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14 - Opera in Spain and the Spanish Dominions in Italy and the Americas
- from Part III - National Traditions (outside Italy)
- Edited by Jacqueline Waeber, Duke University, North Carolina
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Companion to Seventeenth-Century Opera
- Published online:
- 08 December 2022
- Print publication:
- 22 December 2022, pp 312-342
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Summary
Opera was produced only rarely in the otherwise vibrant theatrical culture of seventeenth-century Spain and her American dominions, though Italian operas and occasional Spanish ones became a mainstay of public life in the Spanish-held territories in Italy, especially Naples and Milan. At the royal court in Madrid and the principal administrative centres of the overseas colonies (Lima and Mexico), opera was inextricably bound to dynastic politics and constrained by conventions about the gender of onstage singers. Several other kinds of plays with music were produced at theatres both public and private, however, and commercial theatres known as corrales were among the busiest sites of musical performance and cultural transmission. Some 10,000 plays were performed in Madrid in the course of the seventeenth century, although only about 2,000 such texts have been preserved. The principal theatrical genre was the comedia nueva, a three-act play in poly-metric verse in which the tragic and the comic were mingled to recreate the natural balance of human existence with varying degrees of verisimilitude.
14 - Opera, genre, and context in Spain and its American colonies
- from Part II - National styles and genres
- Edited by Anthony R. DelDonna, Georgetown University, Washington DC, Pierpaolo Polzonetti, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Opera
- Published online:
- 28 September 2011
- Print publication:
- 25 June 2009, pp 244-269
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Summary
Opera had a richly textured history in eighteenth-century Spain and its empire, though a relatively small number of fully sung operas in Spanish were produced in the period. In the peninsular capitals, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and Cádiz, and in the administrative centers of its colonies, Naples, Palermo, Lima, and Mexico City, operas and musical plays were performed in a variety of situations, public and private, and sponsored by both aristocratic patrons and eager entrepreneurs. The history of opera in this period is intertwined with the history of musical theater, given that opera coexisted with several types of partly sung entertainment (zarzuela, tonadilla escénica, and sainete) and embraced a number of musical styles. The classic Spanish comedia – a three-act, tragicomedic genre that usually included songs in verisimilar situations – was still widely performed in the early 1700s. Indeed, scholars now recognize that its conventions were extremely influential well into the eighteenth century. In part, this influence remained vigorous because the traditional mechanisms for theatrical administration and financing were so well engrained. Public theaters, known as corrales, continued to present spoken theater with almost daily performances for an eager audience, much as they had almost continuously since the opening of the first purpose-built public theaters in Madrid and elsewhere just before 1600.
22 - Spain, ii : 1600–1640
- Edited by James Haar
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- Book:
- European Music, 1520-1640
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 18 March 2023
- Print publication:
- 15 June 2006, pp 455-471
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ALTHOUGH the death of Philip ii in 1598 marked the end of an immensely important era in political history, it is difficult to draw a firm line of demarcation around the year 1600 in the history of Spanish music, because so many of the genres and musical techniques of the late sixteenth century were essential to Spanish music through the early seventeenth century, and the social place of music stayed much the same as well. For example, the association between reserved imitative contrapuntal polyphony and sacred Latin texts continued to shape the work of composers within the Church, especially when they set the invariable texts of the Mass. New textures and techniques were developed within vernacular religious genres, whose overtly expressive style included sections of homophony and solo song along with imitative counterpoint. As the seventeenth century progressed, Spanish society was especially desirous of the novelty, invention, enigma, artifice, and magnificent spectacle that scholars tend to associate with the culture of the Baroque. Great formal flexibility, bold contrasts, clear harmonic organization, sensitive text expression, and careful attention to text declamation are notable characteristics of Spanish music from the mid seventeenth century, whether in large-scale sacred pieces for one or more choirs, romances for two or three voices, solo settings of romances, or clever theatrical songs with improvised accompaniment.
While the seventeenth century is accepted as a Golden Age for Spanish culture, music, however, held a subsidiary place next to theater and the visual arts. The century did not produce a long list of extraordinarily innovative Spanish composers, pages of heated musical debate, tomes of erudite speculative writings on musical theory, or libraries full of beautifully prepared and bound scores—the sort of written legacy that modern scholars accept as evidence of historical investment in other musical cultures. The musical repertories from seventeenth-century Spain survive largely in manuscript copies on cheap paper and as humble performing parts. Of course, two of the largest collections of music by court composers were lost through natural disasters : in the fire that destroyed the royal library and music archive of the Royal Palace in Madrid known as the Alcázar in 1734, and in the earthquake of 1755 that took with it the great library of King John iv of Portugal.
21 - Spain, i : 1530–1600
- Edited by James Haar
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- Book:
- European Music, 1520-1640
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 18 March 2023
- Print publication:
- 15 June 2006, pp 422-454
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DURING the sixteenth century, Spanish musical culture enjoyed a period of expansion unprecedented in peninsular history. Religious and secular institutions, buoyed by the wealth flowing in from the colonies in the New World, spent lavishly on expanding the vocal and instrumental ensembles that had been established in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Because the Church enjoyed immense political and economic power during this period, musical life flourished particularly in such great cathedral cities as Seville, Toledo, and Barcelona, where churchmen favorably inclined to music supported a large number of musicians in a liturgy richly adorned with music. The Spanish monarchs Charles v and Philip ii maintained large royal musical establishments as well, and their patronage assured that Spanish music kept its place in the compositional developments of the European mainstream. Many notable musicians came to Spain to serve the royal court. The unwavering royal support of traditional doctrine played a part as well in the flourishing of cathedral music, although the favor bestowed on foreign-born composers made the royal contribution to indigenous musical development somewhat less significant. Finally, peninsular musical culture, both sacred and secular, was deeply imbued with the humanist tradition, and the intellectual and economic resources of the Church, the royal court, and noble families were directed toward promoting artistic and musical creativity.
MUSIC IN RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS
Cathedrals
Early modern Spanish musical culture has been accused of insularity and Spanish composers characterized as provincial for their reluctance to work outside Spain. In fact, the inventories of sixteenth-century Spanish musical libraries make clear that Spanish patrons and musicians lived in a cosmopolitan musical culture where the works of many foreign composers were performed and studied. Works by Agricola, Arcadelt, Brumel, Clemens non Papa, Compère, Févin, Gombert, Isaac, Josquin, Manchicourt, Mouton, Obrecht, Ockeghem, Palestrina, Richafort, Verdelot, Weerbecke, and Willaert can be found today in Iberian manuscripts, or once filled the shelves of Spanish and Portuguese libraries. Printed collections, such as the vihuela books put together by Spanish composers and editors, testify to the fact that even non-professional musicians and listeners were familiar with many kinds of foreign music, both sacred and secular. On the other hand, Spain's richly endowed cathedrals provided native composers with such attractive incomes and excellent musical resources that relatively few Spanish composers during the sixteenth century pursued careers abroad.