Early Music America Summer 2013 - (Page 32)

Indigenous Musicians in Colonial Cuzco A repository of music in the Seminary of San Antonio Abad portrays the rich musical life in colonial Peru 1953, Father Rubén Vargas Ugarte published, in the Peruvian cultural magazine Mar de Sur, his “discovery” of one of the largest caches of Baroque music from Colonial Peru. Over 200 pieces of music were transferred by Vargas Urgarte to the archives of the Archdiocese of Cuzco (most are now located at the Seminary of San Antonio Abad). According to Father Vargas Ugarte, “It was a great fortune to find such an archive, which was in danger of being lost because it was considered worthless.” Father Vargas Urgarte’s findings gave historians and musicologists an important glimpse into the musical life of Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Incas and later an important commercial center. His study confirmed the notion that the latest music from Europe and the New World was performed at Cuzco’s cathedral, as it was in the Viceregal capitals of the Spanish Empire. Some of the New World composers whose music was performed in Cuzco were Juan de Araujo (16461712) and Tómas de Torrejon y Velasco (1644-1728). Since Father Vargas Ugarte’s time, only a handful of studies have been conducted into the musical history of Cuzco. In 2000, a renewed interest in Cuzco’s Baroque period and music took place with the founding of the association Projecto Laudate (Project Praise), which aims to preserve and disseminate Peru’s Colonial music. Over the years, Projecto Laudate has won the recognition of Peru’s Instituto Nactional de Cultura (National Institute of Culture) and has sponsored the work of Peruvian musicologist José Quezada Macchiavello, whose 2004 book El legado musical del I N 32 Summer 2013 Early Music America Examples of some of the negrillas at the archives of the Seminary of San Antonio Abad are “Así mangalu con tumba,” “En Belesamotume que no me ponga focico,” and “Lum negliya de Panamá.” Most of the negrillas found by Vargas Ugarte were anonymous and were written for four to five voices. Other sub-genres listed by Vargas Ugarte and Quezada Macchiavello include batallas, juguetes, queditos, and xácaras. These pieces of music, like the negrillas, are mostly anonymous and appear to have been written for special occasions. For example, one 18th-century batalla was written in honor of San Antonio Abad (St. Anthony the Great), the patron saint of the diocesan seminary of Cuzco. The batalla, written for four voices, calls the faithful to arms: “El mas augusto campeón pone la batalla que como sol con un rayo ahuyentaran las sobras… dense la batalla y virtudes y vicios salgan a la campaña que mi general Antonio es columna” (The most august champion puts on a battle like a ray of sun; the shadows disperse; let virtue and vice come forth in battle with Anthony as our Father Rubén Vargas Ugarte general and firm column). The archives of San Antonio Abad, as well as that of the Archdiocese of Cuzco, known as villancico de negros. The negrilla reveal much more than the music played at the cathedral. The ground-breaking stems from the villancico, a literary and study of Geoffrey Baker, Imposing Harmomusical genre that began in Spain and was transplanted to the New World. The ny: Music and Society in Colonial Cuzco (2008), identified some of the musicians villancico was a song in the vernacular in Cuzco, showed how were they trained performed within a mass or the holy hours of devotion. For the most part, vil- and paid, and described their position within colonial society. Unlike previous lancicos were joyous in nature. Negrillas employed the vocabulary and rhythm of musicologists who mainly focused on the Cuzco Cathedral, Baker examined African slaves to render the music more the parishes and convents throughout “authentic,” although they were almost the city. Baker concluded that while the never performed by black musicians. Cusco barroco (The Musical Legacy of Baroque Cuzco) included a revised catalogue of the scores saved by Vargas Ugarte. It lists previously unknown works and genres performed at Cuzco’s Metropolitan Cathedral and possibly at the eight parishes that surround the city (Santa Ana, Belén, San Pedro, San Sebastián, San Blas, San Christóbal, San Jerónimo, and Santiago). Among the most interesting genres of music performed in Cuzco is the negrilla, also

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Early Music America Summer 2013

Editor's Note
Reader Forum
Sound Bytes
Profile: Christopher Jackson
Musings: When the Music Becomes Ours
Recording Reviews
Early Music, 21st-Century Style
The Indigenous Musicians of Cuzco
Bird Quills, the Art of Touch, and Other Pleasures
Pallade Musica: A Swift Rise, All'Italiana
Book Reviews
Ad Index
In Conclusion: Finding "Local Content" in the Music of New Spain

Early Music America Summer 2013