Colonial music from Spanish America has in the past decades become fairly frequent fare in concert programmes and recordings by early-music ensembles. Nevertheless, its composers have yet to make it to the pantheon of canonical Western composers (of course, the question of whether Latin America is Western or other will receive different answers, depending mostly on from which side of the Atlantic they come). This may be considered a fortunate fate for our Araujos, Torrejóns, Gutiérrez and Jerusalems, because it means that their music has managed to avoid being considered as ‘works of art’, as objects produced by a cultural factory, and is instead being studied and performed as a social artistic practice. The tell-tale sign of the ‘minor composer’ status of these first-rate musicians is the lack of monumental Gesamtausgaben of their works. Two multi-volume complete-works editions of Novohispanic composers (Hernando Franco and Francisco López Capillas) were begun by the Mexican CENIDIM (Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical) many years ago but are not near completion. The series Ignacio Jerusalem: Obras Selectas/Selected Works has recently begun publication (Madrid: Dairea). The only completed series of collected works is the excellent edition of Esteban Salas's output edited by Miriam Escudero (Esteban Salas y la capilla de música de la Catedral de Santiago de Cuba, eight volumes (Madrid: Universidad de Valladolid, 2001–2011)).

In this context, Drew Edward Davies's publication of all the villancicos by Manuel de Sumaya in the Estrada collection of the Mexico cathedral archive is most welcome, especially because it means that most of Sumaya's extant output is now available in scholarly editions, including his música de facistol edited by Steven Barwick (Two Mexico City Choirbooks of 1717: An Anthology of Sacred Polyphony from the Cathedral of Mexico (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982)) and his cantadas, masses and other Latin-texted pieces edited by Aurelio Tello (Tesoro de la Música Polifónica en México, volumes 7, 8 and 12 (Mexico City: CENIDIM, 1994, 1996 and 2007)). The present edition contains thirty-four pieces, sorted into fourteen villancicos for a single choir from one to four voices (including a solo cantata), an equal number for two choirs (six to eight parts, some of them instrumental), four for three choirs (eleven–twelve voices) and two incomplete, but performable, villancicos. It is a magnificent repertory that helps round out an image of one of the most versatile, learned and imaginative composers of the eighteenth century. They are beautiful as well as interesting: Sumaya tends to avoid the obvious, making unexpected compositional choices that yield felicitous results. What seems striking is the unbending seriousness of the texts chosen, which has the consequence of an equally serious style of music. There is no hint in Sumaya's pieces of the comic, so abundant in the genre as a whole. No gypsies, no black minstrelsy, no incompetent sexton, little wordplay – and therefore no heavy-handed repetition of perky little motives, no subordinating the musical flow to a purely rhythmic interest, no sudden interjections. It is true that Christmas villancicos (the favoured habitat of those characters and musical traits) represent a small proportion of this volume, but the literary and musical restraint is nevertheless noteworthy. This limitation (which certainly does not result in boring music) may be thought to reflect a modern eighteenth-century spirituality, emphasizing inner devotion and repudiating ‘baroque’ externality, with its recourse to lowbrow attractions. The new sensibility would become dominant in the villancico repertoire only after mid-century, but Sumaya's villancicos adumbrate it.

In his Foreword, Davies introduces the villancico genre and reports on the curious circumstances of the Estrada collection of the Mexico City cathedral archive, which do not reflect kindly on the musicological profession: they were hidden from view from the 1930s by an over-protective pioneer of Mexican colonial music scholarship, and returned to the cathedral archive by his heirs. This type of conduct was quite frequent in Latin American musicology: another musicological pioneer took with him a few folios of a seventeenth-century polyphonic choirbook from a monastery in Argentina; they surfaced long after his death in his bequest to a Brazilian museum.

The account of Sumaya's life and work, including a discussion of the proper spelling of his name (Grove Music Online prefers ‘Zumaya’) is not only comprehensive and informative, but vibrant and innovative in its advocating for a new conception of the composer's musical personality. The centrality of his presumed opera, Partenope, in previous biographies is contested, and the traditional Spanish dramatic traits in the libretto are adduced to counter the claims of previous biographers concerning Sumaya's eager and early adoption of Italianism in music and music theatre. Although his arguments are persuasive, it is unfortunate that Davies has not taken account of John Swadley's discovery of Zeleuco, an earlier opera libretto definitely set to music by the composer (John Swadley, ‘The Villancico in New Spain 1650–1750: Morphology, Significance and Development’ (PhD dissertation, Canterbury Christ Church University, 2014), 235–238). Although that author also insists on the traces of Spanish comedia in this libretto, the frequent use of da capo arias in the first two acts (the third was composed by ‘an amateur wit’) points clearly towards Italianate forms and probably style.

The edition is up to the standards of the A-R Editions’ series Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era (of which this is No. 206), with an appropriate account of editorial policies and a Critical Report listing mistakes, emendations and variants. The good state of preservation of the sources has helped to make the editorial procedure comparatively simple. Several voices lack text underlay in the sources; this is the rule, in particular, for the bass parts that were regularly performed by a dulcian (bajón). Nevertheless, their melodies and rhythms have usually been tailored to the words sung by the others. Davies has refrained from editorially underlaying words to those parts, which has been usual in editions of villancicos. On the one hand, this prods performers towards a more historical rendition; on the other, it removes the pieces from the repertory suitable for modern choirs (or forces them to give the basses a holiday).

For this reviewer, the decision not to supplement the continuo figures (especially with the major thirds over the first note in ascending-fourth bass progressions) is unhelpful to players not familiar with the repertory. Another quibble involves the edition of number 9, ‘Oíd, moradores’, which is preserved in a 1710 version for four voices – two of them untexted – and in a later undated copy for alto, tenor, two violins and continuo. Arguing that the melodic changes are very few, Davies publishes only the second version. However, a transcription of the first version reveals abundant changes relating to exchange of materials between parts, changes of octave, presence or lack of text, and so forth. It is a pity that this evidence of recomposition and adaptation will not be available to the readers.

Beyond these minor questions, the quality of the music and the careful editing process make this edition of Sumaya's villancicos a veritable gift to early-music groups, choirs and researchers.