NETWORKS OF DISSEMINATION

European musical commodities arrived in early modern Asia from two directions and via multiple channels of transmission. Spanish imperial trade routes in the Western hemisphere extended from Mexico to the Philippines, via Guam (the largest of the Mariana Islands), while the Portuguese commercial network rounded the coasts of Africa via the colonies of Angola and Mozambique, before heading across the Indian Ocean and reaching the entrepôts of Goa, Malacca, Macau, and Nagasaki. Two lines of demarcation, established by the treaties of Tordesillas and Zaragoza in 1494 and 1529 respectively, separated Spanish and Portuguese spheres of imperial interests by means of virtual longitudinal borders that ran through the Americas and Asia. The Philippines, China and Japan lay close to the seam of these imagined hemispheres. The maritime trade routes of other European trading companies provided the means by which France, England and Holland also sought to expand commercial opportunities in Asia and establish diplomatic relations with local rulers.

As in Latin America, functionaries of the Roman Catholic Church followed in the wake of Iberian political, military and commercial expansion into Asia. The ‘royal patronage’ (patronato real or padroado real) that the pope bestowed on the monarchs of Spain and Portugal enabled these heads of state to govern Church matters through Iberian political structures, without constant recourse to Rome. France was another Roman Catholic nation that had direct religious influence on Asia; the Société de Missions Étrangères, established in 1658–63, sent missionaries to regions that lay within the borders of territories now known as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and southern China.Footnote ² Representatives of religious congregations that were responsible directly to Rome also travelled to Asia: these included members of the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide and the Congregatio Missionis (the latter being known as Lazarists). To a large extent they relied on Iberian and French ships for their transportation. In this first wave of European expansion to East and West, evangelisation remained the domain of Roman Catholic nations (English and Dutch expeditions, on the other hand, rarely carried religious functionaries, apart from chaplains who administered to the expeditioners themselves), and the globalising reach of missionary work left a lasting legacy of religious converts and institutions.

Music was a seminal part of evangelistic endeavours, from initial contact with indigenous peoples to the establishment of major churches on a similar scale to those of Europe. Portuguese missionaries, for instance, introduced European musical practices to local populations at several enclaves located on their trade route from Lisbon to Nagasaki. Although forms of oral and rote transmission can easily account for the diffusion of cantigas (not to mention the sea-shanties and instrumental techniques associated with popular music-making that were transmitted by sailors), the performance of complex polyphonic repertoire usually relied on the use of notated sources, thus necessitating the transportation of sheet music and the musical expertise required to transform script into sound. But in spite of the extensive documentation of evangelistic activity in Portugal's eastern empire, the titles of only a few pieces of sacred repertoire known and performed along these trade routes can be located in archival sources. For instance, a missionary writing from the Angolan capital of Luanda in the late sixteenth century described the performance by indigenous musicians of Cristobál de Morales's Missa cortilla and his motet Andreas Christi famulus, as well as Francisco Guerrero's hymn Pange lingua.Footnote ³ Similarly, in 1663 the Italian traveller Joseph di Santa Maria (Giuseppe Sebastiani) recorded his amazement at hearing an unspecified work for seven choirs by Giacomo Carissimi in the Basilica do Bom Jesus in Goa, India, implying in this account that local Konkani musicians took part in the work's performance.Footnote ⁴ The scores of European compositions such as these, transported to Africa and India, thus enabled the long-distance reproduction of sacred musical performances. They embodied a type of physical connection between non-European musicians and European composers. The presence of European music scores and treatises still further afield, however – in East and Southeast Asia – would represent an even more significant connection across much larger distances.

MUSIC SCORES AND TREATISES

European books transported to early modern China, Japan and the Philippines generally fell into three main categories: books that were personal possessions, books that were commodities for trade and books that were intended for institutional use. (A few books that were diplomatic or ceremonial gifts make up a small fourth category.) From the beginning of Roman Catholic missionary work in East and Southeast Asia, collections of plainchant and polyphony were imported to the Philippines, Japan and China. Some extant copies of music scores and treatises – printed and manuscript alike – can be found in surviving collections of early modern European books held in Asian cities, while bibliographical references to additional titles can be gleaned from catalogues, inventories and correspondence. Many musical sources are listed in inventories of institutions or wills of individuals, but in documents such as these a generic description is often given in lieu of any more specific information. For example, the first collection of European books taken by the Jesuits to Japan in 1556 included ‘Hum livro de canto chão’ (‘a book of plainchant’) and ‘Outro de canto d'orgão' (‘another [book] of polyphony’).Footnote ⁵ Similarly, the earliest known set of music books to arrive in Manila, with the first bishop Domingo de Salazar, OP, included ‘4 libros de canto’ (‘four choirbooks’) and ‘12 libros yntonatorios y procesionarios’ (‘twelve books of chant intonations and processionals’), without any further information.Footnote ⁶ Some decades later, in Manila, the bookseller Pedro de Zúñiga (d. 1608) included in his wares ‘pasionarios de canto llano’ (‘plainchant [settings of the] Passion’), ‘un juego de motetes de guerrero’ (‘a volume of motets by [Francisco] Guerrero’) and ‘un juego de motetes de madrigal’ (‘a volume of motets [in the form] of madrigals’ or ‘a volume of motets by “Madrigal”’).Footnote ⁷ The volume of motets by Francisco Guerrero could be one of three opuses published in Venice: Motetta (1570), Mottecta, liber secundus (1589) or Motecta (1597).Footnote ⁸ However, the descriptions of the other musical sources in the will defy identification. The term ‘madrigal’ was certainly used for certain genres in Spain, predominantly by Catalonian composers, but ‘motetes de madrigal’ could refer to works written by a composer whose nickname was ‘madrigal’.Footnote ⁹ Equally, it could refer loosely to a volume of sacred music with vernacular texts. Meanwhile, ‘pasionarios de canto llano’ is a fairly ambiguous description, and a large number of such works available at the time could fit the bill.

Aside from music scores themselves, several European treatises on music theory and practice were known to have been imported to early modern Manila. The earliest example comes from the inventory of a private library that was shipped from Acapulco (Mexico) to Manila in 1583; this lists an Arte de canto llano by an unnamed theorist.Footnote ¹⁰ Extant copies of other treatises are still held in the Central Library of the University of Santo Tomás, Manila. While it is likely that these works arrived in the Philippines during the early modern period, it is difficult to determine the exact dates of their transmission. Amongst these works can be found the first book of Juan Bermudo's Declaración de instrumentos (1549), Pietro Cerone's El melopeo y maestro (1613), an incomplete copy of the first volume of Athanasius Kircher's Musurgia universalis (1650), and a 1779 reprint of Jean le Rond d'Alembert's Elémens de musique théorique et pratique suivant les principes de M. Rameau. Another significant treatise, Andrés Lorente's El porqué de la música (1672; 2nd edn. 1699), is listed in a mid-eighteenth-century library inventory of the Augustinian convent in Intramuros.Footnote ¹¹ Although the inventory does not provide any more information than the author and title, we can assume that either the first or second edition was imported not long after its publication, and evidently before the mid-eighteenth century. It may have been used during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries by several notable indigenous musicians in this convent, who were organists, composers and maestros de coro.

The intervals between the publication dates of these treatises are relatively regular. If we extrapolate from patterns of book trade between Spain and Latin America, it can be surmised that each of these works arrived while it held currency in the prevailing trends of European theory and practice, rather than as an antiquarian work within a larger collection. Of course, when entire libraries were shipped, they may have contained some more dated works. But given the high cost of printed books in the first place, and the trouble in subjecting them to inquisitorial censorship before their transportation halfway around the world, it is likely that only the newest and most useful works were taken. The published music treatises known to have been in Manila reflect local familiarity with regular developments in European music theory.Footnote ¹² Manuscript copies from Europe and Mexico also made their way across the Pacific to the Philippines and China, although titles are not specified.Footnote ¹³ Treatises on European music were subsequently composed in the Philippines, including at least two in indigenous languages.Footnote ¹⁴ These works, now lost, probably drew on major published treatises as their models. But although they were written in local languages for local people, they promoted the musical theory and practice that had been introduced by the Spanish colonialists and adopted by the hispanised Filipino population.Footnote ¹⁵

Of all the treatises imported to Manila, the most significant was undoubtedly the Musurgia universalis by Kircher. It is for this treatise that there survives detailed information about its transmission to the Philippines. In the mid-1650s, Kircher received in Rome an unexpected letter from Manila, capital of the distant Philippine Islands. It was from one of his former students, a 24-year-old Neapolitan named Giovanni Montiel:

Montiel's description of the arrival of Kircher's Musurgia universalis in the Philippines – just four years after its publication in Rome – is illuminating; it reveals the ready reception of the local Jesuit community to current works on music theory, and suggests that other compendia were greeted with similar interest. In the Philippine missions, where music was indeed ‘taught publicly’, the Musurgia universalis, containing information on music theory, history, ethnography, organology, composition and performance, would have been considered a vital tool.Footnote ¹⁷

We should not forget that of all the theoretical works on music published during the early modern period, Kircher's Musurgia universalis enjoyed a breadth of worldwide distribution that was practically unprecedented. The extent of its diffusion was due primarily to the effectiveness of transmission channels operating within the global network of the Society of Jesus. Fifteen hundred copies were printed, and according to John Fletcher, three hundred of these ‘were distributed among the Jesuit fathers come to Rome for the election of a new General, a coincidence ensuring world-wide dispersion of the text’ in Africa, Asia and America. The cardinals, officials and colleges of the Jesuit provinces of Austria and Flanders all received copies, whilst the colleges of Brussels, Leuven and Antwerp each received two apiece. ‘Fifty further copies were sent . . . to the Emperor and Archduke in Vienna, twenty-five to England, fifteen to Spain (twelve to Ferrara); of the remainder, 250 were distributed in Italy . . . The remaining 700 copies Kircher placed at the disposal of the publishing house.’Footnote ¹⁸ One Francisco Ximenez in Mexico sent twenty-five pounds of cocoa and some chillies to Rome in exchange for a copy, and in 1654, the Jesuit Amatus de Chezaud asked Alexandre de Rhodes to bring a copy to Syria.Footnote ¹⁹ In 1656, the Jesuit Albert d'Orville, leaving Lisbon for China (where he arrived in 1659), took some twelve copies with him.Footnote ²⁰

Several copies of the Musurgia are known to have survived to the twentieth century in China. These are listed in a catalogue of the Beitang Library, which was compiled in 1949 by the Lazarist missionary H. Verhaeren.Footnote ²¹ The Beitang Library, a collection of around 5,500 European books and an unknown number of Chinese volumes, was formed through incremental accumulation by the Jesuits in Beijing from the beginning of the mission there in 1601 until the end of the eighteenth century. It subsequently passed through the ownership of Orthodox mission and the Lazarist fathers, and not long after Verhaeren made his catalogue it became property of the state. All its contents are now reputed to form part of the collection of the National Library in Beijing. Alongside three copies of Kircher's Musurgia universalis,Footnote ²² the catalogue lists a copy of the Discorso sopra la musica antica e moderna by Girolamo Mei (Venice, 1602),Footnote ²³ as well as a set of the complete works of Gioseffo Zarlino, De tutte l'opere del R. M. Gioseffo Zarlino da Chioggia (Venice, 1588–9).Footnote ²⁴ French and German theoretical texts include Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Projet concernant de nouveaux signes pour la musique, lu par l'Auteur à l'Académie des Sciences le 22 Août 1742 (Geneva, 1742),Footnote ²⁵ and Tentamen novae theoriae musicae ex certissimis harmoniae principiis dilucide expositae by Leonhard Euler (St Petersburg, 1739).Footnote ²⁶ Instrumental music is represented by Arcangelo Corelli's Sonate à tre, due violini e violone col basso per l'organo (Amsterdam, n.d.),Footnote ²⁷ and a manuscript volume of Sonate a violino col basso del Nepridi, Opera terza, by the Lazarist missionary Paolo Felipe Theodorico Pedrini (1671–1746).Footnote ²⁸ Books containing music intended for purposes of religious indoctrination include the Jesuit Diego Ledesma's Modo per insegnar la dottrina christiana (Rome, 1573).Footnote ²⁹ Printed vocal music is also present: the catalogue lists Giovenale Ancina's anthology of three-part laudi by late sixteenth-century composers, Tempio armonico della Beatissima Vergine (Rome, 1599), which was published as a set of three partbooks.Footnote ³⁰ This last collection may have been taken to Beijing by an early modern Jesuit, where its music may have been performed in religious devotions.Footnote ³¹

The Portuguese colony of Macau, established in 1557 on the south coast of China, boasted a number of religious institutions with well-stocked libraries in the early modern period by the fathers and their converts. An early seventeenth-century catalogue of one such library, which may have been consulted by missionaries destined for mainland China and Japan, includes the titles of a significant number of publications containing music. We see listings such as Giovanni Domenico Guidetti's Directorium chori ad usum Sacrosanctæ Basilic[a]e Vaticanæ (Rome, 1582), books of mass and Magnificat settings by the Portuguese composer Duarte Lobo (1565–1646), and many other choirbooks and liturgical books besides. The rather cryptic references to works by Duarte Lobo have been identified by Noël Golvers as Missarum IV. V. VI et VIII Vocibus (Antwerp, 1621) and Cantica B[eatae] Mariae Virginis, vulgo Magnificat (Antwerp, 1608). According to Golvers, other significant works that formed part of this collection were Litaniae Sanctorum cum Hymnis, Precibus, et Orationibus (Lisbon: P. Crasbeeck, 1619); Pedro Navarro's Manuale Chori secundum Usum Ordinis Fratrum Minorum (Salamanca: G. Foquel, 1586); and Pedro Ruyz Alcoholado's Ceremonial Romano para missas cantadas y rezadas (Alcalá, 1589). Meanwhile, the unidentifiable entries in the catalogue include listings such as ‘Tres libros de coro de solfa grandes, ass[im] hum antifonario Romano’ (‘three large choirbooks with solfa [notation], as well as a Roman antiphonary’).Footnote ³² Although the antiphonary was most likely a printed source, the ‘three large choirbooks’ could have existed in either manuscript or printed form. All of these items were most likely imported to Macau from Europe, via Goa, together with other objects required for the celebration of the Roman Catholic liturgy.

LOCAL PRODUCTION

Given that there was a steady stream of European travellers making their way to the East during the early modern period, it is perhaps unsurprising that a small number of European music scores and treatises on European music were produced locally in Asia at this time. As in Europe, they were handwritten or created through the use of new printing technology.Footnote ³³ Once European colonial settlements had been established in the Americas and in Asia, printing presses were amongst the most important technologies that accompanied colonists; they were also important tools of social control and were instrumental in disseminating religious texts amongst the local population. The first European printed book in Mexico was produced in 1539, eighteen years after the fall of Tenochtitlán, and at least 220 books appeared before the end of the sixteenth century. Thirteen of these contained European music notation, and the earliest example dates from 1556.Footnote ³⁴ The Portuguese began to operate their extra-European presses at Goa in 1557, Macau in 1588, and Nagasaki in 1590.Footnote ³⁵ The Spanish crossed the Pacific in 1565 to commence their conquest of the Philippines, and six years later in 1571 established Manila as their colonial capital. This city developed into an important centre for trade with China, and became a crucial commercial link between Asia and the Americas. Printing in Manila began in 1593, with the production of works in Spanish, Latin, Tagalog and Chinese. By the seventeenth century there were three printing presses in the city.Footnote ³⁶

But of all the Iberian presses in early modern Asia, only one produced any printed examples of European music notation. This was the Jesuit press at Nagasaki, which had been brought there from Europe (via Goa and Macau) in 1590. In 1605, it produced a major publication for the use of clerics in Japan: the Manuale ad sacramenta Ecclesiæ ministranda.Footnote ³⁷ Containing 435 pages, with neumatic plainchant notated on one-tenth of them, this book was the only volume produced by the Jesuit press of Nagasaki to be printed in both red and black ink.Footnote ³⁸ In this volume, seventeen chants appear over forty-three pages; the first eleven are antiphons and responsories for the Office of the Dead, while the final six are chants for the reception of prelates.Footnote ³⁹ Neumes in black ink are printed over red lines. Eta Harich-Schneider has noted that the manner of printing neumes in ‘clusters from three to six or more notes . . . proves that the Western music teachers adapted their methods to the Japanese frame of mind and that Gregorian chant was learned melisma by melisma, just like shōmyō and vocal court music’.Footnote ⁴⁰ It is clear that the chants printed in the Manuale were intended to be sung by priests using the book.Footnote ⁴¹ A number of models that could have influenced the production of the Manuale have been proposed; David B. Waterhouse has noted that the type of proportional notation used was first introduced in Guidetti's Directorium chori (which, as we saw previously, was a volume that was present in Macau in the early seventeenth century).Footnote ⁴² Tatsuo Minagawa has compared the Manuale ad sacramenta with approximately forty similar ecclesiastical manuals from Italy, Spain and Mexico, and has concluded that it was a unique publication modelled on Spanish editions, with some allusion to Italian works.Footnote ⁴³ Its primary historical significance, however, lies in the fact that it is indisputably the earliest example of European music notation printed in Asia.

Another example comes from China more than a century later. But rather than being intended for liturgical use, this printed notation forms part of a treatise on European music theory: the Lülü zhengyi xubian. This source has a fascinating history; its production arose from the interest of the Kangxi Emperor (1654–1722, r. from 1662) in all aspects of learning, and particularly in branches of European science introduced to China by Roman Catholic missionaries. Music, related to the disciplines of astronomy and mathematics in both European and Chinese traditions of scholarship, was one of Kangxi's great loves. He summoned the Jesuit Tomás Pereira (1645–1708) from Macau to the imperial court in 1672 because of the reports he had heard about Pereira's expertise in music, and the missionary arrived the following year. The emperor was intrigued by Pereira's skill in notating Chinese musical performances at one hearing then immediately repeating them verbatim. Subsequently, Kangxi appointed Pereira as a music master, ordering the Jesuit to teach European music and to contribute to a newly created Academy of Music for the reform and documentation of Chinese music, which was headed by three of his sons.Footnote ⁴⁴

Pereira was very probably provided with the services of Chinese scribes, and either he or these scribes were responsible for producing a manuscript on European music notation, called Lülü zuanyao (Essentials of pitchpipes), which survives in five copies (four in Chinese and one in Manchu) written between 1680 and 1707.Footnote ⁴⁵ Catherine Jami has suggested that these manuscripts were probably used as teaching materials in tutorials given to the emperor.Footnote ⁴⁶ Pereira died in 1708 and in 1711 the Lazarist missionary Teodorico Pedrini, between whom and the Jesuits there was a considerable degree of mutual antipathy, arrived at the imperial court. Pedrini, a highly skilled musician – who had even been a member of the Arcadian Academy – soon found himself filling the role of Pereira, discussing European music theory with the emperor, composing sonatas and playing the violin, as Peter C. Allsop and Joyce Lindorff have shown.Footnote ⁴⁷ In 1713, Kangxi commissioned the Yuzhi lüli yuanyuan (Origin of musical harmony and calendrical astronomy, imperially composed), a large compilation of works that included a treatise called Lülü zhengyi (Exact meaning of pitchpipes). This was printed by imperial command in 1723.Footnote ⁴⁸ The third part of the Lülü zhengyi was called xubian (the notation of harmonised modes), and was completed by Pedrini on the basis of Pereira's earlier work. According to Gerlinde Gild-Bohne, the Lülü zhengyi xubian transliterates concepts of European music theory into Chinese and expounds the fundamental principles of staff notation. It explains the five-line staff, the use of durum and mollis in hexachords (i.e. the idea of semitones), solmisation, and European notions of rhythm.Footnote ⁴⁹ It has been suggested that Zarlino's Istitutioni harmoniche and Kircher's Musurgia universalis were the sources upon which the two missionary authors drew for the composition of the Lülü zhengyi xubian.Footnote ⁵⁰ But it is evident that Pereira and Pedrini also studied Chinese musical theory, for they attempted to convey European theoretical concepts into a different cultural and musical system by making use of terms that held currency in Chinese musical thought. European staff notation was seen as a technique of graphic representation that could make a small contribution to musical scholarship in China, not replace the traditional form of notation (which consisted of shortened characters that described pitch, timbre and general rhythmic devices). According to Allsop and Lindorff, Pedrini reported that Kangxi himself used staff notation to transcribe Chinese airs.Footnote ⁵¹

The Manuale ad sacramenta and the Lülü zhengyi xubian are the only two examples of European staff notation known to have been printed in Asia before the explosion of music publishing in Manila in the mid-nineteenth century. Notably, they were each produced within Asian civilisations that were powerful and autonomous, and in no way subject to European rule. In both Japan and China, local musicians had sufficient interest and curiosity in foreign theoretical systems of music (and scientific principles of acoustics) for such exchanges to take place. But in the Philippines, a territory that had been invaded by Spain and incorporated into the Spanish colonial empire, European music and its associated theoretical principles were imposed on the local population. As we have seen, numerous music books were imported to the islands, scores and treatises alike, for use in ecclesiatical ritual and music pedagogy. We may ask, however, how intently local scholars read abstruse and complex treatises on music theory that had been brought from Europe. To what extent were these works understood and appreciated in early modern Manila?

Recently rediscovered evidence suggests that there existed a high level of comprehension in the religious institutions of the city, particularly those in which academic courses were taught. The Biblioteca Nacional de España houses an unusual manuscript volume from the Philippines, entitled ‘Observationes diversarum artium’, a hefty tome of almost one thousand pages. Internal evidence suggests that it was assembled in the late seventeenth century by a Jesuit scholar based at the Colegio de Manila. This source is remarkable for the breadth of scholarly endeavour contained in a single volume; it includes lengthy sets of notes on some fifty-five academic disciplines and applied sciences. One of the most arresting features of this volume, however, is the fact that more than 10 per cent – some 116 pages – is devoted to a redaction of the most current European music theory. From the index, it is possible to conflate the title ‘Musicalia speculativa, practica, et instrumentorum’, for a Latin ‘treatise’ – or, as the author more correctly calls it, ‘compendium’ – that synthesises the works of a number of prominent European theorists.Footnote ⁵² At first sight, it appears to be a fairly conventional digest of European music theory. But it also contains several fascinating vignettes of musical observations that had been made locally in Manila. More remarkably, it contains a small, loose leaf of paper bearing a two-bar transcription of traditional Tagalog song in European staff notation.

In the first two pages of the ‘Musicalia’, the author summarises the musical content of mathematical publications by the Jesuit Mario Bettini (1582–1657), Apiaria universæ philosophiæ mathematicæ, which were produced during the 1640s. The remaining 114 pages of the compendium are devoted to a digest of Kircher's Musurgia universalis, with pithy asides interpolated throughout. Since Kircher's discourse involves regular discussion of the Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636–7) of Marin Mersenne (1588–1648), reference to this latter work logically appears in the paraphrases of Kircher within the ‘Musicalia’. But Mersenne's Harmonie universelle also appears to be treated independently by the anonymous author of the manuscript, suggesting that a copy of the work may have been present in seventeenth-century Manila.

A comparison of the verbose original text of the Musurgia universalis with its redaction in the ‘Musicalia’ suggests that this particular scholar in Manila read the work in minute detail, extracting the most salient points for inclusion. Although he evidently wanted his notebook to contain as much of it as possible, it is revealing to see how much attention he devotes to some parts of some books at the expense of others. The parts of the Musurgia universalis considered by the author of the ‘Musicalia’ to warrant the most attention are Book 5 (‘Symphoniurgus’) and Book 8 (‘Mirificus’). Unsurprisingly, these were the books that deal in great detail with the practice of musical composition and rules for counterpoint.

All the other books of the Musurgia are discussed, to a lesser or greater degree, but not in order of their publication. Direct quotations of Kircher are made only occasionally, and the author of the ‘Musicalia’ gives clear indications of them. The structure of the paraphrase is, in fact, quite complex, with the author often jumping back and forth great distances in the source text. His new framework effectively provides an important contemporary tool for concordance that can facilitate comparison between related materials that are dispersed throughout the enormous text of the Musurgia universalis. Very occasionally the author offers his own opinions on the data presented in Kircher's treatise, as for example in his observation on Johann Jacob Froberger's celebrated Phantasia supra Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la: ‘nunc per gradus, nunc per saltus, ac varias diminutiones’ (‘now by step, now by leap, and various diminutions besides’).Footnote ⁵³ Does this sort of comment mean that one of Froberger's most famous works for keyboard was performed in seventeenth-century Manila? It certainly seems a possibility, given that a complete transcription of the Phantasia was published in the Musurgia universalis, and given that appropriate keyboard instruments were present in the city. But unfortunately we have no way of knowing – for lack of relevant documentary evidence – whether the author of the ‘Musicalia’ had the requisite skills to make such a performance an actuality.

One of the most interesting characteristics of this compendium is, arguably, the author's observations on local musical practices. He incorporates them into the text as they relate to particular points in his Kircherian digest. For instance, in his discussion of the art of string-making (De Arte Chordotomica), he notes that ‘I saw in Manila a Chinese craftsman draw out about an ounce of silver . . . in a long strand the length of 900 Spanish ulnæ, or 3,600 palmos . . . These wires were so fine that the length of a single span [i.e. a single string on an instrument] . . . [could be] broken with great ease.’Footnote ⁵⁴ He also notes that a European instrument in common use was the bandurrilla, and this becomes the subject of another local observation: ‘On 1 August 1663, I saw in Manila, the Philippines, a renowned painter named Sebastián Bicos playing this instrument quite elegantly with the thumb and index fingers striking the strings, while the fingers of his left hand ran quickly over the frets. It imitated the harp, with fuller consonance.’Footnote ⁵⁵ At the end of this comment a brief reference to an unnamed work by ‘Maurolyco’ might point to the presence in Manila of a copy of Francesco Maurolico's 1575 treatise Musicae traditiones carptim collectae.Footnote ⁵⁶ Maurolico's discussion of intervallic proportions may have provided a point of comparison for the division of string lengths on the bandurrilla. Some instruments were common to both European and Filipino cultures at the point of contact, however, and one of these was the jew's harp, or trump, which was usually made of iron in Europe, and bamboo in Southeast Asia. This instrument is the subject of extensive discussion in the ‘Musicalia’, with a lengthy quotation from Kircher, commentary by the anonymous Jesuit author, and even a diagram of the European form of the instrument.Footnote ⁵⁷ Since there is no depiction of a trump in Kircher's Musurgia universalis, this diagram cannot be copied from there. Its remarkable similarity to the styling of Mersenne, however, presents a coincidence that furnishes an increasing amount of circumstantial evidence that the Harmonie universelle, or the Harmonicorum libri (Paris, 1648), were known by the writer of the ‘Musicalia’.

Given that Kircher offers extensive discussions on various national styles of singing, it seems only inevitable that the writer of the ‘Musicalia’ would make some mention of the vocal music of the local Tagalog population. A notated fragment of Tagalog women's chant, on a loose leaf that was never bound securely into the volume, appears to be the earliest known example of European staff notation of music sung by indigenous Philippine musicians. The melody appears to contain a reciting tone; it could even be the skeletal notation of a pasyon tone (the pasyon being a hybrid vocal genre that relates a versified narrative of the Passion of Christ over many hours). The Latin inscription calls the melody ‘[a] certain music, which is often adapted by the Tagalog women of the Philippines to their native songs [in] their dialect’.Footnote ⁵⁸ This melodic fragment's strong resemblance to European plainchant could suggest that it could have been heard by Tagalog women in close proximity to Spanish ecclesiastical institutions, then adopted and adapted into indigenous practices.