Devotional Music in the Iberian World, 1450-1800

The Villancico and Related Genres

Álvaro Torrente, Tess Knighton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351569460
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

From the fifteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century, devotional music played a fundamental role in the Iberian world. Songs in the vernacular, usually referred to by the generic name of 'villancico', but including forms as varied as madrigals, ensaladas, tonos, cantatas or even oratorios, were regularly performed at many religious feasts in major churches, royal and private chapels, convents and in monasteries. These compositions appear to have progressively fulfilled or supplemented the role occupied by the Latin motet in other countries and, as they were often composed anew for each celebration, the surviving sources vastly outnumber those of Latin compositions; they can be counted in tens of thousands. The close relationship with secular genres, both musical, literary and performative, turned these compositions into a major vehicle for dissemination of vernacular styles throughout the Iberian world. This model of musical production was also cultivated in Portugal and rapidly exported to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in America and Asia. In many cases, the villancico repertory represents the oldest surviving source of music produced in these regions, thus affording it a primary role in the construction of national identities. The sixteen essays in this volume explore the development of devotional music in the Iberian world in this period, providing the first broad-based survey of this important genre.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Tess Knighton and Álvaro Torrente

Sacred songs in the vernacular—whether referred to as chançonetas, ensaladas, villancicos, cantadas or pastorelas—are counted as one of the largest corpus of music cultivated in Spain, and, to some extent, in Portugal as well as the areas of influence of both countries, from the 15th to the 19th century. Form and style, both poetic and musical, changed, sometimes radically, over this period, to the extent that it is not easy to find parallels between a simple two-voice polyphonic song from the Cancionero Musical de Astudillo in the early 15th century and a large polychoral and polysectional cantata of the mid-18th century, not to mention the multiform ensaladas of the 16th century, the burlesque and sometimes transgressive jácaras, or the exalted, contemplative and almost mystical tonos a lo divino of the late 17th century.

However, all these compositions have significant traits in common, and it makes it possible to approach them in a single volume with the umbrella title ‘devotional music’. This term relates more clearly to a musical practice whose roots are common to most European countries, yet this practice had a longer—and peculiar—history in Spain, particularly after the Counter-Reformation. For the purposes of this volume, ‘devotional music’ refers to a variety of songs in the vernacular, written by learned poets and composers, and performed by professional musicians, which have their natural space within public sacred celebrations, to the extent that they came to be inserted into the liturgy of major Catholic feast days: notably at the end of Vespers, after the responsories of Matins, during the Offertory and the Elevation of the Mass or in the many processions inside and outside churches. Devotional music could also embrace forms of private, individual worship, though in the case of the diverse genres studied here the focus falls mainly on public forms of devotion, either in small, closed circles, such as convents or private chapels and oratorios, or, more often, in major public spaces such as cathedrals or royal chapels. From this perspective, devotional music is of interest to the 21st-century scholar as a cultural phenomenon that goes well beyond questions of musical or literary value in its role as a major vehicle for communal worship, popular devotion, social representation, political propaganda, religious indoctrination, theological transmission or musical training, with all the fascinating implications raised by such a breadth of purpose and practice.

Indeed, an historical practice that endures for more than four centuries can hardly be designated by a single term: yet for most of their history, these devotional compositions were generically called ‘villancicos’. The word ‘villancico’ emerged in the second half of the 15th century to designate the refrain of a certain type of secular song in the vernacular which, though cultivated by learned poets and musicians, took its inspiration from popular models usually with a clear dance ancestry. It did not take very long for the word to be used to denominate the whole composition divided into refrain and verses (‘cabeza y pies’) which was characterized by the asymmetry of text and music between the two sections [Pope and Laird, 2001]. During this early period, devotional songs already existed but were normally referred to as ‘coplas’ or ‘chançonetas’. As some of these began to correspond to what would become the villancio mould, the term ‘villancico’ began to be used to designate sacred songs in the vernacular, together with other terms such as ‘canciones’ or ‘villanescas’, to the extent that, by the early 17th century its use became restricted to designate these kinds of pieces; other terms were then used for their secular counterparts, notably ‘letra’ or ‘tono’. Probably from around the mid-19th century the word ‘villancico’ began to be used for popular Christmas songs, and this is the current meaning of the term.

The first scholar to identify and dissect the polysemy of the term villancico was José Subirá [1962: 5], who proposed four different species of villancicos on the basis of their chronology and function although his study had little influence in later studies: 1) the secular villancico (‘villancico profano’ or ‘cortesano’), commonly performed at court and in culturally sophisticated circles during the 15th and 16th centuries; 2) the sacred villancico (‘villancico religioso’), dedicated to religious services and composed by learned musicians, which lasted from the late 15th to the 19th century; 3) the dramatic villancico (‘villancico teatral’ or ‘escénico’), inserted into theatrical performances, mostly in the late 15th and 16th centuries; 4) the folk villancico (‘villancico popular’) performed in modern times during the religious festivals of Christmastide.¹ The only significant limitation of this proposal is that it overlooks the—sometimes profound—connections between the different species of villancico: the possible popular background of the court, dramatic and particularly sacred villancico (as explored by Pepe Rey in his contribution to this volume); the connections between the dramatic villancico and both its secular and sacred counterparts (as discussed in the chapters byAlberto del Río and Tess Knighton) or the still unexplored relationship between the modern Christmas villancico—Subirá’s ‘villancico popular’—with the sacred villancico cultivated by learned musicians in earlier periods.

As regards the chronological scope of this book, the polysemy of the term ‘villancico’ can be reduced to two main connotations which do not coincide exactly with those proposed by Subirá. On the one hand, villancico is used to refer to compositions identified by formal traits—particularly the combination of estribillo and coplas—disregarding poetic content, musical style and function; this formal meaning of villancico is dominant in the 15th and 16th centuries. On the other hand, villancico is used generically to denote all learned songs in the vernacular performed in a sacred context; this meaning is predominant from the late 16th to around the mid-19th century. The distinction between ‘villancico form’ and ‘villancico genre’ respectively for each of these uses of the term was first made by Torrente [1997a; 2000a]. More recently, Illari has proposed that this distinction should be expanded and has suggested that the concept of ‘metagenre’ should be applied to the Baroque villancico, whose ‘main basis for a characterization … perhaps, rather than any set of crystallized features, is the peculiar dynamic that shaped it: processes rather than products’. From this perspective, ‘the villancico seems to result from what we can call a metageneric attitude, of writing part songs with references to other kinds of songs (especially, popular references), adapted for different social and aesthetic functions, and through different means and procedures’ [Illari, 2001: I, 140]. Bombi’s chapter in this volume departs from the dialectics of both concepts (genre vs metagenre) to suggest a more precise distinction through the study of literary sources from the late Baroque.

This conceptual debate will no doubt continue, but it is true that during the 17th and 18th centuries a regular generic use of the word ‘villancico’ to designate all sorts of devotional songs can be identified. This co-existed with a more restricted use of the term to refer to a certain type of devotional song characterized by particular formal and structural aspects. The evidence for synchronic use of the same word with two different levels of meaning—one generic, one specific—presents a significant challenge to the modern scholar who is normally expected to employ precise, unambiguous terminology. In the case of the villancico, this terminological ambiguity should not be overlooked or concealed for it doubtless reflects its polysemy in the minds of its cultivators and listeners in a given period. Thus, the term villancico is used by the contributors to this book in both its generic and specific senses.²

The prevalence during the 17th and 18th centuries of ‘villancico’ as a generic word with formal implications led most scholars to assume that the roots of the genre were to be found in those compositions that were originally called ‘villancicos’ and, by extension, in those which shared similar formal traits. This organic approach has dominated musicological studies until very recently [Rubio, 1979a; Querol Gavaldá, 1982; Laird, 1986; 1997; Capdepón, 1993], and can still be observed in recent reference works such as The New Grove [Pope and Laird, 2001] and the Diccionario de la música española e hispanoamericana [Villanueva, 2002]. This model ‘assumes that the villancico was some sort of “living being” which at a certain point in history was born, grew, evolved, declined and died, without losing its essential identity’ [Torrente, 2000a: 63], yet it overlooks the pool of music and poetic genres which, despite having different forms and/or names, share a number of traits, particularly in terms of function, with those works specifically denominated villancico. The approach adopted here is more diverse, taking as its point of departure the assumption that the most significant points in common for the devotional genres studied here are: function in public sacred celebrations, use of vernacular text, inspiration in secular models and a consistent demand for new works.

The historiographical tradition for devotional music in the Spanish-speaking world in general and for the sacred villancico in particular has been at best patchy and generally impoverished. Until recently, both music and literary studies tended to focus on the early period of its development as a musico-literary genre—the late 15th and early 16th centuries. It is noteworthy that the single most important monograph dedicated to the secular villancico from the literary viewpoint [Sánchez Romeralo, 1969] does not discuss its sacred counterpart, nor does it take into account the music; it is another seminal study that provides the first significant analysis of religious poetry used in devotional songs [Wardropper, 1958]. Musical approaches have tended to focus more on editing the works or analysing formal issues, as is the case of Anglés [1947; 1954], Bal y Gay [1944], Pope [1944; 1954; 1980], or Querol Gavaldá [1952; 1955-57; 1963], to mention only a few. The most significant and comprehensive reflections are: the article published in 1962 by José Subirá discussed above; María Esther Grebe’s essay [1969] on the villancico in Latin America which attempts the first global perspective of the genre as it developed on the American continent; and, much more recently, Manuel Carlos de Brito’s essay [1989] which provides one of the best insights into the sacred villancico and its relationship with forms of popular devotion and entertainment.

The story for the Baroque villancico—if the adjective ‘Baroque’ can still be used³—is completely different. In 1935 Viçenc Ripollès published the first edition of 18th-century villancicos and cantatas with a substantial introduction. However, the nationalistic thinking that pervaded Spanish culture after the Civil War prevented any further work in that direction until the 1970s,⁴ when Querol Gavaldá published a selection of solo songs which included several devotional pieces [1973]. This was followed by José Climent’s complete edition of the villancicos by Juan Bautista Comes [1977-79] and Samuel Rubio’s selection of villancicos by Antonio Soler—together with a short but very influential study of the polyphonic villancico [1979]. This eclosion may well have been in part a Spanish reaction towards the editions of Latin American villancicos published that decade by Claro Valdés [1974] and Stevenson [1974], as well as to the rediscovery of the Portuguese villancico in several volumes of the series Portugaliae Musica by Stevenson [1976], Brito [1983] and Alegría [1985]. In the 1980s, Miguel Querol Gavaldá undertook the publication of a number of editions of Baroque music, some of which included villancicos and other genres in the series Monumentos de la Música Española [1982; 1988].

This big wave of editions of Iberian and Latin American villancicos from the 17th and 18th centuries ran parallel to the publication of music catalogues of most Spanish cathedrals and major ecclesiastical institutions,⁵ as well as studies of musical activity in those institutions, starting with the seminal monograph on Granada Cathedral by José López-Calo [1963b]. The publication in 1990 and 1992 of the catalogues of villancico chapbooks in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid—by far the largest collection of this kind of imprints in the world—was critical material for the rediscovery and re-appraisal of this kind of source.⁶

This substantial academic production, although uneven in quality, made accessible in a short period of time a large amount of information and source material which, among many other questions, established the central role of the sacred villancico in Spanish musical life, and became the starting-point for further research, including a number of doctoral dissertations in which the sacred villancico was the focus. The theses by Laird [1986], Villanueva [1988], Sánchez Siscart [1991], Capdepón [1991], Rifé [1992], Caballero [1994], Ezquerro [1996], Torrente [1997a], Cabero Pueyo [1997], Lambea [1998] and Bombi [2001], among others, demonstrate the re-appraisal of the villancico as a central genre in Spanish music history, expanding existing knowledge in many ways, yet only a few of these provided new perspectives beyond the traditional approach. Other recent doctoral dissertations, including those of Nery [1990], Ros Fábregas [1992], Marín [2000a], Illari [2001], Vera [2001], Rodríguez [2003] and Hathaway [2005], though not focusing exclusively on the villancico, nevertheless do afford new and refreshing perspectives. The last decade or so has witnessed a number of works that emphasize understanding of the sacred villancico as a historical and cultural phenomenon, most of them in the form of introductions to music editions or essays scattered in books and journals. This includes a number of works by Bombi, Caballero, Carreras, Gómez Muntané, Hathaway, Illari, Knighton, Laird, Leza, Luis Iglesias, Marín, Nery, Rey, Rodríguez, Sánchez- Siscart, Torrente and others which are listed in the bibliography. Nevertheless, these contributions would not appear yet to have had sufficiently widespread influence to overcome traditional approaches to the genre in mainstream reference works.

The sacred villancico and other devotional genres have not enjoyed great attention in non-Iberian music scholarship. Despite the existence of interesting contributions in English well before the dawn of the 21st century,⁷ these have hardly found echo beyond specialized Hispanic studies. Recent contributions to music dictionaries are somewhat disappointing. The new edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart renewed the old article ‘villancico’ by Isabel Pope [1966] with a shorter essay by Robert Stevenson [1998] which certainly dedicates more attention to the eclosion of the genre in the 17th and 18th centuries, yet still adheres to the organic conception of the genre without a clear discrimination between the early villancico, characterized by its form and the later manifestations of the genre, characterized by their function. The same organic view can be identified in New Grove 2, which includes a revision by Paul Laird [Pope and Laird, 2001] of Pope and Stanford’s original article for the 1980 edition. Laird’s contribution is, however, much further developed than the original and devotes most attention to the period of major flourishing of the genre, exploring various developments as regards form, style and function, as well as to the gradual suppression of the genre in the decades after the mid-18th century.

One major advance in New Grove 2 which must be acknowledged here is the inclusion of a section dedicated to Spain in the article ‘Cantata’ [Carreras, 2001]. Carreras’s article embraces both the secular and sacred dimensions of the cantata as Italianate importations which occupy the functional space of related genres in the Spanish tradition, the tono humano and the villancico respectively. Carreras provides the best insight into one of the most significant devotional genres cultivated in Spain as regards not only history and formal development but also function and poetic content, exploring the blurred borderlines with related genres, including the villancico.

Another remarkable step took place with the publication in 1997 of the first comprehensive monograph on the sacred villancico written in any language, Towards a history of the Spanish villancico by Paul Laird, which was also the first significant attempt to place the villancico on the map of mainstream musicology. The book offers a number of innovative approaches, particularly the systematic use of text imprints as primary sources and the study of circulation of text and music in the Iberian dominions, and this has established a model for the work of several scholars and is changing dramatically understanding of the genre. The main drawbacks are the limited critical reflection about the early history of the genre—up to the mid-17th century—which results in the adherence to the approach found in earlier literature, and the scarce use of documentary information such as descriptions (‘relaciones’), ceremonials or censures which have proved in recent years to be crucial to understanding the cultivation of the villancico.⁸

It was a decade ago that Paul Laird claimed ‘the villancico is almost certainly one of the least understood Renaissance and Baroque genres. One who has spent time with this striking repertory longs for the day when general histories will place the villancico next to the madrigal, cantata and chanson as part of the musicological canon’ [1997: xviii]. Without going so far as to suggest that the villancico should be taken up into the celestial realm of canonical Western musical genres—as if it were a metamorphosed Ovidian character in a 17th-century Venetian opera—it is unfortunate that Laird’s hopes have found so little echo in the more general musical historiography of the last ten years. No single reference to this web of devotional genres is found in the 3,500 pages of Taruskin’s Titanic contribution to recent music historiography, The Oxford history of Western music [2005], which perpetuates its historical oblivion already evident in the volumes edited by Abraham [1968] and Lewis and Fortune [1975] of the New Oxford History of Music.⁹ This is not altogether surprising, perhaps, as Taruskin’s history, despite its fresh and stimulating approach, rarely steps outside the canonic works, authors and genres of the Western tradition. It is also true that the sacred villancico and related genres have been virtually absent from any major historical synthesis. While this could be explained in the mid-20th century as an inevitable consequence of the scarcity of studies and editions—for example in the works of Lang [1941], Bukofzer [1947], Palisca [1968], Abraham [1968] and Lewis and For...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• List of Illustrations
• List of Music Examples
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Weaving ensaladas
• 3 Song migrations: the case of Adorámoste, Señor
• 4 The villancico in the works of early Castilian playwrights (with a note on the function and performance of the musical parts)
• 5 Function and liturgical context of the villancico in Salamanca Cathedral
• 6 ‘The third villancico was a motet’: the villancico and related genres
• 7 The villancico as music of state in 17th-century Spain
• 8 Religiosity, power and aspects of social representation in the villancicos of the Portuguese Royal Chapel
• 9 ‘Music charms the senses…’: devotional music in the Triunfos festivos of San Ginés, Madrid, 1656
• 10 A literary and typological study of the late 17th-century villancico
• 11 Pastorelas and the pastoral tradition in 18th-century Spanish villancicos
• 12 The noël à grand chœur of south-western France and the Iberian villancico: towards a comparison
• 13 De rosas cercada: music by Francisco de la Huerta for the nuns of Santa Ana de Ávila (1767-78)
• 14 Historical and literary vestiges of the villancico in the early modern Philippines
• 15 The ‘ethnic villancico’ and racial politics in 17th-century Mexico
• 16 The popular, the sacred, the colonial and the local: the performance of identities in the villancicos from Sucre (Bolivia)
• Bibliography
• Index