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Go to Old Music News Archive Home Old Music News Volume 28, No. 1 December 2004 Old Music FROM The New World In all of our put-togethers, we’ve never done this. A concert of early music originating in the western hemisphere. A program for the holiday season drawn from the Americas. Go figure. We’ve certainly presented much music from the “Age of Discovery” — that well-known period found in our Social Studies textbooks, during which the New World was all the buzz in western Europe. But that music always came straight from the civilization which claimed to be doing all the discovering. The music was from those powerful courts and cathedrals of Spain, Italy, France and England, where extravagant marriages of church and state had occurred, producing an expansionist scene the likes of which the known world had never seen. As the emissaries of “old world” civilization arrived in North, Central and South America, did they bring their own music and musicians with them? Most certainly. And did they encounter indigenous musical styles amongst the native American populations? You betcha. Was there a musical melding that resulted from this cultural interface? Yup, and it wasn’t all bad. The Spanish in particular brought musicians with a wealth of manuscripts from their home country. They established mission schools in which music was taught to converts and would-be converts. What the Conquistadors came upon: indigenous musical cultures that were highly sophisticated, but in a vastly different way from the traditional “Euro” style. Thus a body of works by native composers stood alongside a continuing importation of music from Europe. Missionaries (as seen anywhere in the world) sought to adapt popular music to the new culture they encountered. A fair amount of European-style music got written in native languages such as Quechua (spoken by the Incas of Peru), Mayan (Central American) and Nahuatl (Aztec) in Mexico. For our annual holiday concert, the Center for Old Music in the New World will explore the treasure trove of our own American heritage: the post-1492 New World, from the early 1500s through the early 1800s. Let’s begin with an untitled Peruvian piece, published in 1631 and legendary in musicology as the “first vocal polyphony printed in any new world book.” Robert Stevenson, a pioneer among musicologists (who mined the musical archives of Mexico, Central and South America), posited in 1959 that the music was written by an Indian to be sung (the words are Quechuan) in church-entering processionals. The vocal ensemble will also perform a pair of villancicos composed in Colombia and Peru during the 17th century. These were tunes rooted in the folkways of the Spanish Renaissance, with beloved Christmas storylines. In Nahuatl, the singers will perform “Sancta Maria e yn il huicac cihuapille” (A Marian processional with a Salve Regina based text) and “Dios itlatço conantzine” (a villancico), both composed in 16th-century Mexico City by Don Hernando Franco. Portions of a 5-voice Mass (also from Mexico City, but with the liturgical Latin text) will be sung by the ensemble. Written during the early 1600s by Juan de Lienas in the stile antico, recognizable strains of our old Spanish favorites — Victoria, Aliseda & Morales — come to the fore. The Center’s instrumental consort of four recorders and two viols will play selections from a large 16th-century Guatemalan manuscript (the San Juan Ixcoi Ms). You’ll hear European stock-sounding music, with indigenous flavor. A selection of Magnificat settings by Hernando Franco will be performed instrumentally. Beautiful examples of 16th-century Mexican polyphony, these will be played by a viol/recorder trio and in solo lute format by John Hedger. Mr. Hedger will also perform his own arrangements of festive dance music variations originally composed for Baroque guitar. He has entabulated these for the lute, from works by Santiago de Murcia (who in the 1720s took a lavish field trip to Mexico, witnessing at the source flamboyant new world dances which were becoming quite the rage in his Old Spain). Moving northward (and forward chronologically), a sampling of English colonial and American federalist music will be heard, including a piece simply known as “Christmas Hymn” by Giovanni Palma, published in Philadelphia, 1787. Nikos Pappas will perform on violin the “Grand Club Jig” for dancing on holiday occasions presented by the Tuesday Club of Annapolis (1753). Canadian colonial music will be heard too, including “Iesus Ahatonnia,” known nowadays as the “Huron Carol.” This piece is based on the French tune “Une jeune pucelle,” a highly popular noël melody, also a dance tune. It was taught to the Huron Indians by Father Jean de Brebeuf, a Jesuit missionary. This lovely song will be performed by soprano Mary Reed. From the genre of traditional psalmody, we’ll have Christmas hymns from 19th-century American shape-note tune books in two regions — New England and the Ohio River Valley. A major programming credit for this concert goes to Nikos Pappas, who has provided invaluable assistance to Center director Donna Boyd in the development of our “American Handefull.” Mr. Pappas is a graduate student of Dr. Ron Pen at the University of Kentucky and specializes in early American performance practice. He is a most welcome addition to Musick’s Company as an instrumentalist (he’ll be heard on viol, violin and harpsichord) and shape-note singing coach. BIG BAND BONUS Joining Musick’s Company on this concert will be a new 4 X 4 truckload of recorderists recruited from Lexington, Richmond, Berea and northern Kentucky. This sixteen-piece instrumental SATB choir is being co-directed by Atossa Kramer and Donna Boyd, and will perform a Guatemalan wind band piece based on a popular noël tune, “Pasteurs, souffrez.” They’ll also play a pair of shape-note hymns from the Southern and Indiana Harmonies. The 18 voices of Musick’s Company and the recorder band will merge on “An Ode for Christmas,” which was published in The American Musical Magazine (New Haven, Conn. 1786) after having been “performed in the College Chappel with universal applause.” We all hope to be worthy of same at St. Michael’s Church in 2004.
DID YOU KNOW... ...that the Center for Old Music has a web site? That’s right, we’ve entered the New World thataway too. Of course, if you are reading this on-line, then you already know. If you’re holding the traditional postage-laden paper product and would dig the e-version, it’s www.centerforoldmusic.org. Center concert dates will first be posted here before going in the mail. Also: if we ever have a last-minute change or postponement (storms, plagues, etc.) this is how you’ll know. You’ll find much more at our developing web site: an early music calendar that keeps you up-to-date on concerts, workshops & other events in the region; info on instruments; Old Music News archives; press releases & helpful announcements. You can even get onto a budding Players’ Registry. A tip of the hat to our web master, Dwight Newton! Old Music News is published by Want to know how to act?
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