1. INTRODUCTION:
Doing this research, I would never have imagined to find compositions in Lima or Guatemala from a composer from Cordoba, Spain, who had never visited these countries. A very exciting challenge presented itself for me; to awake those old scores that have been asleep for more than two centuries and experience, through them, how the music was performed in Córdoba Cathedral during the second half of the eighteenth century.
My interest in this author arose when I listened a beautiful villancico (a musical and poetic form in Spanish and Portuguese traditional from Spain and Portugal and very popular between the XV and XVIII centuries. Christmas carols were originally secular songs with a chorus, of popular origin and for several voices), Voy buscando mi cordero from Juan Manuel Gaitán y Arteaga played by La Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla with Enrico Onofri. Even though it was sacred music and composed for the church and for a weekly mass, it was written in Spanish and with Spanish folkloric flavour. It was then, when it took my attention and wanted to investigate more about his music and in particular about his villancicos. Specially, was there any particular connection between ecclesiastical and folkloric Spanish music during the XVIII-century?
I realized how little the music from Juan Manuel is known nowadays. I started my investigation on where to find the scores and more information about why even though the villancicos were composed for the Cathedral, they were written in Spanish and not in Latin. This search led me to the Archbishop's Archive of Lima that contains the largest number of Christmas carols by this composer. Little by little I found other Spanish archives that had works of this composer as in Cordoba, Granada, El Escorial, Salamanca, Astorga and Santiago de Compostela.
The line of research that I have followed is framed within musicological-historical research. The musicological techniques used are those related to musical historiography (chronological organization of historical-musical events and to the particular period in Córdoba, Spain), knowledge of musical compositions, forms and styles, and musical aesthetics (conception of music, its functions and purposes).
The objectives are oriented to the knowledge of the musical personality of Juan Manuel Gaitán y Arteaga, as a composer and on the other hand to the understanding of the meaning of the villancicos. These compositions of Juan Manuel Gaitán were created to serve the cult of the liturgy, with purposes that are not essentially artistic or aesthetic, but that can be seen today from that perspective.
As an hypothesis, I consider these compositions were requested from Spain for musical practice in Latin American cathedrals and churches to teach the Spanish language and these manuscripts, which originally came from Córdoba, have been preserved in Latin America. If I take into consideration the important function that music played in worship and catechization in Latin America, the analysis of this repertoire in a broader context will help to better understand Hispanic music both in the Iberian Peninsula and in Latin America. It supposes a recovery of the musical heritage and an approach to the compositional style of the mid eighteen century in Spain.
As a second hypothesis, I consider that the villancicos by Gaitán y Arteaga had folkloric Spanish influence from XVIII-century.