6. MUSIC IN LATIN AMERICA DURING THE VICEROYALTY. MAINLY FOCUS IN PERU AND GUATEMALA.
In Latin America, the cathedral is the great architectural and institutional space for sacred and secular music of religious inspiration from the XVI, XVII, and XVIII centuries. The XVI century church in the viceroyalty of Peru is full of catechism work for the spiritual conquest of the indigenous people. This stage of intensive Christianization goes from the arrival of the Spanish people in 1532 to Peru until the death of Santo Toribio de Mogroviejo, organizer of the Peruvian church in 1606.
Music played an important role in the catechization of the population. Juan Carlos Estenssoro, affirms that all strategies formulated for evangelization involved the use of music; whether to transmit and establish Christian context, or to achieve, with the teaching and practice of European music, a cultural assimilation. Teaching music was at first reserved for the elites, but later extended to meet the needs of worship. In each town with more than one hundred habitants, there were at least three indigenous musicians or singers with a salary.
Quezada, affirms that the development of polyphony in America happened in the missionary cathedrals and the institutionalized cathedrals. The ecclesiastical repertoire, conceived as an instrument of catechization, is largely plainchant and sacred polyphony in Latin. The proliferation of more sophisticated and elaborated practices that culminated in the Renaissance and began in the Baroque is possible in America when churches acquire institutional organization and consistency.
Religious orders also played an important role in the dissemination of music. The inclusion of the indigenous in musical life mitigates the marginalization and contributes to integrate them into the new religious culture that was imposed. The Franciscans were pioneers in this policy and founded in 1558 in Quito a school for children of creole, mestizo and the poor children. These kids obtain great fame as singers and musicians.
At the beginning of the XVII century, when evangelization seemed to have been established in Peru, priests discovered that many ancient rites were being performed covertly during catholic ceremonies. As a result, The Third Council of Lime was implanted in 1583. Those changes led the church to consolidate as an institution, becoming a great ministry of culture, with a very clear policy: the use of arts and expressions for the worship.
The capital of Lima was in the viceregal era a large Coliseum, where all the dramatic, comic, and lyrical genres were represented; from the comedies of Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681) and Ramón de la Cruz (1731-1794). Also the representations of religious motets sung magnificently by the nuns of the convent, popular music as carols with guitars, dancing, and funerals accompanied by triumphal marches. This was seen as aberrant and as disrespectful behaviour that Archbishop Juan de la Reguera (1720-1805) had to intervene in the matter and to end such indecent practice. This kind of activities were prohibited it in 1795.
The second half of the XVII century saw the institutionalization of cathedrals. The indigenous musicians began to participate in religious festivities. Gradually, they became part of the chapels of the cathedrals. Cities like Cuzco were consolidated as political, economic, cultural, and religious centers of primary importance. The music teaching at the San Antonio Abad seminary in Cuzco trained musicians who lent their musical services mainly to the Cathedral and, as a complementary way they also did the services in the convents. Some of these musicians who arrived in Cuzco, after working under contract in the city and being formed as musicians, worked in other cathedrals such as Guatemala, Puebla, or La Plata.
Until the beginning of the XIX century, the musical library of Lima Cathedral had the most precious religious musical works in all of Latin America. The city hall of Lima was concerned with having the cathedral supplied with music and the chapel masters had to provide the choir with music for every mass and important festivities. This situation explains, in part, why there are many works by composers from the XVIII century from Spain in Lima. The pieces were requested to Spain because the city was in great need of them to cover the worship and there were not many qualified composers at that time in the capital of Peru. There were found seventeen villancicos by Juan Manuel Gaitán y Arteaga in Lima Cathedral.
The Ibero-American ecclesiastical villancico of the XVI to XVIII centuries constitutes a good example of the cultural unity of the Spanish empire since in all the Hispanic territories of that period similar carols were made in terms of form and content (refrain-couplets-refrain). Many of the colonial musical pieces performed in the religious sphere in Nueva España corresponded to villancicos that attempted to represent humans in situations of Christian context. For this reason, in the archives of Latin American cathedrals, there are several copies of Christmas carols in which indigenous people appear worshipping the Child, the Virgin, or the saints.
In the XVII and XVIII centuries, the Cathedral of Santiago de Guatemala occupied a relevant place in the production of musical pieces. Numerous chapel masters composed polyphonic works to enhance the festivities, attract the faithful to religious services, and at the same time reaffirm the hegemony of the church and the Spanish Crown. Among the varied musical production of that time, the most popular genre in Guatelama was los villancicos de negros, (see chapter 5.3) also known as guineos, or negrillas. The characteristics of this subgenre of the Christmas carol have been detailed in previous works, whose authors highlight above all, the construction of the black man as a candid, innocent, and overflowing of joy subject. Los villancicos de negros, usually have a dialogue between the soloist and the choir. Furthermore, there is an abundance of syncopation, and different rhythmic combinations that, on the one hand, seek to generate a lively sound result and, on the other hand, project the idea that black people have a natural inclination towards music and dance. The language used by the blacks in these Christmas carols is a deformed Spanish in which letters are substituted or omitted, errors in conjugation, verb tense, etc.
The comical reaches the shocking, and burlesque jokes feel irreverent in several cases because they reach the limit of religiosity. The allusion to characteristics and type of language of ethnic minorities, foreigners, and marginal groups was one of the most common themes in Christmas carols, both from Spain and America.