Diagonal: An Ibero-American Music Review

En Ecuador se ha dicho que comprender el funcionamiento de las cofradías es necesario para conocer a profundidad la música colonial y postcolonial. Estas instituciones religiosas tuvieron un destacado papel integrador en las sociedades latinoamericanas. Sin embargo, investigar sobre la música practicada en este tipo de organizaciones todavía sigue siendo una asignatura pendiente en Quito, e incluso, en el país. Por este motivo, y a través de la examinación y el análisis de fuentes primarias, el presente artículo brinda información inédita sobre el culto y la actividad musical desarrollada en la capilla de Cantuña (anexa al Convento Máximo de San Francisco), auspiciada, principalmente, por dos cofradías asentadas en ella, quienes veneraban a la Virgen de los Dolores.

As in the rest of the American continent, as a result of the Atlantic slave trade between the XV and XIX centuries, Latin America received a large number of people from Africa, a population forced to abandon their places of origin, leaving behind their families and culture. Motivated by nostalgia and the need to keep their memory and identity, the African diaspora developed alternative resistance mechanisms despite the acculturation processes. Dispossessed of material goods, they used sound, language, and rituals to keep their culture alive. In time, the immaterial and symbolic goods they created penetrated the societies in which they lived, sometimes becoming mainstream through a whitening process that threatened to dispossess them once more of their symbolic wealth. By observing the art song that resulted from the collaboration of poets and composers of the African diaspora in Latin America, we will analyze how the use of melodic, rhythmic, idiomatic, and textual elements in music worked as a strategy to integrate, penetrate, maintain, and reproduce their cultures of origin as well as to participate in the avant-garde and international artistic conversations, becoming a tool for social mobility and a mechanism for gaining social and political rights.

En la música andina, las relaciones entre melodía y estilo son complejas, pues existen dependencias en muchos aspectos que rigen la una y el otro: organología, ritmo, armonía, forma o diseños melódicos típicos. ¿Hay instrumentos (y maneras de tocarlos), ritmos, armonías, formas o diseños melódicos que se pueden definir como propios de la región andina, de un país, de un departamento o de una provincia? ¿Hasta qué punto estas propiedades son compartidas dentro de la región andina con su complejo tejido de entidades culturales? Dentro de estas propiedades, ¿cuáles son las más adecuadas para definir un tema musical procedente de esta inmensa zona geográfica? Tratando de contestar estas preguntas, voy a plantear que son los estilos los que están profundamente ligados a lugares determinados, mientras que las melodías, según sus características, o quedan vinculadas al estilo, o son libres de cruzar cualquier tipo de frontera, ya sea geográfica, política, social, cultural y hasta temporal.

Defined by a civil war and political tumult, the year 1863 is well known in the history of Mexico as one of singular import, but less so as a milestone of national musical and cultural achievement. Nevertheless, from January through the departure of Benito Juárez and his cabinet from the capital in May, to the installation of Archduke Maximilian as Emperor in November, an unprecedented number of newly composed operas by Mexican composers were staged. All set to preexisting Italian libretti (including titles by Felice Romani and Gaetano Rossi for Carlo Coccia and Vincenzo Bellini, respectively), these works were nevertheless the unique manifestation of a school of Mexican composers expressing themselves en masse for the first time. With the impending conflict, an exodus of resident Italian opera companies by 1861 left the field wide-open to enterprising Mexicans, with Cenobio Paniagua (1821-1882) and Octaviano Valle (1826-1869) in the forefront. A fleeting moment in operatic history, this fascinating year now lends itself to deeper scrutiny, thanks to the resurfacing of long-unavailable musical and archival sources. While these works had remained lost until only recently, several scores have begun reemerging. Of these, limited availability of fragments from Romeo e Giulietta by Melesio Morales (his first effort) and Valle’s ill-fated Clotilde di Cosenza provide crucial insight, while permitting these rarities to be sampled for the first time. Paniagua’s autographs—though recently rediscovered—proved far less available, while materials for I due Foscari by Mateo Torres Serrato remain lost. Limited documentation has long presented further challenges to demystifying what might be considered a legendary period. However, reviewing the underlying politico-historic, artistic, and economic reasons for its impetus, this article will explore and contextualize the circumstances leading to this unprecedented explosion of operatic expression, making a sort of anno mirabilis of one of the hardest years in Mexico’s history.