Microfilms of Mexico City and Puebla Cathedrals Music Archives
Boston University’s College of Fine Arts and the Department of Latin American Studies are very excited to announce that Professor Benjamin Juarez was able to obtain a long term loan of the complete microfilm music collection from the Cathedral archives of Mexico City and Puebla. The materials are on loan from Anahuac University in Mexico City. The archive includes scores and manuscripts from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The 3-year renewable loan was made to Professor Juarez personally, so that BU can host this collection in the US. The collection also includes 4 terabytes of field ethnomusicological work and transcriptions made since the 1960’s by E. Thomas Stanford.
Music played an important role in the rituals of the Aztecs and other Mexican native peoples and it is thus that after the Spanish conquest in 1521, music helped the Catholic missionaries to accomplish their catechism strategies. As musicians had enjoyed privileges under Aztec law, because they preserved community lore and morale, they assumed that they would enjoye a special, high social status in the Christian order. The Indian populace assimilated European music more readily than any other aspect of the imposed culture, the cathedrals at Mexico City, Puebla and elsewhere could boast of music that rivaled the best in Spain, barely fifty years after the Conquest. As early as 1530 an Indian choir trained by Pedro de Gante (c1480–1572) sang every Sunday at Mexico City’s Cathedral (founded 1528). Canon Juan Xuárez was appointed maestro de capilla a year before Bishop Juan de Zumárraga (1468–1548) arrived in Mexico, the new bishop immediately praised the skill of Indian polyphonic singers and in 1532 lauded the deft Indian copyists who transcribed European part music.
In 1556, the first music book was published in the New World by Juan Pablos in Mexico City, it was an Augustinian Ordinarium. Within the next 33 years, 12 more lavish liturgical music books were printed at Mexico City. Nowhere in the colonial Americas was a similar succession of plainsong imprints ever published.
Polyphony flourished in Mexico City’s Cathedral under the direction of distinguished maestros de capilla, such as Hernando Franco (1575–85), Juan Hernández (1586–1620), Antonio Rodríguez Mata (1625–43), Luis Coronado (1643–8), Fabián Pérez Ximeno (1648–54), Francisco López Capillas (1654–74), José de Loaysa y Agurto (1676–88), Antonio de Salazar (1688–1715) and Manuel de Sumaya (1715–39), all represented in this collection. They also ran choir schools, purchased and took care of large choral libraries, and conducted permanent paid choirs and professional instrumental ensembles that were unequalled elsewhere in the New World, perhaps with the exception of Puebla, Lima and -during specific periods- Bogotá, La Plata (now Sucre, Bolivia), Guatemala and Oaxaca.
An important musical center since the 16th century, Puebla was founded in 1531 and soon became the second largest city in Mexico, surpassed in size, wealth and grandeur only by the capital. The city has one of the most lavishly beautiful cathedrals in the Americas, numerous churches and convents, and from 1646 the city had the first public library in the whole continent, an extraordinary collection of 5000 volumes donated by Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza (1600–59), who also finished the building of the cathedral and was a generous patron of music and the arts.
The colonial city also enjoyed the dramatic traditions of Spain; its sumptuous church processionals, costumed máscaras (pageants) and sacred and secular comedias and autos all used music extensively. Local color was added to the scene by the great dances and pageants, also present in some church festivals. Elaborate villancico ‘cycles’ or ‘sets’ were of particular importance in the 17th century, the sites usually contained nine villancicos and a final hymn.
The microfilms contain thousands of compositions from all these masters, as well as European masters from the 16th to the 19th centuries, many works have been singularly preserved at these collections. The Puebla Cathedral has an uninterrupted collection of music, while the one at Mexico City endured tragic fires and floods at different times.
Both archives were microfilmed by E. Thomas Stanford and Lincoln Spiess in the 1960’s. Copies were purchased by the Gaylord Music Library, Washington University, St. Louis, where Dr. Spiess worked; UCLA, where Dr. Robert Stevenson carried his research and a very select group of universities; the original negatives are in the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropologia e Historia in the Museo de Antropologia, Mexico, D.F. The copies of the full collection, on long term loan to Prof. Benjamín Juárez belong to Universidad Anahuac in Mexico City, where both E.T. Stanford and Benjamín Juarez worked in the nineties.
Dr. Stanford has also made available audio files of all his ethnomusicological research carried out in hundreds of communities over decades of field work, photos that document this work and transcriptions of dozens of polyphonic works from the cathedral archives. Close to four terabytes of material. His ethnomusicological work has been classified by the UNESCO as Intangible Patrimony of the Humanity and the original files are in deposit at the Fonoteca Nacional in Mexico City. No other institution, besides BU has access to both collections.
Music played an important role in the rituals of the Aztecs and other Mexican native peoples and it is thus that after the Spanish conquest in 1521, music helped the Catholic missionaries to accomplish their catechism strategies. As musicians had enjoyed privileges under Aztec law, because they preserved community lore and morale, they assumed that they would enjoye a special, high social status in the Christian order. The Indian populace assimilated European music more readily than any other aspect of the imposed culture, the cathedrals at Mexico City, Puebla and elsewhere could boast of music that rivaled the best in Spain, barely fifty years after the Conquest. As early as 1530 an Indian choir trained by Pedro de Gante (c1480–1572) sang every Sunday at Mexico City’s Cathedral (founded 1528). Canon Juan Xuárez was appointed maestro de capilla a year before Bishop Juan de Zumárraga (1468–1548) arrived in Mexico, the new bishop immediately praised the skill of Indian polyphonic singers and in 1532 lauded the deft Indian copyists who transcribed European part music.
In 1556, the first music book was published in the New World by Juan Pablos in Mexico City, it was an Augustinian Ordinarium. Within the next 33 years, 12 more lavish liturgical music books were printed at Mexico City. Nowhere in the colonial Americas was a similar succession of plainsong imprints ever published.
Polyphony flourished in Mexico City’s Cathedral under the direction of distinguished maestros de capilla, such as Hernando Franco (1575–85), Juan Hernández (1586–1620), Antonio Rodríguez Mata (1625–43), Luis Coronado (1643–8), Fabián Pérez Ximeno (1648–54), Francisco López Capillas (1654–74), José de Loaysa y Agurto (1676–88), Antonio de Salazar (1688–1715) and Manuel de Sumaya (1715–39), all represented in this collection. They also ran choir schools, purchased and took care of large choral libraries, and conducted permanent paid choirs and professional instrumental ensembles that were unequalled elsewhere in the New World, perhaps with the exception of Puebla, Lima and -during specific periods- Bogotá, La Plata (now Sucre, Bolivia), Guatemala and Oaxaca.
An important musical center since the 16th century, Puebla was founded in 1531 and soon became the second largest city in Mexico, surpassed in size, wealth and grandeur only by the capital. The city has one of the most lavishly beautiful cathedrals in the Americas, numerous churches and convents, and from 1646 the city had the first public library in the whole continent, an extraordinary collection of 5000 volumes donated by Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza (1600–59), who also finished the building of the cathedral and was a generous patron of music and the arts.
The colonial city also enjoyed the dramatic traditions of Spain; its sumptuous church processionals, costumed máscaras (pageants) and sacred and secular comedias and autos all used music extensively. Local color was added to the scene by the great dances and pageants, also present in some church festivals. Elaborate villancico ‘cycles’ or ‘sets’ were of particular importance in the 17th century, the sites usually contained nine villancicos and a final hymn.
The microfilms contain thousands of compositions from all these masters, as well as European masters from the 16th to the 19th centuries, many works have been singularly preserved at these collections. The Puebla Cathedral has an uninterrupted collection of music, while the one at Mexico City endured tragic fires and floods at different times.
Both archives were microfilmed by E. Thomas Stanford and Lincoln Spiess in the 1960’s. Copies were purchased by the Gaylord Music Library, Washington University, St. Louis, where Dr. Spiess worked; UCLA, where Dr. Robert Stevenson carried his research and a very select group of universities; the original negatives are in the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropologia e Historia in the Museo de Antropologia, Mexico, D.F. The copies of the full collection, on long term loan to Prof. Benjamín Juárez belong to Universidad Anahuac in Mexico City, where both E.T. Stanford and Benjamín Juarez worked in the nineties.
Dr. Stanford has also made available audio files of all his ethnomusicological research carried out in hundreds of communities over decades of field work, photos that document this work and transcriptions of dozens of polyphonic works from the cathedral archives. Close to four terabytes of material. His ethnomusicological work has been classified by the UNESCO as Intangible Patrimony of the Humanity and the original files are in deposit at the Fonoteca Nacional in Mexico City. No other institution, besides BU has access to both collections.