’ expedition. These improvising singers were soldiers, further demonstrating how widespread improvisation was as a practice in sixteenth-century Europe. As Stevenson points out, however, Cortés’ musicians and chaplains had to concern themselves primarily with the Spanish troops, rather than the indigenous populations.177 Thus, the history of Renaissance musical pedagogy in Mexico begins a few years later, with the arrival of Pedro de Gante and his Flemish contemporaries in 1523.

Broadly speaking, we can identify two different sets of musical teachers in the first century of conquest: on one hand, the regular clergy, who ran native colegios attached to their monasteries; on the other, the teachers and musicians under the auspices of the secular clergy, who were responsible for the choir schools affiliated with the cathedrals. This study will discuss both institutions in turn. For the sake of brevity, however, it limits itself to Franciscan colegios in the case of the former, and Mexico City

Cathedral in the case of the latter.

Overview

This chapter describes the founding of the first Franciscan schools by Pedro de Gante and other missionaries, as well as the founding of the Seminary of Tlatelolco. I outline the

177 Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 155.

36 curricula at these schools, and present discussions of music found in Franciscan reports, letters, and chronicles, focusing especially on Fray Jacobo de Testera’s letter from 1533.

Finally, I analyze In ilhuicac cihuapille, one of two extant polyphonic works in Nahuatl from the sixteenth century.

A Note on Sources

Our principal sources of information about the Franciscan mission can be divided into two categories. The first comprises the letters by the mendicants, written either to communicate with each other or to report back to authorities in Spain such as the king or the Council of the Indies. The second comprises the larger chronicles of life in New

Spain. These accounts were written by various missionaries for various purposes.

Although the chronicles bear no formal relationship to each other, later writers often borrowed from earlier works.

This study has already referenced some of the accounts by the Dominican Las

Casas; a few other noteworthy chroniclers are listed below. Fray Toribio de Benavente

(1490-1565),178 who took on the Nahuatl word for “poor,” Motolinía, as his name, arrived as one of the group of Franciscans known as the Twelve in 1524.179 He wrote two extant chronicles: Historia de los Indios, drafted between 1536 and 1541, and

Memoriales, which is more difficult to date accurately, according to Stevenson.180 Fray

Géronimo de Mendieta (1525-1604) borrowed from Motolinía when he wrote the

Historica Ecclesiastica Indiana on commission from the Franciscan Superior General

178 Ibid., 86. All dates in this paragraph are from Stevenson unless otherwise indicated. 179 On the Twelve, see p. 8 of this study. 180 Ibid., 95-96.

37 between 1571 and 1596.181 In turn, Fray Juan de Torquemada’s (1565-1624) work

Monarchia Indiana drew on both of them.182

Diego Valadés’s (1533-1582) Rhetorica Christiana (1579),183 which includes memoirs of the Franciscan mission and descriptions of preconquest Mexica society, gained fame as the first book published in Europe by an American-born author. Valadés had been a student under Pedro de Gante in the 1540s and 1550s.184 However, the most famous account of New Spain is probably the Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva

España by Bernardino de Sahagún (c. 1500-1590), who taught at Franciscan colleges185 and who is considered today as a pioneering ethnologist. This study does not focus on any one of these works in particular, but each offers valuable insights into musical life in the first century of New Spain.

A Note on Musical Examples

The source for each musical example in this study is indicated in its caption. In all cases in the transcriptions a half note is equivalent to a semibreve in the original. I have standardized the names of the parts to soprano, alto, tenor and bass.

181 Ibid., 111. 182 Ibid., 85-86. 183 These dates are drawn from Emilio Ros-Fábregas, “‘Imagine all the people…’: polyphonic flowers in the hands and voices of Indians in 16th Century Mexico,” Early Music 40, no. 2 (May 2012): 181. 184 Lara, Christian Texts for Aztecs, 63. 185 Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 100-102.

Pedro de Gante and the First Schools

Undoubtedly the most influential Franciscan missionary in sixteenth-century New Spain was Pedro de Gante (c. 1479-1572). An illegitimate relative of Charles V, Gante was born in Flanders, and George Heller speculates that he may have studied at the University of Louvain before entering the Franciscan order.186 However, after hearing of Cortés’ discovery, he petitioned Charles V to allow him to go to New Spain, where he arrived with the friars Juan de Tecto and Juan de Aora on August 13, 1523.187 As José Maria

Kobayashi reports, although the friars may have originally intended to make their way to

Tenochtitlán, they were forced to avoid the city because of a plague. Instead, they settled in Texcoco, where they established the first college for native youths in the former palace of the chieftain Nezahualpilli.188 With the arrival of the Apostolic Twelve the next year, the number of Franciscan schools soon grew to four, with the others in Tlaxcala,

Huexotzinco, and Tenochtitlán. After some three and a half years in Texcoco, Gante moved to Tenochtitlán, and in 1527 he founded the school San José de los Naturales next to the Franciscan church of San Francisco de Mexico.189

Each colegio was built adjacent to a Franciscan monastery, or convento. In turn, each convento was built near or on the foundations of former Mexica temples. As

Edgerton describes, the chapels of the conventos were usually open in order to

186 George Heller, “Fray Pedro de Gante Pioneer American Music Educator,” Journal of Research in Music Education 27, no. 1 (1979): 23. 187 Ibid., 24. 188 José María Kobayashi, La educación como conquista (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1985), 166-7. 189 Ibid., 171-178.

39 accommodate the immense native crowds.190 Each included a large courtyard,191 called a patio, in which the natives could receive religious instruction. These patios also held liturgical processions and religious dramas performed by the students at the colegios.192

Students adorned the walls of the patios with murals depicting the Last Judgment and other Biblical episodes.193 Meanwhile, the porticos of the patios were used to administer

Confession.194 The sheer size of the conventos often made them more suitable than the churches of the secular clergy for holding large public events and worship. For example, the memorial procession for Charles V in New Spain was held in San José de los

Naturales rather than Mexico City Cathedral.195

While the patios of the conventos were open to all, the adjacent colegios admitted only the sons of Mesoamerican nobility.196 The mendicants believed that if they converted the elite members of Nahua society, the lower classes would follow suit.

Moreover, these educated elites would be able to assist them in Christianization.197 The colegios consisted of a school, a dormitory, a refectory, and a chapel. According to

Kobayashi, most early accounts of colegios report an average population of about six hundred students. 198 They were made to observe the schedule of the mendicants:

190 Edgerton and Lara, Theatres of Conversion, 47. 191 Edgerton describes them as roughly the size of a dozen tennis courts. Edgerton and Lara, Theatres of Conversion, 52. 192 Ibid., 64. 193 Lara, Christian Texts for Aztecs, 108. 194 Ibid., 104. 195 Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 156. 196 As Kobayashi describes, schools were also established for the daughters of Nahua elites, but met with considerable resistance. These schools for girls sought partly to inculcate European ideas of family life and to undermine the Nahua practice of polygamy. However, polygamy formed an important part of the Nahua economy, since wives performed many duties and could be bartered for other goods. See Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, 203-206, and Lara, Christian Texts for Aztecs, 116. 197 Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, 158. 198 Ibid., 177.

40 according to Sahagún, this included celebrating Matins at midnight and Lauds at dawn.

The rest of the day alternated between study and religious ritual.199

Although the central focus of the colegios was the Christianizing of its students, they also received instruction in a wide array of subjects. In addition to teaching reading and writing, Gante and his contemporaries taught mechanical arts such as shoemaking, carpentry, masonry, painting,200 sewing, and embroidery.201 Music was especially privileged, because it was essential for religious services. For the most part, the

Franciscans kept watch to minimize students’ contact with the outside world, fearing that they would revert to previous customs.202 However, Gante reports in a letter to Charles V that he sent his students out each week to teach Christian doctrine to the residents of neighbouring towns. In some cases, the isolation and indoctrination of these youths caused them to turn violence on the rest of the native population: for instance, a group of students had to be punished by the friars for stoning a priest of the Nahua god

Ometotchtli to death in the market of Tlaxcala.203

The Seminary at Tlatelolco

In spite of, or perhaps even because of, incidents such as those at Tlaxcala, the bishop

Juan de Zumárraga encouraged the creation of an educated native clergy that would be able to proselytize the Nahua.204 The Franciscans elected Jacobo de Testera to oversee the

199 Ibid., 178-180. 200 Ibid., 195. 201 Heller, “Pedro de Gante,” 24-25. 202 Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, 180-181. 203 Lara, Christian Texts for Aztecs, 61. 204 Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, 212.

41 project,205 which was also aided by royal funding.206 In January of 1536, the colegio

Santa Cruz de Santiago Tlatelolco was officially inaugurated with a class of about sixty students. Zumárraga himself interviewed candidates for the seminary, who were selected from the students at San José de los Naturales. The seminary included all of the accoutrements of the other colegios, but also included a library – while most natives were not allowed to own books, exceptions were to be made for the students at Santa Cruz.207

W. Michael Mathes has catalogued the inventories of the library at Santa Cruz made in the sixteenth century: among the names of authors are Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch,

Boethius, Cato, Cicero, Virgil, Quintilian, and Aquinas.208 Other works, such as Aesop’s

Fables and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, were translated into Nahuatl by its students.209

As at the other colegios, students at Santa Cruz lived according to the monastic regimen and observed the canonical hours. Students generally entered between the ages of eight and twelve, and would study for three years. Occasionally, some students were permitted to remain after the age of fifteen if they could assist in teaching.210 This was the case for Miguel de Cuauhtitlan, who became renowned as a grammar teacher. The other instructors were Franciscans. The French friar Arnaldo de Bassacio taught reading, writing, music, rhetoric, logic, philosophy and theology.211 Sahagún taught subjects like

205 Ibid., 207. 206 W. Michael Mathes, The America’s First Academic Library: Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco (Sacramento: California State Library Foundation, 1985), 8. 207 Ibid., 14. 208 Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, 271. 209 Mathes, The America’s First Academic Library, 19. 210 Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, 216-217. 211 Mathes, The America’s First Academic Library, 15.

42 music and medicine, and also employed students as researchers and translators for his own studies of preconquest Mexica culture.212

For a variety of reasons, Zumárraga’s dream of a native clergy never came to fruition. Zumárraga himself lamented that the students preferred the idea of married lay life to the celibate life of a priest.213 In 1545, a plague took the lives of several of the instructors, while New Spain’s strict censorship policies hindered the work of librarians.

The idea of a native priesthood also faced considerable opposition from the Dominican order, which was reinforced in 1539 when a former seminarian Carlos de Texcoco was executed for idolatry.214 In 1555, the first Mexican Provincial Council officially prohibited the creation of an indigenous priesthood.215 Nevertheless, under Sahagún and others, Santa Cruz continued on as a center of higher education until the seventeenth century.216

Franciscan Musical Pedagogy: Preliminary Assessment and Speculation

What was musical pedagogy like at Franciscan schools like San José de los Naturales or

Santa Cruz de Santiago Tlatelolco? Few documents from the institutions themselves provide us with information about music instruction. Only one book of music, titled Arte de canto llano (“The Art of Plainchant”) by an unidentified author, appears in the 1572 inventory of Santa Cruz.217 Scholars must therefore rely mostly on the letters of the

212 Ibid., 29. 213 Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, 225. 214 Mathes, The America’s First Academic Library, 15-20. 215 Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, 250. 216 Mathes, The America’s First Academic Library, 36. 217 Ibid., 30.

43 mendicants themselves. At the same time, Timothy D. Watkins cautions that we must attend to possible biases or inflated claims in the testimony of the missionaries, since their letters to the Spanish court would wish to present their work “in the best possible light.”218

Although this study centers on the transmission and adoption of the European musical tradition, it is first important to emphasize that more traditional forms of Nahua music-making continued to thrive in the early sixteenth century. Indeed, the Franciscans themselves quickly recognized the important role that music played in Nahua religion, and imagined how they might make use of it in their attempts to proselytize. In a 1557 letter to Philip II, Gante explains why he began setting Christian doctrine to music:

And when I saw that all of their songs were dedicated to their gods, I composed solemn songs about the Law of God and the faith, and how God became man to save humankind, and how the Virgin Mary was born pure and immaculately. And about two months before Christmas, I told them to paint their blankets to dance with them, because this is how they used them, with their dances and their songs in costumes of happiness, sorrow, or victory.219

The Jesuit José de Acosta (1539-1600) in his Historía natural y moral reports that the friars in Peru were encouraged by Pope Gregory to allow the natives to hold traditional celebrations provided they were in worship of God and the saints. Accordingly, Acosta writes, the missionaries set Christian teachings to the native style of singing (“en su modo de canto”), which the natives took great pleasure in.220 Lastly, as Emilio Ros-Fábregas

218 Timothy, D. Watkins, “Performance Issues in Early Colonial Mexican Polyphony: a Critical Examination of Some Colonial Accounts,” in Performance Practice: Issues and Approaches, ed. Timothy D. Watkins (Ann Arbor: Steglein Publishing, 2009), 46. 219 Pedro de Gante to Philip II, 23 June 1557, in Nueva colección de documentos para la historía de Mexico, 2:224. 220 José de Acosta, Obras, ed. F. Mateos (Madrid: Atlas, 1954), bk. 6, chap. 28, p. 206. Stevenson has also suggested that Sahagún had Nahua melodies in mind for the 333 Christian songs

44 documents, the chronicle Anales de Juan Bautista documents a feast of St Francis in

1567 in which native musicians in the presence of Gante sang both Renaissance polyphony and cantares in Nahuatl.221

More importantly for our purposes, the Anales de Juan Bautista also attests that

Nahua musicians were trained in canto de órgano (i.e. composed vocal polyphony). As

Martín de Valencia, the leader of the Apostolic Twelve, explained in a 1532 letter, part of the initial motivation behind teaching the European musical tradition was so that natives could better participate in church services:

We work a great deal with [the students], teaching them to read and write and sing plainchant (canto llano) and polyphony (órgano), and to sing the canonical hours and assist at Mass, and we instill all the good Christian customs.222

In 1568, the Council of the Indies sent over an inspector named Juan de Ovando to see the progress of the missionary endeavours. 223 The Franciscan report prepared for him included a lengthy section on music:

Masses and the Divine Offices are usually sung well in canto llano and canto de órgano in all of the churches attached to the monasteries. In some towns where there is more interest and greater possibility, the services of the church are sung with as much solemnity and impressive music as in many Cathedral churches in Spain.224

The Ovando report also highlights the widespread use of instruments in music-making:

contained his work Psalmodia Christiana, but Lorenzo Candelaria contests this claim. Candelaria, “Psalmodia Christiana,” 626. 221 Ros-Fábregas, “‘Imagine all the people,’” 183. 222 Valencia et al to Charles V, 17 November 1532, in Cartas de Indias, 1:56. 223 Ibid., 162. 224 “Relación particular y descripción de toda la Provincia del Santo Evangelio, que es de la Orden de Sant Francisco en la Nueva España,” in Nueva colección de documentos para la historía de Mexico, 2:65. Translation by Watkins, “Performance Issues,” 49.

Canto de órgano is performed in all the churches, and the accompaniment of flutes and chirimias is very common. In many places shawms, crumhorns, viols and other types of instruments are used and there are already some organs; all these instruments are played by the Indians.225

As regards the calibre of the native musicians, both Gante and his student Valadés provide laudatory reviews. In Rhetorica Christiana, Valadés writes that the natives sing

“in very joyful harmony” (in iucundissima harmonia).226 In a 1532 letter to Charles V,

Gante makes favourable comparisons with the best musicians of Europe: “there are singers who could sing in Your Majesty’s chapel so well that if you did not see them you would not believe it.”227

Watkins, however, is suspicious of this claim, contending that Gante may have exaggerated the success of the Franciscan mission. Watkins cites a more critical assessment of native musicianship by Motolinía in his Memoriales:

The third year [the friars] began to teach them singing and some people laughed and made fun of it and others disturbed those who were teaching them, saying the Indians would never learn, both because they seemed to be singing off pitch, and because they seemed to have weak voices. It is true that they do not have voices as strong or as sweet as the Spaniards. Probably this comes about because they go barefooted, with their chests so poorly covered with such thin shirts. But since there are so many of them to choose from, the Indian choirs are all good.228

225 Ibid., 65-66. Quoted as translated in Watkins, “Performance Issues,” 53. 226 Diego Valadés, Rhetorica christiana (Petrugia, 1579), 227. Book digitized by Google from the Getty Research Institute, accessed October 23rd, 2015. https://archive.org/details/rhetoricachristi00vala. Valadés does precede this, however, by saying that it would be strange to compare the voices of the Nahua with the voices of the Spanish. 227 Pedro de Gante to Charles V, 31 October 1532, in Cartas de Indias, 1:52. 228 Toribio Motolinía, Memoriales e Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España, ed. Fidel de Lejarza (Madrid: Atlas, 1970), 95-96. Quoted as translated in Watkins, “Performance Issues,” 46- 47.

As Watkins argues, the Ovando report also comments on the relative feebleness of the natives as singers: “In each of the choirs there are ordinarily at least fifteen or sixteen Indians, because they have thin voices and cannot be heard if they are not a large number and also because they both sing and play as necessary, and for this reason need to rest.”229 Finally, Watkins cites the pronouncements of the first Mexican Provincial

Council, which decree that musical standards must be raised to limit the number of native musicians:

[We shall] limit the number of singers throughout our jurisdiction so that no more than are necessary shall continue to spend their time simply in singing. Those who are permitted to continue must be able to sing plainchant intelligently. They shall sing polyphonic music only when their singing conforms to the standards which we consider acceptable.230

Against these claims by Watkins we can raise three counter-arguments. Firstly, as

Ros-Fábregas points out, reputable choirs in Europe also occasionally received harsh criticism. Ros-Fábregas here cites Richard Sherr, who describes the reception of the papal choir in Rome:

These people definitely did not have “sonorous” voices; adjectives used to describe them include ‘harsh’ (aspra), ‘hoarse’ (rauca), ‘dissonant’ (disona: ‘untuned’ – i.e. unable to keep the pitch?), and they are occasionally associated with the noun imbecillitas (‘weakness’).231

229 “Relación particular y descripción,” 65. Quoted as translated in Watkins, “Performance Issues,” 50. 230 Concilios provinciales primero, y segundo, celebrados en la muy noble, y muy leal ciudad de México, (Mexico, 1769), chap. 66, p. 141. Book digitized by Google from the Getty Research Institute. Accessed October 22nd, 2015. https://archive.org/details/conciliosprovinc00cath. Quoted as translated in Watkins, “Performance Issues,” 50-51. 231 Richard Sherr, “Competence and incompetence in the papal choir in the age of Palestrina,” Early Music 22, no. 4 (1994): 609. In Richard Sherr, Music and Musicians in Renaissance Rome and Other Courts (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1999). See also Ros-Fábregas, “‘Imagine all the people,’” 181.

Secondly, as even the Ovando report mentions, the large number of native singers can be partly explained by the fact that some also played instruments in the service. Finally,

Watkins’ reference to the 1555 decrees neglects to raise the issue of taxation, since native musicians paid only half the tribute of the rest of the population.232 In 1561, Philip II explicitly identified this as a reason to limit the number of musicians:

And because I am told that the number of musicians and singers is increasing not only in large towns, but also in small ones…and in many towns instrumentalists and singers do not pay taxes, which increases the tax burden on the poor, and because in many towns they resist lawful authority… you should consult with the prelates and provincials [of missionary orders] and make the necessary reforms.233

Watkins’ central conclusion is that native singers relied on rote learning to perform European music, rather than developing any significant musical literacy. Once again he cites a passage from the Memoriales:

And as they are intelligent and have an excellent memory, most of what they sing they know by heart, so that if, as frequently happens, they turn too many pages or the book falls while they are singing, this does not prevent them from singing on from memory until they recover the book.234

For Watkins, this anecdote suggests that native musicians simply memorized their music rather than using the written-down parts in performance. It must be said, however, that the ability to memorize a piece of music does not preclude the ability to read it (and no doubt many a modern opera singer or pianist would scoff at the suggestion that they were

232 Jonathan Truitt, “Adopted Pedagogies: Nahua Incorporation of European Music and Theater in Colonial Mexico City,” The Americas 66 (2010): 321. 233 Genaro García and Carlos Pereyra, eds, Documentos inéditos ó muy raros para la historía de México (Mexico City: Vda de C. Beret, 1907), 141-142. Quoted as translated in Watkins, “Performance Issues,” 54-55. 234 Motolinía, Memoriales, 96. Quoted as translated in Watkins, “Performance Issues,” 48.

48 rote musicians for having committed their music to memory!). Watkins further argues that a lack of “in-depth understanding” on the part of native musicians is evidenced in the

Ovando report:

Every day the Indian singers and instrumentalists of the church gather in the schools to practice singing and playing the services that will be sung in church. It is best to continue this custom, first because they do not progress in their singing without this daily practice, and secondly because without practicing in the schools they soon forget what they have learned because they do not practice outside the schools.235

To Watkins, this passage refers to the need for continual repetition in order for the Nahua singers to be able to memorize the music for service. Once again, however, the passage is not fully explicit as to whether this practicing is in regards to the music itself, or in regards to techniques of singing and playing instruments. Regardless, it should be pointed out that European treatises also testify to the importance of frequent practice. Lusitano, when discussing the improvisation of canons, writes: “all these [rules and techniques] are subtle, so they must be well-known and present in the memory, because by being used, they become easy.”236

Ultimately, Watkins’ assertion, namely that the natives may have had a more difficult time learning a “foreign”237 music than is suggested in Gante’s letters, is perhaps a fair one. But his contention that they lacked musical literacy is contradicted by references in letters and chronicles to musical compositions by the Nahua. Reproduced below is an example from Torquemada in his Monarquía Indiana:

235 “Relación particular y descripción,” 65. Quoted as translated in Watkins, “Performance Issues,” 48-49. 236 Lusitano, Del arte de contrapunto, fol. 47r, p. 238. 237 Watkins, “Performance Issues,” 49.

A few years after [the natives] learned to sing, they began to compose, from their genius, villancicos in polyphony [canto de órgano] in four voices, and some masses and other works that were shown to skilled Spanish singers, who said that…they could not be [composed] by Indians.238

Evidence of Improvisation: Testera’s 1533 Letter

Watkins’s speculation over the calibre of Nahua musicians set aside, the letters, chronicles and reports of the Franciscans make it abundantly apparent that Nahua singers learned both canto llano and canto de órgano. Is there any evidence that they also learned canto de contrapunto, that is to say, improvisation? One friar who does make explicit reference to this is the aforementioned Fray Jacobo de Testera, who oversaw the founding of the first college at Tlatelolco.239 The document in which he does so is a letter, dated the 6th of May 1533 from the convento of Rexucinco, and addressed to Charles V.

Although Testera is identified as the principal author, the letter is signed by eight friars in total: they are Testera, Fray Christobal de Çamora, Fray Juan de Ribas, Fray Antonio de

Çibdadrrodrigo, Fray Francisco de Soto, Valencia, Fray Francisco Ximenez, and Frater

Lodovicus de Fuensalida.

Testera begins by explaining that he wishes to describe the great successes that the friars and Bishop Zumarraga have had in spreading the catholic faith in New Spain.240

However, the letter quickly shifts in focus to counter the malicious misinformation being told about Mesoamericans: “our adversary des not cease to give stories with untrue

238 Juan de Torquemada, Monarquía Indiana : de los veinte y un libros, ed. Miguel León-Portilla (Mexico City: National Autonomous University of Mexico, 1977), vol. 5, bk. 17, chap. 4, p. 320. 239 Mathes, The America’s First Academic Library, 9. 240 Jacobo de Testera and others to Charles V, 6 May 1533, in Cartas de Indias, 1:62.

50 reports, wishing to make [us] believe that the Indians of New Spain are incapable

[incapaces].”241 These critics, Testera continues, have neither taught nor worked alongside the natives, nor have they learned Nahuatl.242 Like Las Casas, Testera adopts as rhetorical strategy an appeal to lived experience.

Next, Testera argues that the false religions of the Mesoamericans are not a reflection on the peoples themselves, but a manifestation of God’s “great patience.”243

After all, he writes, is it not the work of the apostles to bring the true faith to the gentiles?

Did not the tribes of Israel at one time succumb to idolatry? Testera cites the letter of

Paul to the Romans, saying that they “were not made to be slaves, but were called to the faith and received mercy.”244

Turning finally to the natives themselves, Testera emphasizes that the supposed

“natural incapacity” of the Nahua is readily disproven by their skills as architects, smiths, and painters, and their discipline in economic, political and ethical life.245 His most glowing praise, however, is reserved for the students of the Franciscan schools. This is the only occasion, so far as I have been able to find, in which a friar clarifies that the musical gifts of the Nahua include not only the ability to sing plainchant and polyphony, but also to improvise:

What can we say of the sons of the natives of this land? They write, they read, they sing canto llano and de órgano and contrapunto, they make books of music, they teach others, they rejoice in ecclesiastical song, they preach to the town the sermons that we preach, and they say these with great spirit.246

241 Ibid., 62-63. 242 Ibid., 63. 243 Ibid., 63. 244 Ibid., 64. 245 Ibid., 65. 246 Ibid., 65.

Given Testera’s reference to the Nahua students preaching in the towns, his allusion to Zumárraga, and the timing of his writing in the early 1530s, it is tempting to see this letter as an attempt to build momentum and procure royal support for the founding of the seminary in 1536. However, the letter’s central focus on discrediting a view of Mesoamericans as “naturally incapable” and its reference to the letter of Paul also situate it within the slavery debates that reached their pinnacle with Las Casas and

Sepúlveda. Once again, music here plays a role in demonstrating the intelligence and humanity of the indigenous residents of New Spain. But whereas Las Casas spoke only generally about the musical talents of the Mesoamericans,247 Testera here makes a specific reference to improvisation.

What can we make of Testera’s letter? Does it provide enough evidence, on its own, to support the claim that the natives of New Spain were improvising? On the one hand, its date of 1533 meant that Franciscan musical pedagogy had been ongoing for several years by the time the letter was written. Moreover, given Testera’s role as overseer of the Franciscan education, he would have had intimate knowledge of what was being taught in the schools. On the other hand, given the letter’s uniqueness, perhaps we must (like Watkins) cast a suspicious eye on its contents and postulate that Testera exaggerated his claims. Furthermore, Motolinía provides contradictory information in another passage on native composers: “Some native youths have composed in polyphony villancicos of four voices, and villancicos in their language, and this seems to signal great ability, because no one has taught them to compose, nor to improvise (contrapunto).”248

247 See pp. 19-20 of this study. 248 Motolinía, Memoriales, 96.

Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Polyphony

With written testimony providing seemingly contradictory evidence, it is tempting to look for clues in musical sources. Unfortunately, as Ros-Fábregas laments, no music is extant from the years in which Gante was teaching.249 Instead, scholars have fixated on a pair of polyphonic works contained in the Valdés Codex, a folio from 1599 named after its one- time owner Canon Octaviano Valdés of Mexico City.250 These works, both dedicated to the Virgin Mary, are the only extant pieces of polyphony in Nahuatl from sixteenth- century New Spain.251

Authorship for both works is attributed to a “Don Hernando Franco.” As shall be discussed later in this study, Hernando Franco (1532 – 1585) was perhaps the most significant musician in New Spain in the sixteenth century, and served as chapelmaster at

Mexico City Cathedral from 1575 to 1585. However, it seems unlikely that he was the composer of these two works. Firstly, as Juan Manuel Lara Cárdenas writes, the compositional style differs greatly from the other works attributed to Franco.252 Secondly, as Stevenson explains, it is very unlikely that Franco had the right to use the title ‘Don’ if he were in fact the Spanish composer and chapelmaster, since the honorific that was given only to members of the highest classes in Spain. Thus, Stevenson suggests that the

249 Ros-Fábregas, “‘Imagine all the people,’” 177. 250 Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 204. 251 The Valdés Codex (MéxVal) is currently housed in the P. Hector Rogel Library of the Seminario Mayor Conciliar of Mexico City. Marín López, “Música y músicos,” Appendix V, 877. The two works by Don Hernando Franco were first brought to light by Gabriel Saldívar in his Historia de la música en México (Mexico City, 1934). So far as I have been able to ascertain, no modern editions of the works have been made. Thus this study uses the transcription published in Stevenson, Music and Aztec and Inca Territory, 208-219. 252 Juan Manuel Lara Cárdenas, “Polifonías novohispanas en lengua náhuatl. Las plegarias a la Virgen del Códice Valdés de 1599,” in Enriquez and Covarrubias, Coloquio Musicat, vol. 1: Música, catedral y sociedad, 140.

53 works were composed by a member of the Nahua nobility, perhaps one who studied under Franco and adopted his name at baptism. The title ‘Don’ would then serve as a reminder that the convert was a member of the native aristocracy, a practice that had many precedents in New Spain.253

It is not surprising that the earliest extant examples of Nahuatl polyphony call upon the Virgin Mary as intercessor, given the extreme popularity of the Marian Cult in

New Spain. The first of these, In ilhuicac cihuapille, begins with an intonation in the soprano before moving into five-part homophony (Example 3.1). For the majority of the piece, the highest soprano line is the only part to sing more than one note on a syllable.

However, the climactic final four measures see the first soprano and alto sing rhythmically parallel melismas above an ornamented bass (Example 3.2).254 Stevenson comments on the melodic attractiveness and rhythmic intensity of In ilhuicac cihuapille, but highlights its numerous illegal parallel intervals.255 Stevenson uses these contrapuntal errors as evidence to justify an assertion that students in colegios learned how to read mensural notation in order to sing polyphony, but not the rules of counterpoint.256

253 Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 205-206. 254 I do not reproduce here the other piece of sixteenth-century Nahuatl polyphony, Dios itlaconantzine, due to limitations of space. It begins with a significantly longer intonation, after which pairs of alternating duets transition into four-part polyphony. In the middle section, staggered imitative entries are followed by a brief trio in the upper three voices, before returning to the music from the opening. 255 Stevenson writes: “Don Hernando [shows] a certain clumsiness in his part-writing that a harmony student can detect.” Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 207. In In ilhuicac cihuapille, there are illegal parallel intervals in m.1 between first soprano and bass; m. 2 between tenor and bass; m.5 between first soprano and bass; mm. 5-6 between tenor and bass; m. 9 between second soprano and tenor; mm. 12-13 between tenor and bass; mm. 15-16 between first soprano and bass; mm. 19-20 between alto and bass. Dios itlaconantzine, meanwhile, features two instances of parallel unisons between the lower two parts (mm. 5-6; mm. 24-25). 256 Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 208. For a full transcription of these two hymns, see Ibid., 208-219.

Example 3.1. In ilhuicac cihuapille, mm. 1-11. As transcribed in Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 208-209. The outermost parts inside each box sing illegal parallel perfect intervals.

Example 3.2. In ilhuicac cihuapille, mm. 21-24. As transcribed in Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 211.

Lara Cárdenas contests Stevenson’s conclusion that In ilhuicac cihuapille demonstrates a contrapuntal naiveté on the part of native composers. There is no evidence, he writes, that a native student ever studied with Franco.257 Moreover, the mere fact that the works are in Nahuatl does not prove indigenous authorship, since others like

Gaspar Fernandes, the Portuguese composer at Puebla Cathedral, also set pieces to

Nahuatl texts.258 It is important to note, however, that Lara Cárdenas does not address

Stevenson’s comments regarding the use of the title “Don.” Responding to the suggestion that the parallel fifths might represent an element of Nahua music integrating itself into

European style, Lara Cárdenas argues that examples of musical syncretism between indigenous and Renaissance music would likely be more marked than mere interval

257 Juan Manuel Lara Cárdenas, “Polifonías novohispanas,” 140. 258 Ibid., 142.

56 successions. Instead, he suggests, the errors are likely on the part of the copyist.259

Ultimately, with so little extant works of music to assess, it is difficult to glean much from analysis.

Conclusion

As this chapter has shown, the precise nature of the musical pedagogy of the Franciscan schools during the sixteenth century remains unclear. Little evidence survives in the form of school inventories or musical compositions. Meanwhile, the testimony of the mendicants can appear contradictory. However, we must remain cognizant that these letters and chronicles provide only a few glimpses into an enormous pedagogical enterprise that spanned many cities and many decades. Testera’s isolated reference to canto de contrapunto is perhaps not enough evidence to support a conclusion that improvisation played a role in Franciscan musical instruction. But it is even more difficult to accept Watkins’ assertion that natives became only rote musicians, given numerous references in contemporary documents not only to improvisation, but also to composition.

It is of course possible that future research will bring to light new evidence to clarify our present uncertainties. But scholars are also fortunate that the picture is much clearer for churches of the secular clergy such as Mexico City Cathedral, whose records have been largely preserved to the present day. Whereas the Franciscan schools were

259 Ibid., 142. It should be noted, of course, that one does find the occasional parallel fifth in Josquin or JS Bach. Moreover, theorists like Zarlino allowed for some contrapuntal laxities in certain circumstances (albeit more typically in regards to improvisation). See Schubert, “Counterpoint Pedagogy in the Renaissance,” 519.

57 primarily directed towards Christianization, the chapelmaster at Mexico City Cathedral had the dual task “to praise God in a dignified way through music created by the leaders of the musical chapel, and to guide, in the right way, the musical tastes of the Mexican people.”260 As we shall see, this musical taste included not only canto llano and canto de organo, but also contrapunto.

260 Mann, “Opus Dei – ‘The Work of God’: Franciscan and Jesuit Music,” in Religion in New Spain, ed. Susan Schroeder and Stafford Poole (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007), 3.

Chapter IV: Improvisation at Mexico City Cathedral

Overview

This chapter examines the written evidence for contrapuntal improvisation at Mexico

City Cathedral. I outline the history of the cathedral and its musicians, and define the terminology of Renaissance music as it appears in cathedral documents. I analyze references to improvisation in the cathedral constitution and chapter acts. Finally, I assess a letter by a late sixteenth-century musician discussing the musical program at the cathedral.

Introduction

In the churches of the secular clergy, music became a professional discipline: the chapelmaster, singers, and instrumentalists were all remunerated for their services, albeit with a substantial disparity in pay between Spanish musicians and indigenous or other non-white musicians.261 As Goldman notes, the professionalization of music sometimes posed its own problems: in 1540, a shortage of funds forced Mexico City Cathedral to temporarily dismiss its singers of polyphony.262 On the whole, however, Marín López observes a more or less continual growth in the musical program of the cathedral until the mid-seventeenth century.263

261 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:157. 262 Goldman, “The Matins Responsory,” 47. 263 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:166.

A Note on Sources

The 1585 constitution of Mexico City Cathedral, written under Archbishop Pedro Moya de Contreras (c. 1528-1591), is perhaps the most thorough description of the organization of the cathedral’s musical practices. The constitution was drawn up during the meetings of the Third Mexican Provincial Council (January 20th to October 20th 1585)264 and as such has been published as an appendix to the legislation of the Council in an 1859 edition.265

A second source of information about activities at Mexico City Cathedral is the archives of the cathedral, called the Archivo del Cabildo Catedral Metropolitano de

Mexico (ACCMM). The archive contains the acts of the cathedral chapter (Actas de cabildo), recording decisions such as the hiring of new employees, as well as other important documents for the history of the cathedral. It is now held in the Biblioteca

Turriana, adjacent to the current cathedral. In recent years, a group of scholars called

Musicat, affiliated with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), have undertaken a digitization project for the archive. Many of the chapter acts are now accessible online.266

Javier Marín López’s 2007 doctoral thesis Música y músicos entre dos mundos

(“Music and Musicians between Two Worlds”) is the most comprehensive study to date on Mexico City Cathedral. Much of my contextualization of improvisation at the cathedral draws on his exhaustive research in the archive. In particular, Marín López’s

264 Poole, “Opposition to the Third Mexican Council,” 114. 265 Basilio Manuel Arrillaga Y Barcárcel and Mariano Galván Rivera, eds, Concilio III Provincial mexicano (Mexico City, 1859), Book digitized by Google from the library of the University of Michigan. Accessed September 23rd, 2015. https://archive.org/details/concilioiiiprov00provgoog 266 See http://musicat.unam.mx/v2013/index.html

60 catalogue of the books of polyphony owned by Mexico City Cathedral gives us a sense not only of what repertoire was performed in the cathedral, but also of which church services would have employed polyphonic music.267

I. The founding of Mexico City Cathedral

Pope Clement VII created a new diocese in Mexico City in 1530, at the request of

Charles V. The building itself had been under construction since 1524 on the orders of

Cortés. It was finished in 1532,268 although it opened its doors as early as 1530.269 The original church structure was built near the grounds of the Great Temple of the Mexica.

In 1554, plans were made to construct a new building on the site, modeled on Seville

Cathedral. These plans were scrapped, however, when the foundations began to sink into

Lake Texcoco, and new designs had to be drawn up.270

The first stone of the current cathedral was laid in 1573 by architect Claudio de

Arciniega, and the cathedral was officially consecrated in 1667, although work continued until 1813.271 As Marín López analyzes, Mexico City Cathedral followed the design of

Spanish churches by placing the choir in the central nave and in front of the main altar.

This meant that music played both an aural and visual part of church ritual.272 In addition, the size of the choir and the construction of a loft for the organist and instrumentalists

267 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:104. 268 Edgar Nebot García, “Materiales arqueológicos recuperados a un costado de la Catedral Metropolitano de la Ciudad de México,” Revista Española de Antropología Americana 42, no. 1 (2012): 47. 269 Pedelty, Musical Ritual in Mexico City, 48. 270 Goldman, “The Matins Responsory,” 46, 7n. 271 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:86-88. 272 Ibid., 1:88-89.

61 allowed for the division of musicians into groups, and the performance of polychoral music.273

In 1534, Bishop Zumárraga wrote the first constitution of Mexico City Cathedral, called the Erecto ecclesiae mexicanae, which outlined the hierarchy of offices in the cathedral.274 In addition to a bishop, each cathedral had a chapter, which assumed the responsibilities of a bishop whenever the office was vacant. At the head of the chapter was the dean, who oversaw the activities of the rest of the chapter and acted as its disciplinarian. Next was the archdeacon, who amongst other duties assisted the bishop in ordination. Below these were the offices of the cantor (chantre), who oversaw music at the cathedral; the schoolmaster, who oversaw education; and the treasurer, who oversaw financial matters. At a lower level still were the canons, who celebrated the daily services, and finally the racineros and medio-racineros, who did not have to be priests but who assisted at the Eucharist.275 Zumárraga’s constitution also outlined positions outside of the chapter, such as the cathedral organist. However, Marín López explains, the original chapter was only able to fill the positions of dean, archdeacon, cantor, and schoolmaster, and only five canon positions.276

Music in the Cathedral: An Overview

While Zumárraga’s 1534 constitution created the musical positions of only cantor and organist, several other musical offices were added over the course of the sixteenth

273 Ibid., 1:97-99. 274 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:32. 275 Schwaller, The Church and Clergy, 13-18. 276 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:32-35.

62 century. As Stevenson explains, the cantor oversaw the financial and administrative aspects of music in the cathedral, but was rarely a musician himself.277 Thus, in order for music to be performed properly, the cathedral employed a succentor (sochantre) who sang and taught plainchant (canto llano).278 The cathedral also employed a chapelmaster

(maestro de capilla), responsible for polyphonic music and also for training the boy singers (mozos de coro) until the cathedral hired a master of the children (maestro de infantes) in 1584. The first explicit reference in the chapter acts to a chapelmaster is in

1538, when Juan Xuárez was assigned to teach the children Christmas music.279 Marín

López’s table of the Mexico City Cathedral chapelmasters until the mid-sixteenth century is reproduced below (Table 4.1). Goldman speculates that Xuárez and his successor

Cristóbal de San Martin were clergymen with only basic knowledge of music, and that little polyphony would have been performed until the 1550s.280 Hernando Franco, whose music I will discuss later on, is today by far the most famous chapelmaster from this period.

Name of Maestro de Capilla Years in Office Unknown 1536-1539 Juan Xuárez 1539-1548 Cristóbal de San Martin 1548-1556? Lázaro de Álamo 1556-1570 Juan de Vitoria 1570-1574 Hernando Franco 1575-1585 Juan Hernández 1586-ca. 1620 Table 4.1. List of Chapelmasters of Mexico City Cathedral during the Sixteenth Century. Information taken from Marín López, “Música y músicos entre dos mundos,” 123.

277 Cited in Goldman, “The Matins Responsory,” 45-46, 6n. 278 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:59-60. 279 Ibid., 1:68. 280 Goldman, “The Matins Responsory,” 47.

The musicians, meanwhile, consisted of a choir, an organist, and instrumentalists

(ministriles).281 The choir was further divided between adult singers and mozos. A catalogue from 1582, during the time of Franco, lists ten adult singers and three instrumentalists, but does not specify the number of boys. However, as Marín López notes, in 1559 the number of boys was listed as twelve. The instruments of the 1582 ministriles are also left unidentified. As previously mentioned, the 1565 Provincial

Council decrees sought to prioritize the organ. However, records also indicate the use of trumpets, chirimías, and other woodwinds in the services in the sixteenth century.282

A Note on Native Musicians

As Ros-Fabrégas describes, the Franciscan teacher Pedro de Gante’s native choir was singing in Mexico City Cathedral by 1530.283 Moreover, native instrumentalists were employed at the cathedral as early as 1543.284 However, identifying the continued presence of indigenous musicians in cathedrals can be a difficult task. As Marín López writes, they were rarely identified as indigenous in cathedral records, and, as previously mentioned, they often adopted European names upon conversion.285

Stevenson has attempted to corroborate the claims made by chroniclers of a high number of native singers and musicians in New Spain by looking at the history of music publishing in Mexico. In particular, he points to the publication of a Graduale

281 Douglas Kirk explores the role of ministriles in late sixteenth-century Spain in his dissertation “Churching the Shawms in Renaissance Spain: Lerma, Archivo de San Pedo, Ms. Mus. 1” (PhD Diss., McGill University, 1993). 282 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:66-68. 283 Ros-Fábregas, “‘Imagine all the people,’” 180. See also p. 46 of this study. 284 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:144. 285 Ibid., 1:150.

Dominicale in 1576, of which he conjectures over one thousand copies were printed.

Each of these lectern books (libros de facistol) would have served an entire choir, suggesting that there were over ten thousand singers using them. Given that the total

Spanish population in New Spain in 1580 was less than fifteen thousand, Stevenson concludes that the vast majority of singers must have been indigenous.286 As African and

Asian slaves began arriving in New Spain, many also became church musicians. At

Mexico City Cathedral, one black slave named Luis Barreto joined the tiple section around 1595. By 1615, he was able to buy his freedom with the money that he had earned as a musician.287

However, Marín López has downplayed the overall presence of indigenous and other non-white singers at Mexico City Cathedral by citing the cathedral’s role as the head of the European Church in the New World, and thus as the “centre of colonial domination.”288 As he writes, members of the Nahua elite generally preferred to remain in native churches on the periphery of cities, where they could hold positions of authority such as maestro de capilla.289 Moreover, he adds, provincial cathedrals like those in

286 The 1576 Graduale Dominicale, which contains the plainchant portions of the Mass sung by the choir, features music by Juan Hernández, one of the chapelmasters at Mexico City Cathedral during the sixteenth century, making him the first composer to have music published in the New World. The book was printed by Pedro Ocharte and also by Antonio de Espinosa. A surviving version by Espinosa in the U.S. Library of Congress shows that it was printed on a woodblock press. However, Stevenson does not comment whether any of the books could have gone back to Spain. See Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, 186-188. See also Mark Roosa, “Mexican 1500s Choral Book Poses Questions,” Information Bulletin 58, no. 12 (1999), U.S. Library of Congress, Accessed 17 November 2015. http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9912/cons.html 287 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:157. For more on the life of Barreto, see Alfredo Nava Sánchez, “El cantor mulato Luis Barreto. La vida singular de una voz en la catedral de México en el amanecer del siglo XVII,” in Cayeros, Coloquio Musicat, vol. 2: Lo Sonoro en el Ritual Catedralicio: Iberoamérica, Siglos XVI-XIX. 288 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:141. 289 Ibid., 1:149.

Valladolid (now Morelia) and Oaxaca likely had a much higher number of native musicians than metropolitan cathedrals such as the one in Mexico City.290

Thus, for the time being, the following investigation into Mexico City Cathedral seeks to establish the existence of improvisation as a practice in the churches of New

Spain without consideration of the origins of the improvising musicians (unless it is explicitly referenced in the documents). However, future application of my methodology to the records of native parroquias or cathedrals such as Morelia could prove fruitful for further establishing the link between improvisation and native musicians in colonial

Mexico.

A Note on the Spanish Terminology of Renaissance Music

Before turning to the evidence for improvisation at Mexico City Cathedral, it is important to explain Spanish musical terminology during the Renaissance. Since my argument rests on a clear understanding of the terms that appear in these documents, I will define here the terms canto llano (or canto firme), canto de órgano (or canto figurado), contrapunto, and fabordón.

As mentioned, the term canto llano was used to designate the singing of plainchant. Francisco de Montanos’ Arte de canto llano (1592) first teaches its readers the elementary principles of music, such as the names of the pitches (letras) of the gamut, and how to read clefs and the Guidonian hand.291 The rest of the treatise contains

290 Ibid., 1:149. 291 Francisco de Montanos, Arte de canto llano : con entonaciones communes de Coro, y Altar, y otras cosas diversas, como se vera en la Tabla (Zaragoza, ES, 1694), 2-7. Document uploaded to IMSLP: http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/6/69/IMSLP143465-PMLP269505- arte_de_canto_llano_1694.pdf

66 instructions for singing plainchant in services, and a lengthy compendium of chants

(cantos llanos diversos) to train the learner (en que se exercite el que aprende).292

However, Montanos does not teach the rules of mensuration and rhythmic notation, which are reserved for canto de órgano and contrapunto. Some Mexican documents, meanwhile, use the term canto firme in lieu of canto llano. In his colossal treatise El melopeo y maestro (1613), Pietro Cerone clarifies that the two terms are synonymous:

“the music of canto llano or canto firme is a collection of notes sung according to the same tempo or meter.”293

Canto de órgano, on the other hand, was used to designate both mensural music in general and composed polyphony in particular. Cerone writes, “mensural music, or de

órgano, is made up of varied signs and unequal figures that are augmented or diminished according to the modus, tempus, and prolation.”294 The usage of canto de órgano in other documents makes clear, however, that this term also designated composed polyphony.

Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, chronicling in his Túmulo imperial de la gran ciudad de

México (1560) the funeral celebrations for Charles V in Mexico City, records that the choir sang the polyphonic work Parce mihi domine, which he clarifies was “canto de

órgano composed by [Cristobal de] Morales.”295 Mexico City Cathedral also purchased a

“book of canto de órgano” from the singer Juan de Carabantes in 1558.296 Unfortunately,

292 Ibid., p. 37. 293 Pietro Cerone, El melopeo, ed. Giuseppe Vecchi (Bologna: Forni, 1969), vol. 1, bk. 1, chap. 7, p. 211. 294 Ibid., 211. 295 Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Túmulo imperial de la gran ciudad de Mexico. (Mexico City: 1560), fol. 25v. Book digitized from the Complutense University of Madrid by Google Books, 2009. https://books.google.ca/books?id=FHkcgFuOXGcC&redir_esc=y 296 ACCMM, Actas de cabildo, bk. 1, fol. 170v, MUSICAT 79000111.

67 the title of the book is omitted in the chapter record, and only a mass by Carabantes appears in the cathedral’s 1589 inventory of polyphony.297

As shall be discussed, the Mexico City Cathedral constitution of 1585 uses the term canto figurado (translated into Latin as cantus figuratus). As Craig Russell and

David Kendall have noted, the term canto figurado came to be considered as distinct from canto de órgano by the eighteenth century, as in Francisco Marcos y Navas’ Arte, ó compendio general del canto llano, figurado y órgano en método fácil (1777).298

However, I believe there is enough evidence to assert that the term as used here was synonymous with canto de órgano. Lusitano uses canto figurato in lieu of canto de

órgano in the published version of his treatise Introdutione facilissima (1555).299 The

Spanish theorist Bartolomé Ramos de Pareja in his Latin treatise Musica practica (1482) divides music into cantus firmus (or cantus planus), contrapunctus, and cantus figuratus,

“which many call organi cantus.”300 Cerone also comments on the diversity of names given to canto de órgano: “note as well that musica rhythmica, canto variable, canto mensurable, canto figurato and canto de órgano are the same, only differently named, in the usage of different nations and various lands.”301 Finally, as Stanley Boorman writes, the Italian printer Ottaviano Pettrucci’s 1498 privilege from Venice to print polyphonic

297 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:607. 298 Craig H. Russell, From Serra to Sancho: Music and Pageantry in the California Missions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 42-43. David J. Kendall, “The Late Medieval Roots of Spanish Canto Figurado, Presentation at the Meeting of the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society, Orange CA, October 12 2013. 299 See Canguilhem, Philippe et al, eds., Chanter sur le livre à la Renaissance: Les traités de contrepoint de Vicente Lusitano (Turnhout, BE: Brepols, 2013), p 345. 300 Bartolomé Ramos de Pareja, Musica practica (Leipzig: Johannes Wolf, 1901), 4. 301 Cerone, El melopeo, p. 211.

68 music stated he could publish canto figurado.302 Conversely, no treatises that I have encountered from this period distinguish canto figurado from canto de órgano.

In contrast to the composed polyphony of canto de órgano or figurado, the term contrapunto designated improvisation.303 Bermudo explains that “contrapunto is an improvised arrangement over canto llano with varied melodies.”304 As previously mentioned,305 this quotation draws attention to the role of plainchant in improvisation, against which improvising singers sang countermelodies. A number of theorists describe contrapunto through its relation to canto de órgano or composition. Francisco de Tovar in his Libro de música práctica (1510) writes: “between contrapunto and the composition of canto de órgano there is no difference, except that contrapunto is in the mind

(subintelecto) and canto de órgano is written down (figurado) in representing the voices.”306 The Italian theorist Pietro Pontio, who also attests to the close relationship between improvisation and composition in his treatise Ragionamento di musica (1588):

“You should know (as I have said) that from this florid, or diminished, counterpoint come a variety of compositions, like masses, motets, psalms, ricercars, lamentations, and madrigals.”307 However, Cerone writes that it is typical to encounter “an improviser (un contrapuntista) who does not know how to compose, or a composer who does not know

302 Stanley Boorman, "Petrucci, Ottaviano," Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 25, 2015, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/21484. 303 Schubert, “Counterpoint Pedagogy in the Renaissance,” 503, 1n. 304 Juan Bermudo, Declaración de instrumentos musicales, 1555 edition (Kassel, DE: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1957), bk. 5, fol. 128r. 305 See pp. 25-26, 139n of this study. 306 Francisco Tovar, Libro de música práctica (Barcelona: Johan Rosebach), 1510, fol. 35r. Cited from Fiorentino, “Canto llano, canto de órgano, y contrapunto improvisado,” 151. 307 Pietro Pontio, Ragionamento di musica, ed. Suzanne Clercx (New York: Bärenreiter, 1959), 123. Translated in Schubert, “From Improvisation to Composition,” 118.

69 how to make impromptu counterpoint (hazer contrapunto de repente).”308

Finally, as Fiorentino demonstrates, the term fabordón held a duality of meanings in Renaissance Spain as both a type of improvised singing and a genre of musical composition. Around 1545, for instance, Cristobal de Morales was asked by Toledo

Cathedral to write a fabordón as part of his examén de oposición.309 Fiorentino concludes that there was no single technique for creating a fabordón,310 but writes that extant pieces titled fabordón are generally simple and homophonic.311 The phrase “cantar fabordón” also appeared with some frequency during the Renaissance to refer to singing by the ear

(or por uso in Spanish, translating literally as “for use”), often with a negative connotation of artlessness.312 A chapter act from Burgos Cathedral in 1533 instructed its chapelmaster to write a book with fabordón settings of the psalms because the singers were making too many mistakes when singing fabordón “from their heads” (de cabeza).313 Bermudo, meanwhile, says that the rules for singing psalm texts are less strict when psalms are sung “in canto concertado de favordón, or contrapunto.”314 Fiorentino thus speculates that Bermudo saw the terms fabordón and contrapunto as synonymous.315

Clearly, however, each appearance of the term must be defined in large part through its

308 Cerone, El melopeo, ed. Giuseppe Vecchi (Bologna: Forni, 1969), vol. 2, bk. 10, chap. 21, p. 608. 309 Fiorentino, “‘Cantar por uso’ and ‘cantar fabordón’: the ‘unlearned’ tradition of oral polyphony in Renaissance Spain (and beyond),” Early Music 13, no. 1 (2015): 26. 310 Ibid., 30. 311 See for example the fabordones in Tomás de Santa María, Libro llamado arte de tañer fantasia, ed. Luis Antonio González Marín (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2007), bk. 2, fols. 43r-48r. 312 Fiorentino, “‘Cantar por uso,’” 23-24. 313 Ibid., 25. 314 Bermudo, Declaración (1555), bk. 2, fol. 28v. 315 Fiorentino, “‘Cantar por uso,’” 26.

70 context. I turn to the specific uses of these terms in the case of Mexico City Cathedral in the following section.

II. Evidence of Improvisation at Mexico City Cathedral

Moya de Contreras’ Constitution of 1585

The 1585 constitution of Mexico City Cathedral clarified and developed some of the rules made in Zumarraga’s Erecto ecclesiae mexicanae of 1534, while also taking into consideration some of the changes discussed during the meeting of the Third Mexican

Provincial Council. The constitution was sent to Rome for approval, which it received in

1589, and came to serve as a model for the constitutions of many other New Spanish cathedrals.316 For our purposes, the document is significant in that it expands on the role of the chapelmaster and musicians as regards their duties both in cathedral services and in preparing the musicians.

The section on music in the cathedrals, titled “On the Office of the Maestro de

Capilla and the Singers,” appears in the final chapter of the first part of the constitution, and as the eighteenth out of forty-eight chapters overall. It is further divided into eight points (puntos), only parts of which I reproduce here. In the first point, the Synod outlines the basic responsibility of the maestro de capilla to prepare both the singers and the books of music with which they will perform (by referring to the choir lectern, or facistol).

316 Ibid., 44-45.

I. When the ministers and singers are sufficiently trained by the maestro de capilla, and have prepared in advance the things that they will sing with canto figurado each day, the facistol must be prepared so that the Divine Office is always sung with necessary honor. The maestro de capilla must take diligent care of this.317

The next point clarifies that the maestro de capilla is to prepare the musicians by holding regular lessons for them in the church. The document here makes its first reference to improvisation, in this case as an aspect of the musical curriculum.

II. On all non-feast days, between prime and mass, in a place inside the church, [the maestro de capilla] must hold a school for all, for the canons and for the singers and ministers and servants in the Church, who must gather to be taught, and instructed in polyphony (canto figurado) and in improvisation (contrapunto), in time so that they are not kept from the other lesson in canto firme led by the sochantre.318

This point adds, moreover, that any “notable dissonance” that “offends the ears of the town” in the service will result in a fine for the neglectful chapelmaster.319 The third point establishes the authority of the maestro de capilla over his musicians, who are to obey his

317 “…Cuantó convenga que los Ministros del coro y los cantores estén suficientemente instruidos por el maestro de capilla, y que se dispongan de antemano las cosas que hayan de cantarse con canto figurado en cada dia, preparado paro esto el facistol, para que la solemnidad siempre con el debido honor. Por lo cual, es necesario que el mismo maestro de capilla ponga diligentemente todo cuidado.”Arrillaga Y Barcárcel and Galván Rivera, Concilio III Provincial mexicano, 690- 691. 318 “En primer lugar, en todos los dias no feriados, luego que se acabe la prima, hasta que se deje de tocar á la misa, en un lugar que dentro de la iglesia haya de señalarse especialmente para ello, deba tener escoleta para todos, tanto para los Beneficiados como para los demás cantores y ministros y sirvientes de la iglesia, que en este lugar deben reunirse para ser enseñados, é instruidos en el canto figurado y contrapunto, en tiempo que no sea impedido por otra lección de canto firme que haya de tenerse por el Sochantre.” Ibid., 691. My transcriptions from Arrillaga Y Barcárcel and Galván Rivera follow their conventions regarding the use of accents on Spanish words. 319 Ibid., 692.

72 directions or risk being fined. In this case, the document refers to improvisation in the context of an actual service.

III. It should be also that the singers, musicians and ministers of the choir obey reverently the office of the maestro de capilla. Thus the Holy Synod mandates that the maestro de capilla instructs the singers and ministers of the choir to sing, or the musicians and organist to play. All that he demands of them, either to stand in front of the lectern in the choir, or in order to make counterpoint [hacer contrapunto] over the cantus firmus, or to sing with the organ, or lastly, to other things pertaining to the office of the maestro, [all these things are] to be done by any and all of the above named, without any excuse nor pretext.320

In point IV, the Synod stresses the importance of punctuality, so that the musicians do not delay or interrupt a service. Whereas the previous point does not specify what chant is used as a cantus firmus, here the Synod explicitly states that the psalms are to be performed with improvisation.

IV. The Holy Synod also demands, on all Sundays and other festivals (as is custom) that are sung with accompaniment of organ, that the same maestro de capilla and singers enter the choir at the beginning of Vespers, at Deus in adjutorium meum etc., so that, for the antiphon Asperges, and for the psalms, and also for the contrapunto that they have to intone over the psalms, they are ready and forewarned.321

320 “Conviene tambien, que por los cantores, músicos y ministros del coro se obedezca reverentemente en su oficio al mismo maestro de capilla, y por lo mismo este Santo Sínodo ordena y manda, que lo que el mismo maestro de capilla encomendare para cantarse á los cantores y ministros del coro, ó para tocarse á los músicos y al organista, y todo lo que á cualquiera de ellos ordenare, ya sea para que digan al facistol del coro, ya para hacer contrapunto sobre canto firme, ó para cantar con el órgano, ó por ultimo, en las demas cosas pertenecientes al oficio del mismo maestro, esto mismo se haga por todos y cada uno de los sobredichos, sin excusa ni pretexto alguno.” Ibid., 692-693. 321 “Manda igualmente el mismo Santo Sínodo, que en todos los domingos y en otros dias festivos segun se acostumbra, en los cuales haya de cantarse con acompañamiento de órgano, el mismo maestro de capilla y los cantores entren al coro al principio de la tercia y de las vísperas, esto es, al Deus in adjutorium meum, &c., para que, tanto á la antífona Asperges, como á los salmos, y también al contrapunto que haya de entonarse sobre los mismos salmos, estén prontos y prevenidos.” Ibid., 693.

Points V and VI establish the obligation of musicians to attend lessons, and the obligation of priests who are musicians to participate in all services where they are required. The final two points clarify what and when the choir is expected to sing in polyphony. Point

VII makes the only explicit reference to the use of fabordón.

VII Moreover, the maestro and singers have the obligation to sing in canto figurado on all Sundays of the feasts of Easter and the first and second vespers of the Lord, and also in the Sundays and feasts for the Blessed Virgin Mary at the first vespers, [for] the first, the third, and the fifth psalms; also at Matins the song Benedictus, alternating with the organ in verses [sung to] that different music called Fabordon, and also to sing in the same way the Magnificat canticle, also at Prime, and second vespers, and the whole mass, not only in the feasts referred to, but also in all the duplex feasts in which we are also accustomed to doing so.322

Thus, not only does the 1585 constitution confirm the role of improvisation in both music lessons and churches, it also specifies some of the music (the psalms, the Benedictus, the

Magnificat) that was improvised. As with Zumárraga’s bull of erection in 1534, the 1585 constitution is more prescriptive than descriptive. Still, some of the issues it addresses, such as the choir’s tardiness in arriving to the service, seem too peculiar and precise not to be a reflection of practices at the cathedral in some way. Moreover, having been written in 1585, the constitution was drawn up just at the end of the tenure of Hernando

322 “Ademas, el mismo maestro y cantores tengan obligacion de cantar con canto figurado en todos los dias domingos de las festividades de las pascuas á las primeras y segundas vísperas del Señor, en los demas domingos tambien y festividades que se acostumbran de la Bienaventurada Vírgen María á las primeras vísperas, el primero, el tercero, y el quinto salmos; mas á los maitines el cántico Benedictus, alternados con el órgano los versos, con aquella diferencia de música que se llama de Fabordon; y tambien canten del mismo modo el himno y el cántico Magníficat, tanto á las mismas primeras, como á las segundas vísperas, y toda la misa no solo en las referidas festividades, sino tambien en otras dobles mayores en las que igualmente se acostumbra hacerlo.” Ibid., 694-695.

Franco; it is tempting to imagine the cathedral choir having been at its peak under the prolific Spanish-born composer.323

Evidence in the Cathedral Chapter Acts

A second source of information about musical activity, and one that is perhaps more descriptive than the constitution, are the acts made by the cathedral chapter. Amongst other information, these records contain notices of decisions in regards to the musical personnel of the cathedral. The earliest explicit reference to improvisation comes in 1599, regarding the hiring of a new master of the boy choristers (maestro de mozos de coro or maestro de infantes):

This day, because of the death of Father Barrientos, who had charge of the choirboys, we name as the maestro, and with the salary of the deceased, Francisco de Covarrubias, musician, because that seemed to be very convenient, to teach them plainchant (canto llano), polyphony (de órgano), and improvisation (contrapunto).324

Evidently this was convenient because Covarrubias had already been part of the musical establishment at Mexico City Cathedral since 1575, when he was hired as an instrumentalist.325 Barrientos, meanwhile, had originally entered the cathedral as a singer in 1581.326 The fact that the position of maestro de infantes was regularly occupied by another musician at the cathedral reinforces my claim that knowledge of improvisation was not limited to only the chapelmaster and music teachers. This is further confirmed by

323 As shall be discussed, however, the cathedral had some criticism of Franco in 1583. See pp. 86-87 of this study. 324 ACCMM, Actas de cabildo, bk. 4, fol. 225v, MUSICAT 79000593. 325 ACCMM, Actas de cabildo, bk. 2, fol. 303v, MUSICAT 79000270. 326 ACCMM, Actas de cabildo, bk. 3, fol. 110v, MUSICAT 79000322.

75 chapter records from 1619 noting raises in salary for two singers on the expressed condition that they learn how to improvise (cantar contrapunto) within one year.

To Diego de Huertas, a contralto musician, we give the raise of one hundred pesos of common gold per year over the one hundred and fifty [pesos] that he earns today – and begin this from today – with the obligation that within one year he learns to improvise in singing (cantar contrapunto).327

The most precise reference to improvisation in the chapter acts is found in a 1615 record of instructions by the cathedral dean Don Pedro de Vega Sarmiento to the maestro de infantes. The document, divided into nine points, describes in detail the weekly duties of the choirboys and the responsibility of the maestro in educating them and enforcing a code of conduct. Point III clarifies that the music lessons in chant, polyphony and improvisation for the boys should take place in the morning and afternoon in between other services.

We must also get the maestro in the delegated place to give them lessons, all the days of work, at 6:30 in the morning, requiring [the boys] to go punctually at that hour so that they receive lessons in plainchant (canto llano), polyphony (de órgano), and improvisation (contrapunto), to prepare them for officiating and helping the Mass, which is something that they must learn to do. They must spend the time until they go to Prime, and once finished saying this, they must go to the lesson until they enter Terce, learning to sing the verses of the canonical hours of all the year, the antiphons of Prime, Terce, Sext, and None, and the Vespers that they intone on feast days – that they always sing. And if it seems to take two hours in the morning and one in the afternoon – from 1:30 to 2:30, as they do at the Holy Church of Puebla – they will have more time for the lesson.328

327 ACCMM, Actas de cabildo, bk. 6, fols. 119v-120r, MUSICAT 86000033. See also ACCMM, Actas de cabildo, bk. 6, fol. 120r, MUSICAT 86000030. 328 “Ha de procurar el tal maestro estar en el lugar diputado para darles lición, todos los días de trabajo, a las seis y media de la mañana, obligándolos a que a la misma hora estén allí con puntualidad para que se les dé lición de canto llano, [canto de] órgano y contrapunto, para pedirles cuenta de lo que saben de oficiar y ayudar a misa, que es una de las cosas a que más deben acudir. En esto, han de ocuparse hasta entrar en prima y, en acabándola de decir, han de

While these sources from the beginning of the early seventeenth century appear to go beyond the scope of this study, Brill emphasizes the musical conservatism of New Spain in the early Baroque period. He writes, “in an age where Baroque composers were writing vocal and instrumental homophonic compositions across the ocean, vocal imitative polyphony based on plainchant motives, a mainstay of the Renaissance, was still the norm in the colonies.”329 Brill and other scholars have attempted to attribute this to New Spain’s geographic and cultural isolation, partly imposed by Spain’s embargo on foreign ships trading in its colonies’ ports.330 Both written records and extant music from early seventeenth-century New Spain make clear that imitative polyphony in the vein of

Guerrero, Morales and Victoria remained the dominant musical style.

Illana’s Letter of 1594

The constitution and chapter acts, while undoubtedly valuable resources about Mexico

City Cathedral, are limited in regards to the kinds of information they can provide us. As discussed, it is difficult to know whether the constitution represents what the cathedral was, or what it aspired to be. We can recall, for instance, that Zumárraga’s original 1534 constitution included provisions for a much larger and more sophisticated cathedral

volver a la lición hasta que se entre en tercia, ocupándose en cantar los versos de las horas canónicas de todo el año, las antífonas de prima, tercia, sexta y nona, y Vísperas que se entonan en días feriales – que éstas siempre las cantan ellos –; y si pareciere tocar una destas dos horas de la mañana en una de la tarde – de una y media a dos y media, como se usa en la Santa Iglesia de la Puebla –, habría más tiempo para la lición.” ACCMM, Actas de cabildo, bk. 5, fol. 378v-379v, MUSICAT 37000043. 329 Mark Brill, “Style and Evolution in the Oaxaca Cathedral. 1600-1800” (PhD diss., University of California, Davis, 1998), 205-206. 330 Ibid., 175.

77 chapter than the actual chapter of the early to mid-sixteenth century. This uncertainty makes the cathedral chapter acts seem like a more reliable source, since they tell us about more mundane activities and decisions. Nevertheless, these records also provide somewhat narrow windows into music making. For example, the first appearance of the word contrapunto – some fourteen years after the writing of the constitution – tells us that Covarrubias was hired to teach improvisation, but not how successful he was in doing so, or indeed whether he fulfilled his mandate at all.

Thus, the final source I will discuss in regards to improvisation at Mexico City

Cathedral provides a unique insight, in that it presents both a description and an assessment of the music at the cathedral. Furthermore, although its contents were written by a member of the cathedral chapter, and endorsed by other members, it is not an official statement or publication. The source in question is a rather cantankerous letter (now preserved in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville) by Antonio de Illana, a predecessor of Covarrubias as maestro de infantes at Mexico City Cathedral, writing to the Spanish tiple Juan de Villarrubia.331 As Marín López documents, Illana came from

Madrid to Mexico City in 1591.332 The letter, written in 1594, sees Illana three years into his tenure as a singer and decidedly unhappy with the musical state of affairs at the cathedral. Illana petitions Villarrubia to leave his post at the Cathedral of Cadiz to sing at

Mexico City Cathedral, and to bring along other talented improvisers with him. Illana, who names himself as maestro de infantes in his letter,333 bemoans that he has been unsuccessful teaching counterpoint to the boy choristers, writing that even those who had

331 I have translated the letter from the transcription made by Marín López in “Música y músicos,” Appendix 1, 16. 332 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:455. 333 Marín López tracks the surviving evidence related to Illana’s salary and position at the cathedral in Ibid., 1:346.

78 come over from Spain had been corrupted by a kind of “New World laziness.” I reproduce below the pertinent portions of his letter.

When you come, Your Grace, all will serve you. I know that everyone wants you to come, because the tiples in this Holy Church include the maestro, whose voice has broken, and he improvises (canto su contrapunto) in the choir over the antiphons and the offices, but he is tired. He has some boys as assistants who sing like parrots what the maestro teaches them with his strong singing voice, and he has a black slave purchased by the cathedral with a good voice who does not know how to behave.334 The two boys who I brought here are singing as when they came [have not made any progress], because the land here has affected them. It is a land of lazy loafers. I had taught them something from the little I know, and so it is a pity that this poverty exists, as Your Grace will see eventually. I will say no more on this.

If there is some good bass who catches Your Grace’s eye, or if perhaps there is some good tenor or alto who catches your eye [then let me know]; they would have to be good improvisers (contrapuntantes) because there is a great lack [of them] in this Holy Church.335

Illana’s rant confirms that the practice of improvisation (with reference to the maestro)336 took place at the cathedral before it was explicitly referred to in the chapter acts.

Secondly, it confirms the presence of non-white musicians, in this case a black slave

334 The exact meaning of the phrase “no sabe andar por casa” is a bit unclear. 335 “Venido Vuestra Merced todos le servirán y sé yo desean su venida de Vuestra Merced, porque los tiples que hay en esta Santa Iglesia es el maestro que es tiple mudado y canto su contrapunto en el coro sobre los antífonas y sobre los oficios y está cansado, y tiene por ayudantes algunos niños que cantan como papagayos lo que les enseña su maestro con el caudal que tiene que canta su voz, tiene un mulato que compró la iglesia buena voz y no sabe andar por casa, los dos niños que yo traje que están en el cantar como cuando vinieron porque la tierra los lleva, que es tierra de holgazanes, que yo les hubiese enseñado de lo poco que sé y así es lástima la pobreza que hay porque Vuestra Merced lo verá con el favor de días, no digo más en esto. Si acaso hubiere algún contrabajo bueno le eche Vuestra Merced el ojo y si acaso hubiese algún tenor y contralto también les eche el ojo; estos han de ser contrapuntantes porque hay grande pobreza en esta Santa Iglesia.” Transcribed in Marín López in “Música y músicos,” Appendix 1, 16. 336 It is somewhat unclear whether Illana is referring to himself.

79 singing in the soprano section.337 Finally, however, it manifests his dissatisfaction with the calibre of the music and musicianship at the cathedral. The boy choristers who “sing like parrots” (that is to say, who simply repeat) what they were taught were evidently incapable of improvising on their own. Moreover, according to Illana, the cathedral could also stand to hire better improvisers in the other vocal sections.

We have no way of validating Illana’s assessment, but I think there are some grounds to justify that his negative assertions should be taken with a grain of salt. For one thing, as Marín López notes, the contents of his letter were disputed by other members of the choir, including maestro de capilla Juan Hernández.338 A chapter act from April 22nd,

1594 records that Hernández tried to assure the cathedral chapter that the tiple section was perfectly adequate, and that there was no need to spend money importing new singers.339 Despite this, the chapter did offer three hundred pesos as a salary to

Villarrubia, and more money to cover the cost of his voyage. However, Villarrubia’s name does not appear in the chapter acts after this date. The second notable aspect of the letter is its overall tone. Illana’s gripes about Mexico being a “land of loafers” and his later comment that he had no friends there, as well as his caution to Villarrubia that he should bring his own supplies (such as rope)340 with him, speak to a man that was unhappy with his life in general in the Spanish colony. One wonders how impartial Illana was in describing the musicians at the cathedral, or whether he was seeking an outlet to vent his frustrations. As the chapter acts record, however, Illana accepted the role of

337 This slave appears to have been a different person from Barreto, who was purchased by the cathedral in August of 1595. See Nava Sánchez, “El cantor mulato,” 106. 338 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:369. 339 ACCMM, Actas de cabildo, bk. 4, fol. 102v, MUSICAT 79000511. 340 Marín López in “Música y músicos,” 1:370.

80 maestro de infantes a second time in 1600.341 Ultimately, and irrespective of his qualitative assessment of the cathedral’s musical program, Illana’s letter further confirms the practice of improvisation in sixteenth-century New Spain.

Conclusion

The existence of improvisation as a practice at Mexico City Cathedral thus appears to be incontrovertible, at least on the basis of written evidence. What is less clear is why the earliest mention of improvisation at the cathedral (in Moya y Contreras’ constitution of

1585) appears so much later than Testera’s letter of 1534 in regards to natives improvising at colegios. Perhaps this stands as further evidence for the argument that

Testera was exaggerating his claims. Alternatively, perhaps Testera’s letter admits the possibility that the singers at Mexico City Cathedral were improvising earlier than the first explicit references to them doing so. Certainly, the 1585 constitution does not come across as inaugurating the practice of improvisation at the cathedral: for example, it seems to respond to a problem of singers refusing to improvise when instructed to do so by the maestro de capilla.

Meanwhile, Illana’s letter confirms that at least some of the musicians at the cathedral were improvising prior to the first mention of this practice in the chapter acts. It is difficult to imagine that Franco would not have taught the mozos to improvise, even if he was fined for his lackluster teaching in his later years.342 The same may well be said for Lázaro del Álamo, if indeed he was the polyphonic composer Cervantes de Salazar

341 ACCMM, Actas de cabildo, bk. 4, fol. 251r, MUSICAT 6000494. 342 See p. 86 of this study.

81 makes him out to be. What remains to be seen is whether the surviving Mexican compositions from the sixteenth century reflect and make manifest this tradition of improvisation. I shall discuss this in my final chapter.

Chapter V: Techniques of Improvisation in Mexican Compositions

Overview

This chapter provides a partial and speculative reconstruction of the tradition of improvisation in sixteenth-century Mexico in general and at Mexico City Cathedral in particular. It outlines the obstacles for investigating the techniques of improvisation in

New Spain, viz. the absence of extant music treatises or records of exámenes de opposición. It analyzes the compositions of Hernando Franco to identify traces of improvisation such as the parallel-sixth model, the use of parallel tenths, and stretto fuga.

Finally, it highlights the motet Coenantibus autem illis by the possibly indigenous

Mexican composer Juan de Lienas as an example of a work largely composed through techniques of improvisation.

Obstacles to Reconstructing Improvisation at Mexico City Cathedral

Given the abundant use of terminology like contrapunto and fabordón in written records from New Spain, and given the central role that improvisation played in the musical culture of Spain, there can be little doubt of its taking place at Mexico City Cathedral.

However, neither this written testimony nor any extant sixteenth-century Mexican treatises (that we know of) go so far as to describe the Mexican improvisation tradition in terms of the techniques that improvising musicians used or the music that they played and

83 sang. Thus, reconstructing the tradition of improvisation from this more technical perspective requires some guesswork and speculation.

One impediment to reimagining early Mexican improvisation is an absence of information about available music treatises in sixteenth-century New Spain that describe specific contrapuntal techniques in detail. As Brill notes, some of the European music treatises that circulated in New Spain were Francisco de Montanos’ Arte de canto llano

(“the Art of Plainchant”; 1610 and 1648), Andrés Lorente’s El porqué de la música (“The

Reason of Music”; 1672), and, most influentially, Pietro Cerone’s monumental treatise El melopeo y maestro (“The Composer and Teacher”; 1613).343 All of these treatises postdate the sixteenth century, although as I discussed in Chapter 4, the dawn of the seventeenth century in New Spain did not bring with it any major shifts in musical style.344 Meanwhile, as regards books from the New World itself, a treatise by the famous poet Sor Joanna Inés de la Cruz (1651 – 1695) has been lost,345 while others by Juan

Pérez Materano (c. 1505 – 1561) and the famous Colombian-based composer Gutierrez

Fernández Hidalgo (c. 1553 – 1620) were approved but never published.346 The absence of musical treatises is not in itself surprising, nor does it problematize our discussion of

343 As translated by Gary Towne, “The Good Maestro: Pedro Cerone and the Pedagogical Relationship,” in Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Susan Forscher Weiss, Russell E. Murray, Jr., and Cynthia J. Cyrus (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 324. The dates are from Brill, “Style and Evolution,” p. 209. Brill does not provide any information about when these treatises arrived in New Spain. In the case of Cerone, we can provide a terminus ante quem of the mid-seventeenth century, since Francisco López Capillas (c. 1605 – 1674), a composer who spent his entire life in Mexico, cited El melopeo in the introduction to one of his masses. See Lester D. Brothers, “Musical Learning in Seventeenth- Century Mexico: The Case of Francisco López Capillas,” Revista de Musicología 16 (1993): 2821. Meanwhile, a copy of Montanos’ treatise Arte de canto llano was listed for sale in Mexico City in 1655. Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:569. 344 See p. 76 of this study. 345 Brothers, “Musical Learning in Seventeenth-Century Mexico,” 2821. See also Stevenson, “The First New World Composers: Fresh Data from Peninsular Archives,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 23 (1970): 98-99. 346 Stevenson, “The First New World Composers,” 98-99.

84 improvisation, since improvisation was primarily an oral tradition.347 Nevertheless, even if we see these treatises as merely recording and capturing a practice that was already taking place,348 we lack these records for sixteenth-century Mexico.

Another missing source for specific information about improvisation are the exámenes de oposición, which, as Canguilhem writes in regards to Toledo Cathedral, can tell us much about how chapelmasters were expected to be able to improvise.349 As Brill records, Mexico City Cathedral instituted the examen de oposición as a procedure for hiring chapelmasters as early as 1530. In practice, however, it was implemented very rarely, and for the first time only in 1648 for the hiring of Francisco López Capillas (c.

1605 – 1674). Brill speculates that this was because of an absence of qualified judges who would be able to assess such a competition.350 Marín López emphasizes the cost for the cathedral both in holding the examen and in announcing the availability of the post.351

Instead, the cathedral appears to have preferred promoting from within,352 which is further evidence that musicians other than the chapelmaster were capable of improvising.

However, the lack of records of exámenes in the sixteenth century deprives us of another potential avenue for investigating improvisation.

In the absence of treatises and records of examinations, a third possibility for assessing the tradition of improvisation in New Spain is to examine composed Mexican polyphony for the use of improvisational techniques. As Cumming demonstrates,

Renaissance composers often employed improvisation techniques to build passages in

347 See once more Coclico’s insistence that he learned music from Josquin and not from a book. Wegman, “From Maker to Composer,” 416, 16n. 348 Owens, Composers at Work, 33. 349 See again Canguilhem, “Singing upon the Book,” 55-57. 350 Brill, “Style and Evolution,” 219-220. 351 Marín López, “Música y músicos,” 1:114. 352 Ibid., 1:115.

85 their compositions.353 Therefore, analysis of these compositions for traces of improvisable polyphony may give us a sense of what specific techniques were at the composers’ disposal. This is probably the least compelling of the three approaches I have discussed, because there is no guarantee that the work reflects what was improvised in daily music making. Nevertheless, until more information emerges about music treatises or exámenes in sixteenth-century New Spain, extant compositions serve as the best potential source for reconstructing the tradition of improvisation. Moreover, as Cumming adds, this type of analysis enriches our understanding of written works from the period.354

Little polyphonic music composed in sixteenth-century Mexico survives today.

We know from the testimony of the chronicler Francisco Cervantes de Salazar that the chapelmaster Lázaro de Álamo (fl. c. 1556-1570) composed polyphony, but none of it is extant.355 Fortunately, the music of Álamo’s indirect successor Hernando Franco has been better preserved.356 Born in Spain near the Portuguese border, Franco became a choirboy at Segovia Cathedral.357 He eventually became a chapelmaster in Portugal, but left for the New World at some point in the mid-sixteenth century in order to earn a better salary.358 In 1575, he left the chapelmastership of Guatemala Cathedral for Mexico City

Cathedral, where he held the post of maestro de capilla until his death in 1585, aside

353 See for example Cumming, “Composing Imitative Counterpoint around a Cantus Firmus: Two Motets by Heinrich Isaac,” The Journal of Musicology 28, no. 3 (2011): 254-265. 354 Cumming, “Renaissance Improvisation and Musicology,” pt. 8. 355 Juan Manuel Lara Cárdenas, “Introduction,” in Hernando Franco (1532 – 1585): Obras Vol. 1, Tesoro de la música polifónica en México, no. 9 (Mexico: CENIDIM, 1996), xv-xvi. 356 Stephen, Barwick, “Introduction,” in The Franco Codex of the Cathedral of Mexico (Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965), xi. 357 Alice Ray Catalyne and Mark Brill, "Franco, Hernando," Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed September 30, 2015, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/10132. 358 María Gembero Ustárroz, “Magraciones de musicos entre España y Améérica (siglos xvi – xviii): estudio preliminar,” in La música y el Atlántico: Relaciones musicales entre España y Latinoamérica, ed. María Gembero Ustárroz and Emilio Ros-Fábregas (Granada: University of Granada Press, 2007), 25.

86 from a period in 1582 of just over a month where he held out over contract disputes.359

As Goldman notes, all of Franco’s extant music has its provenance in the New World;360 his works are found in the Guatemala, Puebla, and Mexico City cathedrals.361 I suggest that Franco’s compositions can give us some indication of the contrapuntal techniques he would have taught and employed in improvisation at Mexico City Cathedral.

Before turning to Franco’s works, however, I must address two possible counterarguments to this assertion. The first is Illana’s letter, which indicates that the choirboys at Mexico City Cathedral were incapable of improvising.362 The second is that

Franco received a reduction in pay in 1583 for failing to fulfill his role of teaching music to the choirboys. 363 In the first case, it should be noted that Illana arrived at the cathedral some six years after Franco’s death, and wrote his letter three years after that. While

Illana’s letter provides a snapshot of musical life in 1594 (and perhaps even his three-year tenure), I contend that the letter does not provide enough evidence to substantiate a claim that no choirboys prior to his arrival could improvise. Moreover, the maestro de capilla disputed Illana’s low assessment of the cathedral’s tiple section. Finally, Illana’s letter makes clear that some singers in the choir were improvising, if not the choirboys themselves.

In regards to the second counterargument, Stephen Barwick conjectures that

Franco’s subpar performance as a teacher may have been the result of poor health later in his life, and that this motivated the chapter to hire a separate maestro de infantes in

359 Barwick, “Introduction,” vii. 360 Goldman, “The Matins Responsory,” 53, fn. 27. 361 A more comprehensive account of the sources for Franco’s extant works can be found in Lara Cárdenas, “Introduction,” xx-xxii. 362 On Illana’s letter, see pp. 76-80 of this study. 363 Barwick, “Introduction,” xi.

1584.364 We may therefore speculate that these problems arose only at the end of

Franco’s tenure at the cathedral. By contrast, in 1580, the cathedral chapter praised him for keeping the choir “in good order.”365 Thus, I think it is reasonable to propose that

Franco’s musicians learned and used the techniques of improvisation evident in Franco’s compositions, at least until 1583. In the following discussion I identify Franco’s use of the parallel-sixth model, the parallel-tenth model, and the stretto fuga technique, all of which can be readily improvised to create extemporaneous polyphony.

The Parallel-Sixth Model

The parallel-sixth model, as Peter Schubert has named it, appears frequently in

Renaissance music of the sixteenth century, and in treatises such as Guilielmus

Monachus’s late fifteenth-century work De preceptis arte musicae.366 It is a way for four singers to create four-voice polyphony with the plainchant (or cantus firmus) typically in the tenor. The soprano sings in parallel sixths above the cantus firmus. The bass alternates thirds and fifths below the cantus firmus, while the alto alternates thirds and fourths above it. The tenor’s cantus firmus note thus alternates as the third or fifth of the chord. However, it is also possible to place the cantus firmus in the soprano voice in the model, causing it to alternate between the root and the third of the chord, as is the case in

364 Ibid., xi. 365 Lara Cárdenas, “Introduction,” xvii. 366 See Eulmee Park, “‘De preceptis artis musicae’ of Guilielmus Monachus: A New Edition, Translation and Commentary” (Ph.D Diss., Ohio State University, 1993), 188-189. See also Schubert, Modal Counterpoint, Renaissance Style, 2nd edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 245. Cumming, “From Two-Part Framework to Movable Module,” in Medieval Music in Practice: Studies in Honor of Richard Crocker, ed. Judith Ann Peraino and Richard L. Crocker (Middleton, WI: American Institute of Musicology, 2013), 178-179.

88 the example below (Example 5.1). The alto and bass, although always in perfect consonance with each other, alternate between fifths and octaves to avoid illegal parallel motion.

As a relatively easy way to improvise four voices in homorhythm, the parallel- sixth model seems to have been frequently employed in the Renaissance in the singing of fabordón, one of the terms used frequently in written evidence for improvisation. As

Fiorentino writes, records from the beginning of the sixteenth century at Burgos and

Granada cathedrals in Spain report that the choirs sang the psalms “a fabordón.”

Meanwhile, the Cancionerio de Barcelona, also from the early sixteenth century, contains formulas for psalm singing to be memorized by the choir. Among these formulas is the parallel-sixth model.367 A second piece of evidence for the use of parallel-sixth model in fabordón is an anonymous antiphon Regem cui omnia, transcribed by Grayson

Wagstaff from a Mexico City choirbook, for the Matins for the Dead.368 The antiphon largely conforms to the parallel-sixth model. As Goldman notes, throughout the sixteenth century at Mexico City Cathedral, Matins was mostly sung either in plainchant or in fabordón.369

Franco uses the parallel-sixth model to compose two movements of a mass found in a recently discovered choirbook in Mexico City Cathedral’s archives.370 Lara Cárdenas states that the three masses in the choirbook would have been used for the seasons of either Advent or Lent, in part because they lack a Gloria and Credo movement. The first

367 Fiorentino, “‘Cantar por uso,’” 24-25, Ex. 2. 368 Grayson Wagstaff, Matins for the Dead in Sixteenth-Century Colonial Mexico: Mexico City Cathedral 3 and Puebla Cathedral 3 (Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2007), 1. 369 Goldman, “The Matins Responsory,” 22. 370 Lara Cárdenas “Introduction,” p. xxi. The mass, which Lara Cárdenas calls the Misa ferial a 4, begins on p. 20.

89 of these masses, which I discuss here, takes its melody mostly from the chant of the eighteenth Gregorian Mass, which is used in Lent and Advent and also for the Matins of the Dead.371

Franco sets his Kyrie and Agnus Dei movements in free homophonic counterpoint, with the soprano and tenor parts frequently moving in contrary motion.

However, the Sanctus and Benedictus are set almost purely in the parallel-sixth model, with the plainchant in the soprano. The one deviation Franco makes from the model is to occasionally move the tenor up one tone relative to the soprano to form a triad between the upper three parts, with the bass doubling the tenor an octave below. Franco employs this chord at non-cadential points in the Mass for climactic moments in the text, as in the first syllable of Deus and the first syllable of Gloria (m. 18). While not technically considered an element of the parallel-sixth model technique, this progression would be easy to improvise, so long as one of the singers indicated when to do so. Franco then cadences with a typical 7-6 suspension between the soprano and tenor (m. 27).

371 Ibid., xxxiv-xxxv. For the chant in its entirety, see the Liber Usualis (New York: Desclee, 1961), 62-63. McGill University’s SIMSSA (Single Interface for Music Score Searching and Analysis) project has developed a searchable version of the Liber Usualis available through DDMAL (Distributed Digital Music Archives and Libraries Lab): http://liber.simssa.ca

Example 5.1. Sanctus, mm. 14-28. As transcribed by Lara Cárdenas, Hernando Franco (1532 – 1585): Obras Vol. 1, 22. All intervals in this example are relative to the tenor part. Asterisks indicate a note is taken from the chant. Numbers in square brackets denote a chord that deviates from the parallel-sixth model. The cadence begins in the second half of m. 26.

The Parallel-Tenth Model

The parallel-tenth model, once again named by Schubert, appears in treatises such as

Monachus’s De preceptis, Franchinus Gaffurius’s Practica musice (1497), and Andreas

Ornithoparcus’s Micrologus (1517).372 Gaffurius refers to the technique as “a certain very famous progression of notes” (celeberrimus…processus notularum).373 As Cumming writes, none of the three theorists is particularly clear about the rules of the technique. At its core, the technique consists of doubling one voice in parallel tenths above or below the other, with one or more voices singing in between them. If the cantus firmus is the voice that is doubled, then another improvising singer can sight consonances against the cantus firmus, but must ensure that his or her countermelody is invertible at the tenth with the cantus firmus in order to be legal. Effectively, this means that the second added voice must avoid any parallel motion with the cantus firmus, since parallel thirds would invert to parallel octaves against the first added voice, and parallel sixths to parallel fifths

(Table 5.1). However, the cantus firmus could also be placed between the voices singing in parallel tenths. In this case, the improvising singers would have to indicate their melodic motions to ensure they sing in parallel with each other, while still avoiding parallel motion with the cantus firmus.

Vertical intervals between tenor and top 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 voice Corresponding inverted intervals between 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 tenor and lower voice Table 5.1. Rules for invertible counterpoint at the 10th around a tenor part.

372 Park, “‘De preceptis,” 194-196. Franchinus Gaffurius, Practica musice (Milan, 1496), trans. Clement A. Miller (n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, 1968), bk. 4, chap. 12, pp. 144-145. Andreas Ornithoparcus, Musice active micrologus (Leipzig, 1517), trans. Gustave Reese and Steven Ledbetter, Ornithoparcus/Dowland: A Compendium of Musical Practice (New York: Dover, 1973), bk. 4, chap. 4, pp. 22-23, p. 98. See also Schubert, Modal Counterpoint, Renaissance Style, 193. Cumming, “From Two-Part Framework,” 197. 373 Quoted as translated in Cumming, “Composing Imitative Counterpoint around a Cantus Firmus,” The Journal of Musicology 28, no. 3 (2011): 259-260.

An example of the parallel-tenth model appears in Franco’s setting of the hymn

Vexilla Regis, found in the third choirbook of Mexico City Cathedral. As Lara Cárdenas explains, this hymn was sung daily at vespers from the Saturday before Passion Sunday until the Wednesday of Holy Week.374 Franco sets the seven verses of the hymn in alternation between canto llano and four-part polyphony for various vocal combinations.

Once again, he derives much of his melodic material from the chant.

Parallel tenths occur frequently between the soprano and bass voices in the first and seventh verses of Franco’s hymn. In the first verse, on the words et morte vitam,

Franco reduces the texture to three voices (Example 5.2). The soprano and bass briefly sing in parallel tenths while the alto sings between them. The bass then drops away in m.

37, leaving the tenor to take up a more lengthy series of parallel tenths with the soprano in a higher register until the bass returns in m. 41. The alto continues to fill the role of the second improvising voice. In a couple of instances (mm. 39 and 41), Franco ornaments the model with 11-10 suspensions.

374 Ibid., xxxvii-xxxix.

Example 5.2. Vexilla Regis, mm. 34-43. As transcribed by Lara Cárdenas, Hernando Franco (1532 – 1585): Obras Vol. 1, p. 51. The numbers indicate the vertical intervals from the lower voice in the box.

The most extended use of parallel tenths in the piece, however, is in the final measures of verse seven (Example 5.3). These occur between the soprano and bass on the words adde praemium, until the final cadential progression on Amen.

Example 5.3. Vexilla Regis, mm. 292-302. As transcribed by Lara Cárdenas, Hernando Franco (1532 – 1585): Obras Vol. 1, 63. The outermost parts enclosed in the largest box sing in parallel tenths. All intervals in this example are relative to the soprano part. The smaller, dotted boxes indicate motivic imitation between the bass and tenor parts.

Given my argument that Franco’s expertise in improvisation informed his composing, it may be useful here to speculate about his compositional procedure for this passage.

Owens has demonstrated that composers like Heinrich Isaac (1450-1517) composed polyphony “phrase by phrase, point by point.”375 Margaret Bent, meanwhile, argues that

375 Owens, Composers at Work, 268.

95 although composers did not write their vocal and instrumental parts successively, they assigned “conceptual priority” to some parts over others in the compositional process.376

Finally, Cumming has explained Josquin’s compositional process and identified this conceptual prioritization by highlighting his use of a “two-part framework” to underpin each musical passage. These pairs of voices, with legal vertical intervals between them and “cadential progressions in mind,” serve in Cumming’s words as “the heart of the piece,” with other voices added later either conceptually or temporally.377 Cumming lists different indicators to be used for identifying the voices involved in the two-part framework of a particular passage:

• An absence of vertical fourths between the two voices • Cadences between the two voices • Parallel imperfect intervals between the two voices • Imitation between the two voices378

Since there are parallel tenths between the soprano and bass in Example 5.3, one might be tempted to label these two voices as constituting the two-part framework. I argue, however, that there is more evidence for the framework existing between the soprano and tenor parts. First, this is because the final 7-6 suspension of the cadence is between these two voices (m. 301). Secondly, all of the vertical intervals between the soprano and tenor are legal without the presence of the bass. Even the 11-10 suspension between the soprano and bass at m. 295 also works as a 7-6 suspension between the soprano and tenor.

376 Margaret Bent, “Naming of Parts: Notes on the Contratenor, c. 1350-1450,” in Uno gentile et subtile ingenio: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Bonnie J. Blackburn (Turnhout, BE: Brepols, 2009), 2. 377 Cumming, “From Two-Part Framework,” 177-179. Temporal priority might be indicated by the existence of multiple versions of a third voice in different sources of a piece, but consistent versions of the two voices constituting the two-part framework across all sources. Ibid.,180. 378 Ibid., 180-181.

I suggest, therefore, that Franco decided to use the parallel-tenth model to construct this passage, and then improvised a duet between the soprano and tenor that did not feature any parallel motion between the voices so as to ensure that the soprano could be doubled by the bass a tenth below. What is readily apparent, based on Cumming’s parameters, is that Franco’s alto comes a distant fourth in conceptual priority in this particular passage. It leaps to a vertical fourth against the soprano in m. 295, it plays no significant role in the cadence, and it features no imitation with the other parts (unlike the motivic imitation between the bass and tenor in mm. 291-294). This is further evidence that Franco initially composed an improvisable trio in the parallel-tenth model, and then added the alto voice after-the-fact (whether conceptually or temporally).

Stretto Fuga

The final improvisational technique I have observed in Franco’s works, dubbed stretto fuga by John Milsom,379 was so ubiquitous in the Renaissance that Zarlino felt the need to comment on its over-usage.380 As Schubert notes, the device appears in the treatises such as those by Lusitano, Francisco de Montanos, Morley, and Zarlino.381 The technique

379 See John Milsom, “‘Imitatio’, ‘Intertextuality’, and Early Music” in Citation and Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Musical Culture: Learning from the Learned, ed. Suzanna Clark and Elizabeth Eva Leach (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2005). 380 “But the too continual [use of] such closeness [of imitation] causes it to have fallen into a certain common way of composing, such that that nowadays a fuga is not to be found that has not been used thousands and thousands of times by various composers.” Quoted as translated in Schubert, “From Improvisation to Composition,” 111. 381 Lusitano, Del arte de contrapunto, chap. 3, pp. 230-244, fols 44v-48r; Francisco de Montanos, Arte de música theorica y pratica (Valladolid, 1592), trans. Dan Murdock Urquhart, “Francisco de Montanos's Arte de musica theorica y pratica: a translation and commentary” (PhD diss., Eastman School of Music, 1969), bk. 4, fols. 7-10; Morley, A Plain and Easy Introduction, 111- 114; Gioseffo Zarlino, Le institutioni harmoniche, 3rd ed. (Venice: 1573), part 3, chap. 63, pp. 302-17. See also Julian Grimshaw, “Morley’s Rule for First-Species Canon,” Early Music 34

97 creates a canon for two to four voices at the period of one time unit. In order for the canon to be contrapuntally valid, the lead voice (called the dux) must restrict its melody to a particular set of melodic intervals, which in each case depends on the vertical interval at which the second voice is following. In the case of a two-voice canon where the second voice follows at a fifth below, the dux can descend a third or fifth, ascend a second or fourth, or sing a unison (but never successive unisons, which would result in parallel fifths). A table of permissible melodic motions for the stretto fuga technique in two voices, compiled by Schubert and Cumming, is reproduced below (Table 5.2).

Pitch interval of Melodic intervals in the dux stretto fuga Odd intervals Even intervals At the Unison !3 !5 (once) unison (1) "3 "5 (once) At the Below U !3 !5 (once) 8ve "3 "4 (once) Above U !3 !4 (once) "3 "5 (once) At the Below U !2 !4 (once) 5th "3 Above U !3 !5 (once) "2 "4 (once) At the Below !3 !5 !2 (once) 4th "2 "4 (once) Above !2 !4 (once) "3 "5 (once) "2 (once) Table 5.2. Rules for melodic motion in two-voice stretto fuga. Table taken from Cumming and Schubert, “Traces of Improvised Practice in Composed Music, 1425-1610,” presentation at the American Musicological Society Conference, Louisville, November 12-15 2015. The phrase “(once)” indicates that successive uses of this melodic motion will result in illegal parallel perfect consonances between the voices.382

(2006): 661-666; Schubert, “From Improvisation to Composition,” 110; Cumming and Schubert, “The Origins of Pervasive Imitation,” 206-220. 382 See also Denis Collins, “‘So You Want to Write a Canon?’ An Historically-Informed New Approach for the Modern Theory Class,” College Music Symposium 38 (2008). http://www.jstor.org/stable/25664812

Most of Franco’s imitative entries follow at longer time intervals. However, several examples of stretto fuga appear in his settings of the Magnificat. Fourteen settings by Franco are preserved in a 178-page manuscript known as the Franco Codex, held in

Mexico City Cathedral’s archives. Franco’s successor Juan Hernández prepared the manuscript, which he presented to the chapter in 1611.383

In his second Magnificat setting, Franco employs a typical stretto fuga at a fifth below between the alto and bass for the words Gloria patri (“Glory to the father”)

(Example 5.4). The time unit of imitation is the half note, or semibreve. The melody of the canon follows the rules of stretto fuga at a fifth below and is ornamented with passing tones, until m. 134 where the dux (in this case, the alto) breaks off into free counterpoint

(m. 134). Franco repeats the same stretto fuga in a slightly more abridged version a few measures later (m. 137). The soprano sings the chant melody of the verse, which overlaps briefly with the canon at mm. 133-134 (for a span of two half notes) and at mm. 137-138

(for a span of six half notes). Stretto fuga against a cantus firmus is discussed as a technique in its own right in Lusitano’s Del arte de contrapunto.384

383 Barwick, “Introduction,” ix-x. 384 Lusitano, Del arte de contrapunto, fol. 54v, p. 277. See also Schubert, “From Improvisation to Composition,” 105-108.

Example 5.4. Magnificat, secundi toni, mm. 131-144. As transcribed in Barwick, The Franco Codex of the Cathedral of Mexico, 34. The outermost parts enclosed in each box sing in stretto fuga. The numbers indicate the melodic movement of the dux voice.

A few more instances of stretto fuga can be found in Franco’s eighth Magnificat setting. A brief stretto fuga at the fifth below occurs between the alto and bass on the words Esurientes implevit bonis (Example 5.5). However, it ends after only two measures, as the bass changes the interval of imitation from a fifth below to a fourth below (m. 229) to begin a second stretto fuga. This second canon is still at the time

100 interval of a half note, but the first note of the subject is subdivided into a quarter rest and a quarter note, while the second note is also subdivided and features an ascending passing tone. In m. 230, Franco delays the movement of a descending step by a quarter note to create a suspension. Changing the interval of imitation would make this passage more difficult to sing extemporaneously, but Franco still clearly draws on his prowess at improvisation.

Example 5.5. Magnificat, octavi toni, mm. 227-230. As transcribed in Barwick, The Franco Codex of the Cathedral of Mexico, 169.

Another example of a stretto fuga at the fifth below appears earlier in the piece for the beginning of the text Quia fecit mihi magna qui potens est (“for he that is mighty has magnified me”). Here the time unit of imitation is only the minim, or quarter note

(Example 5.6).

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Example 5.6. Magnificat, octavi toni, mm. 176-179. As transcribed in Barwick, The Franco Codex of the Cathedral of Mexico, 165.

One instance of stretto fuga from Franco’s first Magnificat provides a good example of how the composer plays with the technique as a structuring principle. Here the stretto fuga is between the alto and the soprano, who follows at a fourth above, on the words Et exultavit spiritus meus (Example 5.7). The time unit of imitation is the half note. Franco subdivides the descending fifth by leaping up an octave, creating a suspension above the cantus firmus in the bass (the subdivision is indicated in the example by the parentheses around the interval).385 However, Franco’s tenor presents the dux’s subject a full measure before the alto enters. Thus, in lieu of a three-voice stretto fuga, here Franco has cleverly devised a canon that works at multiple time intervals, while also valid against the cantus firmus. Moreover, he draws the opening motif of the stretto fuga’s soggetto from the melodic motion of the chant.

385 This use of subdivision is in itself perfectly legitimate for stretto fuga.

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Example 5.7. Magnificat, primi toni, mm. 151-154. As transcribed in Barwick, The Franco Codex of the Cathedral of Mexico, 12. The smaller, dotted boxes indicate melodic imitation between the parts. The solid arrow indicates imitation at the 5th between the tenor and alto after two half notes, while the dotted arrow indicates imitation between the alto and soprano at the 4th after one half note (in stretto fuga).

The above examples demonstrate that Franco used improvisational techniques as part of his compositional arsenal. Like all other Renaissance composers, however, he did not limit himself to these techniques. Franco likely wished to show off his ability as a composer by creating contrapuntal combinations that would be difficult to extemporize.

Cerone expresses this line of thinking in El melopeo y maestro: “pity the poor

103 contrapuntist, for he is only a tanner of leather while the composer is a maker of shoes.”386 However, we must also remain cognizant of the possibility of as-yet undetected improvisational techniques at play. Musicologists today are relatively new to the world of

Renaissance improvisation, which may be why the purportedly improvised partbooks of

Chiamaterò confound us. It is equally possible that contemporary musicians could have improvised more of Franco’s music than we realize.

Juan de Lienas’s Coenantibus autem illis

One final musical testament to improvisation is the Eucharistic motet Coenantibus autem illis by Juan de Lienas, a shadowy figure in the history of Mexican music. As Russell writes, all of Lienas’s music and all information pertaining to him can be found in two manuscript collections: the Convento del Carmen Codex, and the Newberry Choirbooks.

We have no dates for Lienas’s birth or death, but the collections were probably assembled between c. 1617 and c. 1654. Although this would place Lienas outside of the period of this study, I discuss him here because of the possibility that he was a native nobleman, or cacique – several manuscripts give his name as Don Juan Lienas.387 While the precise origins of the manuscript collections have been disputed, we can be fairly confident that Coenantibus autem illis was composed in or around Mexico City.388 At any

386 Quoted as translated in Brothers, “Musical Learning,” 2821-2822. 387 Craig H. Russell, "Lienas, Juan de," Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed October 1, 2015, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/16627. On the honorific “Don” and Nahua nobility, see pp. 52-53 of this study. 388 Eliyahu A. Schleifer has sought to locate the origin of the work away from the Convento del Carmen, which is situated in the Villa Obregón suburb of Mexico City. Since the convent was founded by members of the Discalced Carmelites, he argues, it would have had strict rules against

104 rate, the piece stands as a New World master-class in the use of improvisational techniques in composition.

Coenantibus autem illis begins with a lengthy stretto fuga at a fifth below between the soprano and alto. The time unit of imitation is the half note (Example 5.8).

Lienas ornaments the stretto fuga with passing tones and a variety of rhythmic subdivisions. At m. 5, the tenor and bass enter with the same stretto fuga while the soprano and alto break into free counterpoint, clearly establishing the stretto fuga as the structuring principle of the motet’s opening.389

the use of polyphony. Instead, Schleifer suggests that the codex may have come from the Convento de Nuestra Señora del la Encarnación, as was the case for the Newberry Choirbooks, before ending up in the library of the Carmelite college. Eliyahu A. Schleifer, “New Light on the Mexican Choirbooks at the Newberry Library,” Notes 30, no. 2 (1973), 235-241. However, as Stevenson points out, this theory is problematized by the presence of parts for male voices in the music of the Convento del Carmen Codex, which would appear to make it unsuitable for the nuns of the Convento de la Encarnación. Russell, “Lienas, Juan De.” On the other hand, the presence of four parts in a musical work does not preclude the convent as an origin, as Laurie Stras argues in her study of the veglie (musico-dramatic entertainments) of Suor Annalena Aldobrandini for the nuns of the convent of spirito santo in Florence. Suor Annalena calls for madrigals to be sung by the nuns “a quattri voci.” Stras suggests that the nuns would have either composed new music for this purpose, or adapted an existing madrigal. See Laurie Stras, “The Ricreationi per monache of Suor Annalena Aldobrandini,” Renaissance Studies 26, no. 1 (2012): 47. 389 The use of a pair of duos to begin a piece is commonplace in sixteenth-century polyphony. See Schubert, “Hidden Forms in Palestrina’s First Book of Four-Voice Motets,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 60, no. 3 (2007): 483-556.

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Example 5.8. Coenantibus autem illis, mm. 1-8. As transcribed in Bal y Gay and Chávez, El Códice del Convento del Carmen, Tesoro de la música polifónica, no. 1 (Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1952), 182.

At m. 23, for the words accepit Jesus panem, Lienas introduces a new section through a pair of interlocking duets in parallel tenths between soprano and tenor and between the alto and bass. (Example 5.9).

106

Example 5.9. Coenantibus autem illis, mm. 23-26. As transcribed in Bal y Gay and Chávez, El Códice del Convento del Carmen, 183.

At m. 50, on the words deditque discipulis suis, Lienas introduces a three voice stretto fuga ornamented with passing tones between his lower three voices (Example 5.10). The time unit of imitation is the half note. The alto acts as dux, the bass follows an octave below, and finally the tenor follows a fifth above the bass. This kind of three-voice stretto fuga allows all the melodic motions permissible in a two-voice stretto fuga at the fifth above, with the exception of the descending step: the resultant vertical interval of a sixth from this movement would invert to an illegal seventh in the second pair of voices.390

Although the tenor part of the stretto fuga breaks into free counterpoint partway into m.

53, the alto continues for two more half notes in a two-voice stretto fuga with the bass.

390 For more on three-voice stretto fuga invertible at the twelfth, see Cumming and Schubert, “The Origins of Pervasive Imitation,” 211-213. For invertible counterpoint at the twelfth, see also Schubert, Modal Counterpoint, Renaissance Style, 179-180.

107

As with the second stretto fuga of Example 5.5, Lienas subdivides the opening note of the stretto fuga into a quarter rest and a quarter note. In m. 50, the quarter rest in the alto dux is occupied by the final note of the preceding phrase, making it clear that

Lienas made this adjustment to facilitate the transition between musical sections. In the second, four-voice presentation of the stretto fuga (m. 53), Lienas eliminates the quarter rest in the soprano and bass, but preserves it in the alto and tenor, providing rhythmic variety.391 In this climactic passage, Lienas demonstrates a command of techniques of improvisation comparable to any European contemporary.

391 On four-voice stretto fuga, see Cumming and Schubert, “The Origins of Pervasive Imitation,” 213-220.

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Example 5.10. Coenantibus autem illis, mm. 50-58. As transcribed in Bal y Gay and Chávez, El Códice del Convento del Carmen, 184-185. All parts enclosed in each box sing in stretto fuga. Numbers in parentheses indicate where the two-voice stretto fuga between the alto and bass continues. Numbers in square brackets indicate where Lienas deviates from the stretto fuga model.

Conclusion

Just as composers in Europe used techniques of improvisation in their compositions, there is ample evidence that the same held true in Mexico. Admittedly, only a small corpus of polyphonic works survives from the sixteenth century; nevertheless, Franco’s

109 compositions testify to his strong familiarity with the parallel-sixth model, the parallel- tenth model, and stretto fuga. Further research about improvisation in Renaissance music may help to uncover more techniques in Franco’s works.

Of course, as discussed at the beginning of this chapter, whether or not the improvisable counterpoint in composed polyphony reflects the daily improvisation in sixteenth-century cathedrals is another question. However, given that the techniques that appear in Mexican music also appear in Spain, and given the Spanish origins of so many musical migrants to the New World, it is reasonable to assume that the pedagogy in Spain and New Spain would have been very similar, if not identical.

Lastly, Coenantibus autem illis stands tantalizingly as possible evidence of improvisational techniques in a work by an indigenous composer. However, until more evidence comes to light on Lienas’s identity, we cannot make any pronouncements with certainty.

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Conclusion

There can be no doubt that improvisation formed a part of the musical program at Mexico

City Cathedral, and there is a fair bit of evidence that it emerged elsewhere in New Spain.

Written records constitute the principal evidence for improvisation taking place, but they are corroborated by surviving polyphonic works from sixteenth-century Mexico. We must also remain cognizant that a great number of musicians (including all chapelmasters at Mexico City Cathedral until Francisco López Capillas) came to the New World after having been trained in Spain, where improvisation was widely practiced. The existence of the improvising tradition in Mexico reinforces the claim, made in my second chapter, that improvisation was fundamental to Renaissance musical practice.

This study’s first two chapters have provided the historical and musical contexts for my investigation into improvisation. Chapter 1 explores the ways in which music intersected with larger questions of colonial policy in sixteenth-century Mexico. For many missionaries and chroniclers in New Spain, the musical capabilities of the

Mesoamericans testified to a rationality and humanity that prohibited any attempt to enslave them. In Chapter 2, I highlight the importance of contrapuntal improvisation in sixteenth-century Europe so as to justify my reassessment of the exporting of the

European musical tradition to the New World.

In turn, Chapters 3, 4, and 5 constitute this study’s primary contribution to musical scholarship on New Spain. Chapter 3 surveys sixteenth-century discussions of musical activities at native colegios and emphasizes Testera’s 1533 letter referencing improvisation as a heretofore under-recognized source on musical practice. Chapter 4

111 presents the firm written evidence for improvisation taking place at Mexico City

Cathedral, tracing the appearance of terminology like contrapunto and fabordón in official (and in Illana’s case, somewhat unofficial) church documents. Finally, Chapter 5 enters more into the realm of speculation in attempting to reconstruct this improvising tradition, but demonstrates the clear use of techniques of improvisation including the parallel-sixth model, the parallel-tenth model, and stretto fuga in New Spanish polyphony.

Is there any significance to the ostensibly late development of improvisation in the musical culture at Mexico City Cathedral? As shown, the earliest explicit reference to improvisation at the cathedral is in its 1585 constitution, more than half a century after it had opened its doors. Meanwhile, only in 1599 do we find any reference to improvisation in the chapter acts, although Illana’s letter confirms its taking place in 1594. Does the ability to sing extemporaneous counterpoint represent a level of musical sophistication that was simply unachievable in the first decades after conquest? This question is hard to answer because of the paucity of extant sources of information about music in the sixteenth century, perhaps most notably the absence of surviving musical works from before Franco. Argensola’s reference to Cortés’ improvising soldiers in 1519 and

Testera’s reference to improvising native singers in 1533 strongly suggest that improvisation was practiced in New Spain before we have explicit documentary evidence. Further research into the publishing and importing of music books and treatises in New Spain may provide us new insights into what contrapuntal techniques were at

Mexican musicians’ disposal, as will a continued growth in our knowledge of improvisational practices in Europe. The rewards of this sort of scholarship are mutually

112 beneficial: greater understanding of improvisation in Mexico will provide a greater understanding of Mexican compositions, and vice versa.

As the numerous documents cited in my third chapter attest, native musicians quickly became accomplished in the European musical traditions of the sixteenth century.

Canto de contrapunto most likely would have been among the practices they adopted and mastered; thus far, however, only Testera’s letter and the music of “Don” Juan Lienas stand as direct evidence for indigenous improvisation. An examination into chapter acts and documents from other Mexican cathedrals could prove fruitful, especially in the case of the Cathedral of Morelia, whose records are explicit about the presence of native singers.392 Oaxaca Cathedral appears similarly promising, since in 1655 the chapter promoted the Zapotec Juan Mathías to the position of maestro de capilla (the first native chapelmaster in the New World). Unfortunately, records of his examén de opposición, and all but one of his compositions, have not survived.

The question of indigenous improvisation is important because of its intersection with one of the most enduring narratives of the Spanish Empire, known commonly as the

Black Legend. Building in part on the chronicles of Las Casas, this narrative depicts the

Spanish as diabolical and all-conquering, and the native peoples of Mexico as utterly powerless in their subjugation. As Matthew Restall explains, the Black Legend took hold among the English in the aftermath of the Spanish Armada in 1588 – in fact, some explained the failure of the invasion as divine punishment for Spain’s cruelty in the

Americas. Subsequently, the Black Legend was disseminated among other Protestants in

392 See Archivo del Cabildo Catedral de Morelia (ACCM), Actas de cabildo, bk. 1, fol. 22v, MUSICAT 83000024; ACCM, Actas de cabildo, bk. 1, fol. 23r, MUSICAT 83000029; ACCM, Actas de cabildo, bk. 1, f. 62r, MUSICAT 83000075; ACCM, Actas de cabildo, bk. 1, f. 69r, MUSICAT 83000081.

113 the Netherlands, Prussia, and the United States.393 Vestiges of the Black Legend, which

Restall terms the “myth of desolation,” still pervade depictions of New Spain today.394

Scholars have problematized the Black Legend from a number of different angles.

Indian Conquistadors, a collection of essays edited by Michel R. Oudjik and Laura E.

Matthew, emphasizes the role of native armies in the conquest of Mesoamerica and their strategic goals.395 In response to the historian Robert Ricard’s depiction of the spiritual conquest, meanwhile, Louise M. Burkhart highlights how European Catholicism in

Mexico was transformed for and by the Mexica.396

In a similar vein, Stuart Schwartz and David Tavárez downplay the effectiveness of the church’s attempts at extirpation of native peoples in New Spain. Although

Zumárraga initially held public executions of idolatrous caciques as a form of exemplary punishment, the actual ability of the Inquisition to enforce orthodoxy was low – as

Schwartz explains, one tribunal was responsible for an area of over three million square kilometers.397 After the controversial execution of the cacique Don Carlos Ometochtzin in 1539, no public punishments of natives took place in Mexico City until 1714,398 and natives were formally exempted from the Inquisition in 1571.399 Meanwhile, Schwartz

393 Restall, Seven Myths, 118-119. 394 Ibid., 100-101. Restall highlights the introduction by Miguel Léon Portilla in The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962) and Nathan Wachtel’s La vision des vaincus : les Indiens du Pérou devant la conquête espagnole, 1530-1570 (Paris: Gallimard, 1971). 395 Ibid., 17. 396 Susan Schroeder, “Introduction,” in Indian Conquistadors: Indigenous Allies in the Conquest of Mesoamerica, ed. Laura E. Matthew and Matthew R. Oudjik (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 8. This study has already referred to scholarship by Jaime Lara that describes the syncretistic nature of Christianity in New Spain. See pp. 9-12 of this study. 397 Stuart B. Schwartz, All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 125. 398 Tavárez, The Invisible War, 26. 399 Ibid., 63. However, Tavárez highlights that punishments continued on more local levels, in particular in Oaxaca in the mid-sixteenth century. See Tavárez, The Invisible War, 55-60.

114 argues, extant reports by the Inquisition reveal a sexual liberation and religious heterodoxy among the Spanish in Mexico that often went far afield of beliefs and norms in Spain.400

These accounts detail how Mesoamericans were able to preserve their traditions post-conquest, and how Europeans were changed by the colonial encounter. My investigation into the skills of indigenous church musicians approaches the Black Legend from a different perspective, by examining how natives were able to adopt and incorporate European cultural practices. As Restall writes, this kind of inquiry poses an equally valid challenge to the myth of desolation: “native borrowing of Spanish cultural elements did not represent native culture loss or decline, but rather adaptability and vitality.”401 Restall highlights how natives adopted European models of theatre and mock battles to invert or undermine the narrative of the Spanish conquest. As Motolinía documents, during the celebrations of Corpus Christi in 1539, a group of Tlaxcala natives performed a mock battle reimagining the Conquest of Jerusalem, casting a Nahua

“Cortés” as the defeated, converted Muslim Sultan.402

Native Christian musicianship provides another example of indigenous adoption of European cultural practices. This is attested to not only in Testera’s reference to improvisation, but also in the testimony of the friars and chroniclers who praise the

Mesoamericans’ skill in singing, composing, and instrument-building. While this music making was not as overtly political as the theatrical productions mentioned above, the references to music by Testera and Las Casas highlight its close connection to matters of colonial policy. Of course, we should be mindful that the letters of the mendicants belong

400 Schwartz, All Can Be Saved, 125-129. 401 Restall, Seven Myths, 128. 402 Ibid., 120-121.

115 to another European narrative about the natives of the New World, one that emphasized their innate purity and innocence.403 As such, there is a continued need for scholarly examination of other sources informing us about music in New Spain, and also of the testimony of natives themselves. The aim of such of investigation would not be to determine once and for all the “quality” of native musicians, as Watkins appears to emphasize, but to reconstruct the most comprehensive image possible.

This discussion inevitably raises the topic of religious conversion. Zumárraga’s comment that “more than by preaching, the Indians are converted by the music”404 seems hardly coincidental. Whereas Mesoamerican Christians were denied books and denied the right to preach (the notable exception being the students of the colegio Santa Cruz), music provided an opportunity for them to be active agents of their new faith. Brill has argued that music in New Spain functioned as a tool of oppression, and merely distracted

Mesoamericans from their plight under colonial control: “music contributed strongly to the preservation of a rigid system of domination, a system into which the music itself, in turn, was rigidly ensconced.”405 I argue instead that as chapelmasters, composers, performers and improvisers, native musicians in colonial Mexico experienced a level of autonomy and agency that should not be understated in our appraisals of New Spain.

403 Ibid., 105. 404 Quoted as translated in Pedelty, Musical Ritual in Mexico, 49. 405 Brill, “Style and Evolution,” 208.

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