Fernando Sanz | Valladolid (EFE) XVII, which was heard in the Peninsula and also in Latin America.
A music from the Golden Age that forms a legacy that is beginning to come to light thanks to the ‘Bridging Musical Heritage’ project, subsidized by Creative Europe.
The universities of Valladolid and Coimbra, the Superior School of Early Music of Porto, the Superior Conservatory of Lyon, as well as other ensemble groups and a production company participate.
It seeks to “open a window from historical listening to contemporary listening”.
This is stated by its coordinator and professor at the University of Valladolid, Soterraña Aguirre, who in statements to the EFE Agency highlights the exceptionality of the music archive of the Valladolid seo.
About a thousand works of music from the Golden Age in the cataloging phase
It is an archive that “contains a large amount of profane repertoire”, since the chapel masters -who were composers, teachers, choir and orchestra directors, because they did everything- left their private legacies to the cathedral and “that is very strange”.
Aguirre explains that in the more than 450 years of the headquarters of the Archdiocese of Valladolid “there are close to 10,000 compositions, many of them unique.”
And in the period on which his project focuses, between the 16th century and the mid-17th century, he estimates that there may be “about a thousand works”.
They are in the cataloging, digitalization and transposition phase into contemporary musical notation, in order to be interpreted.
“The chapel masters not only composed for the cathedrals, but also composed for the local society and the distant society”, he explains.
“We have an international repertoire that they acquired and deposited in the cathedral, like many madrigals or a large repertoire of songs, unusual at this time,” he details.
Back and forth
Unlike today, at that time access to music was very limited, with the exception of those people who could play a polyphonic instrument or small musical groups.
For this reason, the new compositions were heard in religious institutions and, especially, at Christmas and Corpus Christi.
They performed madrigals and Christmas carols – which were not only understood as Christmas songs, but as urban music, “from the town” – and which preserved “the political and social projection of the moment”.
They dealt with issues of the time with which they tried to “connect with people”, analyzes the professor from the University of Valladolid.
Christmas carols with the speech of the black slaves of the time
Among them, the Christmas carols of Galicians and “de negros” stand out, representing the speech of the black slaves of the time, coming mostly from Guinea and Uganda.
They were represented as “a very honest and very noble character, a bit clueless” in compositions with “quite rich, dance rhythms”.
It is a kind of music that did not remain in the Peninsula, but was exported to Latin America, where “it was consumed a lot and immediately”, since the chapel masters worked “in Mexico, in Cuzco or in the different viceroyalties, it was they created the first cathedrals and, immediately, they composed Christmas carols”.
“We also received how they perceived the number of black slaves that there were in Hispanic America, that there were many, and they returned here with those repertoires that are the round trip” explains Aguirre.
In his opinion, “the scalpeling that is now so popular in urban popular music was already done by them.”
“Refuge” and “job” feminine
Another novelty that ‘Bridging Musical Heritage’ explores is the so-called women’s music.
They are compositions by female performers intended for nuns and monasteries and which are preserved in cathedrals because “the chapel masters also created compositions for them”.
Aguirre details that in the 16th and 17th centuries music “was an education allowed for women”, a space that at that time was “a refuge” but also “was a profession”.
Also a way of entering monastic life for “the second or third daughters of families who could not pay the marriage dowry” and even for those who had no resources.
“If the dowry could not be paid, which was also high, the only exception to entering a convent was to do so as a chorister nun and not as a servant,” says the teacher, who emphasizes the high preparation and complexity of his compositions.
They were “instructed musicians”
“They entrusted them to the chapel masters. Copies are preserved here and thanks to this we know that they were great performers, that they had groups of at least eight performers who played harps, keyboards or another series of complex polyphonic instruments”, analyzes the expert.
As an example, the Christmas carol in Spanish ‘Atención, que sala Teresa’ for eight voices, violin and harp, a polychoral piece “of great celebration” printed in partichelas – that is, on loose sheets with each voice – that was used during the taking of habits.
“They were educated musicians: their parents paid for their education, to be bass player, because the low voices could not interpret them and they were played with a ‘bajón’, which was like a bassoon of the time, but there were also many keyboard players and they also composed music. ”, he refers.
It is, in short, a hidden legacy that comes to light almost half a century later and that has the thick walls of the Valladolid seo as a shelter. “That repertoire of women that we have not seen is in these places and in Valladolid we have a very valuable one,” he concludes. EFE.