The Influence of Latin America on the Musical Baroque

Expanding the Definition of Baroque Music Through the Example of Latin American Baroque Hybridity

By Omar Ávalos Gallegos Associate Music Instructor, Santa Ana College This paper was written in May of 2009 for a Seminar in Baroqe Music at CSU Fullerton taught by Dr. Katherine Powers

Many people love chocolate, but not many people know that the word chocolate comes from the Nahuatl word xiocolatl.1 Nahuatl was the language spoken by the Aztecs and other tribes. The point here is that Pre-Columbian people also had an influence on the rest of Western culture as the West did on the Americas. Not only were contributions made in gastronomy but also in music, a fact that is rarely examined. The current music history model also largely ignores the contributions of the African peoples to the Baroque musical period. This fact is more easily understood when taking into account the fact that the Iberians, the Spanish and the Portuguese that is, did more to exploit Africans into slavery than other European countries.2 The forced contact between different cultures caused the creation of hybrid and unique musical forms in Latin America that in turn influenced music making in Europe.

The sarabande, chaconne, and fandango are only some of the forms that are said to be of Latin American origin for example, and these along with other genres will be presented further along. In this paper I’ll demonstrate how hybrid forms developed on a small, local scale and went on to leave traces on some the most celebrated or widely known European Baroque composers.

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Real Academia Española Rogério Budasz. “Negros e violas no mundo luso-brasileiro nos séculos XVII e XVIII.” In IV Reunión Científica: Mujeres, negros y niños en la música y sociedad colonial iberoamericana, edited by Víctor Rondón, 63-75. Santa Cruz, Bolivia: Asociación Pro Arte y Cultura, 2002.

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César Augusto Salgado applied hybridity theory to the Latin American Baroque in his article, “Hybridity in New World Baroque Theory.”3 Salgado focused mostly on examples of hybridity in literature and architecture of the period and spoke in general terms about hybrid aspects in Latin American Baroque art, but did not go into any detail concerning music. He did present examples of how native themes were meshed into religious plays or in architectural arches decorated with Nahuatl motifs for example.

What was true for those practices was also true for music as will be demonstrated further.

Another important work that contributes to diffusing the idea of Latin American Baroque hybridity is Geoffrey Baker’s Imposing Harmony: Music and Society in Colonial Cuzco (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008). Baker applies what he calls an urban musicological approach to focus on music created at the peripheries of Cuzco Cathedral in Peru. He focuses on confraternities, seminaries, convents, urban parishes, and doctrinas, which were the most rural parishes designed for the indoctrination of Andean peoples. It was at these doctrinas that religious rules were not as strict, which allowed the natives to fuse their old methods of worship, which included song and dance, with the newly imposed Catholicism.

Baker argues that previous musicology on the Latin American Baroque took a cathedral-centric view, one that does not give a complete picture of the musical happenings around the model of Cuzco, and that perpetuates the hegemony of purely Euro-Hispanic musical practice. He explains that this method of urban musicology comes

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César Augusto Salgado. “Hybridity in New World Baroque Theory,” The Journal of American Folklore 112, no. 445 (Summer, 1999): 316-31.

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from a trend started in Spain that asks the question, “And what of the music created outside of the cathedrals?” This approach is also being applied in England.4 Baker goes on to stress the significance of the aptitude of the native musicians trained around Cuzco and how they performed polyphonic works for seven choirs, and it is by this measure that Baker qualifies the music of this Latin American model. He judges it in comparison to how closely it resembles the European practice, or how it outdoes the European practice, but only by European standards. He stops short of qualifying hybrid musical forms as being on par or as good, significant, etc as European models. This is in contrast to C. Augusto Salgado that stresses that it is the hybrid form that adds value and significance because of its uniqueness and distinctiveness.

A Regional Survey of Hybrid Musical Baroque Forms Latin American Musical Baroque Hybridity is better understood when placed in context with similar hybrid practices in the intellectual world of the time. One example is found in the writings of Juana de Asbaje, the later-turned nun and poetess Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Sor Juana used indigenous wordplay in her poetic villancicos for example.

She composed tocotines using Nahuatl, and guineos using African influenced wordplay.

Her compositions were set to music by contemporary composers of her time.

Some of the earliest examples of Mexican hybrid works were composed by, or attributed to, Gaspar Fernandes (1585-1629) of Portuguese origin and active at Evora Cathedral in Portugal before arriving at Antigua Cathedral in Guatemala, which was part of then New Spain. After Guatemala Fernandes became chapel master at Puebla 4

Geoffrey Baker, Imposing Harmony: Music and Society in Colonial Cuzco (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).

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Cathedral. The best source for a listing of his hybrid works is Robert Stevenson’s Latin American Colonial Music Anthology (Washington D.C.: General Secretariat of the Organization of American States, 1975). There are villancicos in the guineo or negrito style in this publication such as, Eso rigor e repente, Dame albricia mano Anton, Tantarantan a la guerra van, and Tururu farara con son. The Nahuatl-influenced villancico forms of the tocotín or indio and mestizo are also represented in Tleycantimo choquiliya and Xicochi Xicochi Conetzintle.

Stevenson found another Mexican hybrid work that he called Two Aztecan Chanzonetas in Puebla.5 This work was later recorded as Dos motetes en nahuatl.

Stevenson attributes this work to a native, possibly a student of Hernando Franco (153285). Stevenson dates it to 1599, is entirely in Nahuatl, and was much later set polyphonically by Gabriel Saldívar. Stevenson also resets it polyphonically in Music in Aztec and Inca Territories (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968). A discrepancy exists with the dating and attributing of the work being that the Capilla Virreinal de la Nueva España recording attributes it to Hernando Franco. Another work with hybrid traits found by Stevenson is Conuinando está la noche, a villancico in the guaracha form by Juan García de Zéspedes (Puebla, ca. 1619-78).

Yet another hybrid work from Mexico is the villancico in the negrilla form, A siolo flasquiyo dating to 1653 by Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (Puebla, 1595-1664).

Stevenson included this work in his Latin American Colonial Music Anthology over thirty years prior to John Walter Hill’s inclusion of it in his Baroque Music.6 Stevenson

5 Robert Stevenson, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968).

6 John Walter Hill. Baroque Music (New York: W.W. Norton & Company 2005).

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included the location of the original manuscript, found at Puebla Cathedral. This was very likely Hill’s lead for his inclusion of it in his book.

Similar practices occurred throughout Latin America, specifically in the Andean region, where dramas were written in Quechua, the Pre-Hispanic language of the Andean people. One of the earliest hybrid musical forms coming from the Andean region, which now constitutes Peru and Bolivia, previously Alto Peru, is the polyphonic work in the Quechua language, Hanacpachap cussicuinin by Juan Pérez Bocanegra dating to 1631 and located at Cuzco Cathedral.7 The Andean region was also not without its African root and influence, evident in the villancicos Los cofla desde la estleya, from La Paz, Bolivia, and Turulu neglo from Cuzco, Peru.

The Sucre Cathedral archive in modern-day Bolivia also contains music of African, Gypsy, and Native American influences. Examples of these are the negrilla called Los negritos, and a gitano called, Gitanitas del valle, venid a bailar, a cantar (gypsies of the valley come sing and dance). Another villancico found at Sucre, a mestizo because of its use of the Spanish and Quechua languages is, Fuera fuera háganles lugar.

A catalogue of the music at Sucre Cathedral is found in Un catálogo musical americano (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aries, 1972).

The Archive of Bogotá Cathedral in Colombia contains a number of African or negrilla villancico texts. A significant number of these are reproduced in José Ignacio Perdomo Escobar’s El archivo musical de la Catedral de Bogotá (Bogota: Publicaciones del Instituto Caro y Cuero, 1976). Perdomo states that the dramatists Lope de Rueda and Quevedo used Afro-Spanish dialect in their works, one example is found in Eufemia by 7

Robert Stevenson, Latin American Colonial Music Anthology (Washington D.C.: General Secretariat of the Organization of American States, 1975).

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Lope de Rueda. The negrillas found in this collection are rich with unique dialectal words such as santutumé, gurumbe, teque-leque, cucua, and zulambaque. These words were used in villancicos because of their percussive, musical, playful, and onomatopoeic nature. This is a practice perpetuated unto modern times. The following is a small example of a negrilla from the Bogotá Cathedral with translation.

De Guinea salimo Sambacaté Toca la flauta, Siola Flacica, Tocala ve.8

From Guinea we left Sambacaté Play the flute siola Flacica Play it, do you see?

The Bogotá archive also contains a number of gypsy or gitano influenced villancicos. Their Andalusian wordplay appears in the texts found in this archive.

Perdomo provides a valuable fact by stating that Andalusians were the largest number of immigrants to Spain’s American colonies.9 Here is a small gypsy-influenced example, a terceto, taken from the Bogotá Archive.

Chaz, chaz, chaz Que repican todas las gitanillas, Todas a compás

Chaz, chaz, chaz All the gypsy women sound All in rhythm

The arrival of multitudes of Africans from Angola into the Portuguese colony of Brazil resulted in the creation of musical genres unique to Brazil. Not all arrivals of African descent into Brazil were from Angola, however, some arrived in Brazil after passing through Portugal. The genres of the arromaba, caozinho, cubanco, gandu, sarambeque, cumbé and the paracumbé are thought to be of Brazilian origin. These

8

José Ignacio Perdomo Escobar, El archivo musical de la Catedral de Bogotá (Bogota: Publicaciones del Instituto Caro y Cuero, 1976).

9

Ibid. 103.

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genres had limited influence on European musical practice, as they were not seen outside of Portugal and Spain. Examples of these genres, specifically the cubanco, cumbé, and paracumbé, set to European musical practice are found in the Portuguese Coimbra and Fundaçao Gulbenkian codices of guitar music.10 Cross-cultural musical influences took place throughout Americas that resulted in hybrid musical forms that also went on to be practiced in Europe. The existence of texts of vernacular influence in various religious centers throughout the continent is proof of this cross-cultural influence. Not all popular villancicos were given elaborate, concertostyle settings, however, that was a practice reserved mainly for Spanish and Latin texts, which greatly outnumber the villancicos of popular origin, but there is evidence of polyphonic popular villancico settings throughout the continent. Some of these popular genres were adapted for the Spanish vihuela, or viola as the Portuguese called it. One of these genres, the zarabanda, a genre also thought to have Afro-Latin roots, went on to be the most influential of the Latin American Baroque genres. Other Latin American genres were also practiced to a greater extent in Europe. An examination of these follows.

Musical Genres of American Origin in European Baroque Practices The fandango and the sarabande are the more commonly known Baroque musical genres of Latin American origin nowadays. The sarabande is easily equated with Baroque times because of J.S. Bach’s use and standardization of it in his keyboard and lute suites.

These genres were also practiced in Baroque times throughout the Western hemisphere.

10

Rogerio Budasz. “Negros e violas no mundo luso-brasileiro nos séculos XVII e XVIII.” In IV Reunión Científica: Mujeres, negros y niños en la música y sociedad colonial iberoamericana, edited by Víctor Rondón, 63-75. Santa Cruz, Bolivia: Asociación Pro Arte y Cultura, 2002.

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The fandango is thought to have arrived in Spain via Africa, then Latin America.

It, like other dances of African influence during colonial times, was for a time prohibited from practice in both pubic and private spaces. Documentation exists of its practice in eighteenth-century Spain, and elsewhere in Europe.11 The Baroque European composers Jean Philippe Rameau, Luigi Boccherini, Domenico Scarlatti, and Antonio Soler also cultivated this genre.

The sarabande, or zarabanda is first mentioned in Latin America in the sixteenth century.12 This dance may very well be of African origin or be influenced by African rhythms first, prior to its European adaptation in the eighteenth century. A documented example of a sarabande composed by Gaspar Fernandes dating to the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century having Africanesque hemiola rhythms exists in “The AfroAmerican Musical Legacy to 1800” by Robert Stevenson.13

Hybrid Themes in Latin American Baroque Music Autochthonous music and language were not the only characteristics used within a European musical practice. Themes native to, or developed on this continent also became meshed within European style musical settings. One example is Ignacio de Jerusalem’s Maitines para la Virgen of Guadalupe. One of the Latin texts in these matins contains the word Mexici, a unique identifier that here fuses Latin and Nahuatl. This work

11

Gabriel Menéndez Torrellas. ““La presencia de la mujer y los negros en el fandango en la Iberoamérica colonial: Coreografía, baile popular, y fenómeno social.” In IV Reunión Científica: Mujeres, negros y niños en la música y sociedad colonial iberoamericana, edited by Víctor Rondón, 101-11.

12 Richard Hudson and Meredith Ellis Little. "Sarabande." In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed May 4, 2009).

13 Robert Stevenson. “The Afro-American Musical Legacy to 1800,” The Musical Quarterly 54, no. 4 (October 1968): 490-96.

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is an example of a meeting, juxtaposition, and an overlapping of a stately musical religious form of European origin, and the cult of Guadalupe.

The cult of Guadalupe is based on a variation of Marian devotion, where the person or memory of Mary is venerated and adapted to Mexican characteristics. The practice originated by superimposing the person of Mary over the original Aztec female deity Tonantzin, this created a type of hybrid practice. The objective was for Mary to become or to be seen as Tonantzin to the native Mexicans and through this attain their conversion to Catholicism.

The impact of this cult extended far beyond Mexico, as far as Sucre in Bolivia. A sanctuary to that saint exists at Sucre Cathedral in addition to a musical composition by Antonio Durán de la Mota for four voices and harp that was dedicated to her. The work dates to 1752 and is archived at this cathedral.14

From Small to Grand Scale: Latin American Themes in Purcell and Vivaldi Henry Purcell and Antonio Vivaldi are not ever equated with Latin American themes but they, two of the most exemplary composers of the Baroque period also drew from them. The cause for this has to do with the current music history educational model.

Undergraduate history courses provide only a broad, general introduction to these composers where other works of theirs are treated as more exemplary. Knowledge of these facts concerning Purcell and Vivaldi becomes the realm of post-graduate work, which in turn means that the overall impact and diffusion of these facts among larger groups of people is minimal.

14

Carmen García and Waldemar Axel Roldán. Un archivo musical americano (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1972).

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Henry Purcell composed a semi-opera, The Indian Queen around 1695. Purcell based the opera on a dramatic work by John Caryl. Caryl’s work was performed in London in 1664.15 In The Indian Queen, Caryl combines fiction and history and an imaginary a conflict between the Mexican and Peruvian empires. It has historical incongruence in it but the work seems to have been written for fantasy’s sake and not for historical accuracy. The story pits the Mexican queen Zempoalla against Moctezuma, who in this libretto is Incan. He is a historical Aztec emperor, but again, this work is more about fantasy than history.

Moctezuma, or Montezuma in English, was the subject of Antonio Vivaldi’s opera Motezuma dating to 1733. This libretto, by Girolamo Giusti is a bit more realistic as it treats the encounter between Moctezuma and Hernán Cortez, the man who conquered the Aztecs with the aid of neighboring enemy native tribes, as its subject. The work was found and attributed to Vivaldi in 2002 and was recently performed by the Long Beach Opera on March 28, 2009 at the Center Theater in Long Beach and on April 5, 2009 at Barnum Hall in Santa Monica.

Vivaldi’s Motezuma was not the only Italian Baroque opera about the Aztec emperor. Gian Francesco de Majo set Vittorio Amedeo Cignasanti’s libretto based on Antonio de Solis’s La conquista del Messico in Turin in 1765.16 This work is also based on historical facts about the encounter between Cortez and Moctezuma but also takes artistic liberties and adds fiction similar to the libretto Vivaldi used.

15

Ana Núñez Ronchi. La reevaluación de las crónicas de indias en la ópera The Indian Queen de Purcell (1695). PhD dissertation, Arizona State University, 2003.

Marita P. McClymonds. "Motezuma." In The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, edited by Stanley Sadie. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed May 4, 2009).

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In conclusion, Latin American Baroque musical genres, dances, and themes contributed to the forging of hybrid musical styles in the Americas that went on to influence the most celebrated of European Baroque composers. A pattern emerges in the Early Baroque where African and Native American musical roots merge in the Americas and are then supplanted in Europe, then cultivated, and made a common practice. Some genres remained associated with one European region, which is the case with some genres of Brazilian origin and their practice in the Iberian Peninsula, and others became more widely diffused, namely the fandango and sarabande.

Henry Purcell, Antonio Vivaldi, and Gian Francesco de Majo glorified the theme of the encounter between the European and Native American cultures, set against the spectacular backdrop of Mexico City in Baroque musical practice. Hybrid works were created through the use of these American themes set to European art music. In sum, musical and cultural hybridity was achieved by adapting Latin American musical genres and historical themes into European art music.

America, continent of symbiosis, of mutations, of vibrations, of mestizajes, has been baroque from the start.... And why is Latin America the promised land of the baroque? Because all symbiosis, all mestizaje, gives rise to baroqueness (Carpentier 1987:110, 112).

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SOURCES Augusto Salgado, César. “Hybridity in New World Baroque Theory.” The Journal of American Folklore 112, no. 445 (Summer, 1999): 316-31.

Baker, Geoffrey. “Music in the Convents and Monasteries of Colonial Cuzco.” Latin American Music Review 24, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 2003): 1-41. ______. Imposing Harmony: Music and Society in Colonial Cuzco. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.

Behauge, Gerard. “Latin American Music: An Annotated Bibliography of Recent Publications.” Anuario Interamericano de Investigación Musical 11, (1975): 190-218.

Budasz, Rogério. “Negros e violas no mundo luso-brasileiro nos sécolos XVII e XVIII.” In IV Reunión Científica: Mujeres, negros y niños en la música y sociedad colonial iberoamericana, edited by Víctor Rondón, 63-75. Santa Cruz, Bolivia: Asociación Pro Arte y Cultura, 2002.

Catalyne, Alice Ray and Mark Brill. "Franco, Hernando." In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed May 3, 2009).

Cirio, Norberto Pablo. “¿Rezan o bailan? Disputas en torno a la devoción a San Baltazar por los negros en el Buenos Aires colonial.” In IV Reunión Científica: Mujeres, negros y niños en la música y sociedad colonial iberoamericana, edited by Víctor Rondón, 89-100. Santa Cruz, Bolivia: Asociación Pro Arte y Cultura, 2002.

Devoto, Daniel. “Panorama de la Musicología Latinoamericana.” Acta Musicologica 31, Fasc. 3/4 (July-December, 1959): 91-109.

García Muñoz, Carmen and Waldemar Axel Roldán. Un archivo musical americano.

Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1972.

Hague, Eleanor. Latin American Music: Past and Present. Santa Ana, CA: Fine Arts Press, 1934.

Hudson, Richard and Meredith Ellis Little. "Sarabande." In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed May 4, 2009).

Katz, Israel J. "Fandango." In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed May 4, 2009) Kennedy, T. Frank. “Colonial Music from the Episcopal Archive of Concepcion, Bolivia.” Latin American Music Review 9, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1988): 1-17.

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McClymonds, Marita P. "Motezuma." In The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, edited by Stanley Sadie. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed May 4, 2009).

Menéndez Torrellas, Gabriel. “La presencia de la mujer y los negros en el fandango en la Iberoamérica colonial: Coreografía, baile popular, y fenómeno social.” In IV Reunión Científica: Mujeres, negros y niños en la música y sociedad colonial iberoamericana, edited by Víctor Rondón, 101-11. Santa Cruz, Bolivia: Asociación Pro Arte y Cultura, 2002.

Nawrot, Piotr. “Frasiquillo de Busanga. Esa noche yo baila: Una negrilla en archivos musicales bolivianos.” In IV Reunión Científica: Mujeres, negros y niños en la música y sociedad colonial iberoamericana, edited by Víctor Rondón, 161-70. Santa Cruz, Bolivia: Asociación Pro Arte y Cultura, 2002.

Núñez Ronchi, Ana. La Reevaluación de las Crónicas de Indias en la Ópera “The Indian Queen” de Purcell. PhD diss., Arizona State University, 2003.

Perdomo Escobar, José Ignacio. El archivo musical de la Catedral de Bogotá. Bogota: Publicaciones del Instituto Caro y Cuero, 1976.

Price, Curtis. "Purcell, Henry." In The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, edited by Stanley Sadie. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed May 4, 2009).

Romero, Raúl R. Debating the Past: Music, Memory, and Identity in the Andes. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Russell, Craig H. "Jerusalem, Ignacio." In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed May 4, 2009).

Stevenson, Robert. “The Bogotá Music Archive.” The Journal of the American Musicological Society 15, no. 3 (Autumn, 1962), p. 292-315. ______. Music in Aztec & Inca Territory. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968. ______. Latin American Colonial Music Anthology. Washington D.C.: General Secretariat of the Organization of American States, 1975. ______. “Colonial Music in Colombia.” The Americas 19, no. 2 (October 1962): 121-36. ______. “Opera Beginnings in the New World.” The Musical Quarterly 45, no. 1 (January-March, 1959): 8-25.

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______. “The Afro-American Musical Legacy to 1800.” The Musical Quarterly 54, no. 4 (October 1968): 490-96.

Copyright Omar Ian Avalos Santa Ana, California 2012

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