Memory of the World; 2012 - unesdoc - Unesco

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American colonial music:
a sample of its documentary richness
Inscribed 2007
What is it
Collections of music, including choir books, polyphonic
books, music papers, codices and manuscripts from
Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico and Peru dating from the
16th to the 18th centuries.
Why was it inscribed
The collections, from a wide range of sources, influences,
backgrounds and musicians, comprise important roots
of music in the American continent. They illustrate how
the contributions and fusion of indigenous, European
and African influences evolved into a new culture and
musical heritage.
Where is it
Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia, Sucre, Bolivia;
Archivo de la Catedral de Bogotá, Bogotá, Colombia;
Archivo Histórico de la Arquidiócesis de Oaxaca, Oaxaca,
Mexico; Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, Lima, Peru
The American colonial music collections span three
centuries of the musical history of Hispanic America
during the Colonial era. They reflect its many aspects and
influences and include religious and lay music, cultural
and popular, vocal, instrumental, Renaissance, Baroque
and classical. The collection comes from the many areas
where music would have been heard in American colonial
society – cathedrals, convents, schools, aristocratic houses,
theatres, public spaces and places of entertainment,
including the corrales de comedias, the public playhouses
of contemporary Spanish popular culture. Together they
represent an aspect of the new culture that grew from the
cross-fertilization of indigenous, European and African
roots in this part of the American continent.
Sacred and religious music features prominently and
includes the polyphonic pieces that comprise much of a
libro de coro (choir book) by Gutierre Fernández Hidalgo.
Dated 1584, the book is one of the earliest South American
choir books (from Colombia) and reflects the musical
repertoire used in the conversion of the continent in the
16th century. The Cancionero Musical de Gaspar Fernandes
is another volume of polyphonic compositions, this time
188 American colonial music: a sample of its documentary richness
from the early 17th century. Said to be the only book that
synthesizes the change from Renaissance to Baroque
in the Hispanic empire, the Cancionero also charts the
course colonial music followed between the 16th and
17th centuries, and displays influences of European,
indigenous and African origin. Many of the compositions
are in the vernacular, with some Latin and also
secular pieces.
The growth in popularity in the 17th century of villancicos
is also represented. These devotionals were sung in the
vernacular and used in religious liturgy in the Hispanic
American tradition. Early forms appear in Fernandes’s
Cancionero Musical, and there are versions from later
in the century by Juan de Araujo and Antonio Durán de
la Mota for voice or instruments. Both chapel masters,
they composed noted villancicos based on the work of the
Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the most famous
woman poet in the territory of New Spain.
Another specific treasure is La Púrpura de la Rosa, the
only example of dramatic music from the region in the
17th-century Hispanic Baroque style. Premiered in Lima
in 1701, it is the earliest opera composed and performed in
the Americas. Its importance is such that in 2001, during
the tricentennial commemoration of its composition,
Peru’s National Congress declared it ‘Patrimonio Cultural
de la Nación’, an official part of Peruvian cultural heritage.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz whose work
inspired some of the music. �