La música en el siglo XVII. Vol. 3 of Historia de la música en España e Hispanoamérica ed. by Álvaro Torrente (review)

There is a long history of Spanish-music histories in Spanish. The first was Mariano Soriano Fuertes y Piqueras's Historia de la música española desde la venida de los fenicios hasta el año 1850 (Madrid and Barcelona, 1855–1859). Though somewhat notorious for its inaccuracy, the work initiated a long and increasingly distinguished historiographical tradition, which included notable musicological contributions by Baltasar Saldoni, Francisco Barbieri, Felipe Pedrell, Antonio Peña y Goñi, José Subirá, and Federico Sopeña, among many others.

In the 1980s, Alianza Música in Madrid published a series of books on Spanish music, each devoted to a particular style period and written by a specialist in that area. Several years later, the ten-volume Diccionario de la música española e hispanoamericana, edited by Emilio Casares and published in 2002 by the Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales (ICCMU) in Madrid, set a new standard in coverage of this subject, although it is now somewhat dated.

The latest entry in this historiography is the eight-volume Historia de la música en España e Hispanoamérica, which at this writing is nearly complete. Like the Alianza series, it consists of several volumes organized chronologically. Unlike that series, however, it embraces Spanish America as well as Spain. There are compelling reasons for this approach.

Both the Diccionario and the Fondo series squarely face the fact that separating Spain from its colonial possessions does not present an accurate musical picture of the past. Spanish musicians were active in the New World, and New World dances like the zarabanda and chacona had an enormous impact in Spain and elsewhere. The fundamental difference in approach here is, of course, that the Fondo series is not a reference source. Instead, it presents a narrative history, progressing from antiquity through the twentieth century.

The volume under consideration, devoted to the seventeenth century, is notable for the breadth and depth of its coverage. Its editor, Álvaro Torrente, is a professor of musicology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and he has succeeded Emilio Casares as director of ICCMU. In addition to his editing responsibilities, he is the author of four of the volume's nine chapters. As he points out, the music of this period was closely connected to both poetry and religion, and was conditioned by the "socio-political reality of the Hispanic monarchy with its geographical plurality and rigid social stratification" (26). His editorial aim is therefore to present "a polyphonic narration in which the reader will be able to perceive with clarity the diversity of individual voices that we have sought to bring together in order to enrich our knowledge of the music composed, performed, and listened to during the long century that emerged from the final decades of the sixteenth century" (26).

The nine chapters cover a wide swath of musical and geographical territory, starting with the editor's thought-provoking essay on "Silver Music in a Golden Age." It focuses on issues of style, patronage, the liturgy, and poetry with the kind of deeply informed insight into historical context that sets the tone for the volume, indeed the series, and establishes its bona fides as a major step forward in the historiography of Spanish music. Chapter 2, by Pablo L. Rodríguez, zeros in on both sacred vocal music and a rich repertoire for organ. Torrente returns in chapter 3 to treat music in the private sphere, especially music for dancing as rendered on the guitar. This quintessentially Spanish instrument, its performers and composers as well as its social context, is the subject of chapter 4, by Alejandro Vera Aguilera. In rondo fashion, Torrente-Ritornello is the author of chapter 5, focusing on a florescence of theater music during this...