Today, Latin American colonial music is an emerging theme whose interest and popularity has intensified over the last decade on an international scale. The recent creation of music ensembles and recording labels specialising in this repertory in Europe and America (such as K617 in France, Urtext in Mexico or APAC in Bolivia) has coincided with the interest of musicologists from various countries and with different historiographical and methodological traditions who have studied the music of the mainland Spaniards, Criollos, Indians and Africans during the period of Spanish rule. In this context, Geoffrey Baker's Imposing Harmony: Music and Society in Colonial Cuzco is an extremely important publication reflecting the significant advances made in recent years in the field of historical musicology of the New World. The book is a revision of the author's doctoral thesis, submitted to Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2001 and is the first devoted to colonial music in the interesting series of studies dealing with Latin American topics published by Duke University Press. As the author himself indicates, the text is not completely unpublished, as four of the book's five chapters (chapters 1, 3, 4 and 5) had previously been published as independent articles, either in a complete or partial manner. This does not detract from the volume, which, overall, shows tight structural coherence and may be read from beginning to end in a quick and easy fashion. This is aided by its fluid text (halfway between a specialist monograph and an essay), the concentration of the notes at the end of the book, and the absence of tables.

The study's objective is clearly defined in the opening pages: ‘to decenter Cuzco's musical history, expanding the focus from the Hispanic centre – the cathedral-seminary axis – to include the geographical and social margins’, thus integrating the musical practices of the indigenous people, untouched until now in musicological literature about Cuzco (pp. 5–6). One of the unique aspects of Imposing Harmony is precisely the chosen city, Cuzco, capital of the former Incan empire, with a mainly indigenous population that played a central role in colonial society, art and culture. If Lima was the political capital and Potosí the financial capital, Cuzco remained the symbolic capital of the Peruvian viceroyalty. However, previous studies of music and musicians in colonial Cuzco scarcely include references to the indigenous population. ‘Where are the Indians?’ (p. 4) is the question underlining and propelling the book, which becomes a crusade to recover the native Indians for colonial music history and highlight the importance of the Andean local practices in the formation of what the author calls ‘Cuzqueño criollo identity’. Although the time frame chosen is the extensive and changing colonial era (1533–1824), Baker centres his attention on two periods: the years 1620–1720, coinciding with the so-called ‘golden age’ of art and culture in Cuzco (an age which, paradoxically, music historiography had not addressed), and the late colonial period. Although the entire era of Spanish domination is not tackled with the same profundity, this is a commendable attempt at summarising and detecting the changes and constants in musical practice.

One of the most original aspects of the study is its methodological orientation and its interdisciplinary nature, a blend of history, anthropology and musicology. The book combines two methodological traditions currently in fashion: urban musicology, which since its creation in the mid-1980s has recently been enriched with important studies of both large cities (as in the case of Robert Kendrick's study of Milan) and provincial towns (as in the case of Miguel Ángel Marín's study of Jaca), although, for the moment, limited to a European context;Footnote ¹ and the postcolonial studies that, overcoming Eurocentric determinism, focus on the conflicts caused by power struggles, the construction of identities and the recuperation of the role of the marginalised groups of colonial society, exemplified by Juan Carlos Estenssoro's and Bernardo Illari's brilliant applications in the musical sphere.Footnote ² Thus, the word ‘colonial’ in the book's subtitle is not merely used as a chronological label, but in an ideological sense, with all the racial inequality and identity, imposition, resistance and negotiation of organisational models and cultural practices this implies. This new approach to musical culture, taking social and racial factors into account, proves to be indispensable in studying colonial music, and in Baker's case is directly related to the nature of the archives consulted and the main sources used for the study: account books of confraternities and parish churches on the one hand, and notarial records (mainly wills and contracts) on the other. The impossibility of accessing the archive of Cuzco Cathedral (closed to researchers for decades) forced the author to seek alternatives to pursue his research. This imposed (as well as healthy) distance from the cathedral archive gives the study a markedly social and urban perspective that the cathedral documentation (an official narration of the achievements of the Spanish minority) would not have permitted him to obtain. On the other hand, the fragmentary and heterogeneous nature of notarial documentation and account books, by definition, do not prevent him from constructing a model account of their fluidity and continuity. In a context in which the study of colonial music is more conditioned by the discovery of new cathedral sources than by new interpretations of them or research in alternative archives, Baker's book is a breath of fresh air in colonial historiography (both for its sources and its methods) that it is hoped future researchers will continue.

A quick glance at the contents shows that this is not the classic study of a city or a series of institutions. The presentation of the contents page itself (in which only the titles of the chapters are given, without their internal subdivisions) is an indication of the author's intention to avoid the more descriptive rather than the interpretative historiographical tradition that has dominated the study of colonial and, more specifically, cathedral music on both sides of the Atlantic. The volume is divided into five chapters ranging from the Spanish heart of the colonial city to the Andean doctrinas de indios in rural areas. After providing a broad overview of music in the city in general (ch. 1) Baker successively analyses the presence of music and musicians in the main Spanish (the cathedral, the seminary of San Antonio Abad, convents and monasteries, chs. 2 and 3) and Andean institutions (urban and rural parishes, chs. 4 and 5). Each chapter ends with a useful summary of concluding statements. Despite the institutional organisation of the contents, Baker presents a very integrated overview of music-making in Cuzco that surpasses the classical list of the activities of its institutions: the music is studied from both within and outside the institutions as a phenomenon of urban projection and social significance and, moreover, as a key element located at the interface of Spanish and Andean republics in both urban and rural areas. This surprising presentation of Cuzco as an extraordinarily flourishing musical city is explained, at least in part, by the variety of uses and functions of music in the different strata of colonial society: for the Spanish authorities music was a form of demonstrating the success of evangelisation under Hispanic rule and the efficient fulfilment of their duties; for the nuns active in convents and beaterios, a unique opportunity to make a future for themselves, exteriorise their faith and promote themselves in the city; for the indigenous leaders or caciques, a symbol of prestige and a reinforcement of their authority before the community and the Spanish elite; and for the Andean musicians active in urban and rural parish churches, a means of social promotion and a contribution to the community, which, in contrast, shielded them from the more oppressive aspects of the colonial system (tax payments and labour levies) and allowed them to perpetuate pre-Hispanic practices, at times under the blind eye of the authorities. Thus, all levels of the hierarchical colonial society had good reasons to foster the cultivation of music, which became one of the strongest means of constructing new identities.

Chapter 1, which includes the classic description of the urban soundscape, serves as a broad introduction to the overall study and convincingly presents the metaphor alluded to in the title of the volume: the imposition of harmony, not only in the strict musical sense (in allusion to the cultivation of polyphonic art music, foreign to the Andean population) but figuratively, as a symbol of the urban and social order that guided the conquistadors in the transplantation of European models, and which materialised in a complex and polyhedric programme encompassing physical and moral as well as artistic and cultural elements. One of the most original aspects of Latin American cities in comparison to their European counterparts is the participation of the indigenous communities in the city's civic ceremonies – the authorities expressly required their presence, as this was part of their strategy to preserve the order and harmony of the different social and racial groups. The analysis of chronicles and pictorial images such as the Noticias cronológicas (c. 1749) by Esquivel y Navia and El primer nueva corónica [sic] y buen gobierno (1613) by the indigenous chronicler Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala (two sources Baker has ‘recovered’ for colonial musicology) reflect the existence of the many forms of indigenous expression showing how the daily reality of colonial Cuzco did not correspond with the civilisers' ideal plan. On more than one occasion, the author shows his dissatisfaction with the classic opposition of the Spanish domination vs Native resistance model. The indigenous people incorporated characteristics from the European tradition into their musical culture and developed their own traditional and native elements. Thus, the model was not solely imposed by the Spaniards but negotiated with the Andean people. Could the colonial project have gone ahead without the support of the local caciques? Probably not. An alternative title for the book might thus have been Negotiating Harmony, due to the author's questioning of the traditional pattern described above throughout the text.

The extensive series of pictorial images is very pleasing (surprisingly not listed anywhere in the volume) and help in understanding the role of colonial music in society. Of particular interest is Baker's imaginative analysis of the series of anonymous paintings depicting the Corpus Christi procession (1674–80), an eminently urban annual event prepared by and for the city and in which the participation of the Indians was essential, from the preparation of the decoration of the streets to the performance of indigenous songs and dances. Baker bravely suggests that the singers in one of the paintings of the Corregidor Pérez (figs. 4 and 10) could be those from the seminary accompanied by the cathedral seises, who are probably singing a villancico, and even suggests that the harpist portrayed could be the Indian Don Joseph Ygnacio. Bernardo Illari has pointed out the highly idealised and ideologically manipulated image of these paintings, which were not at all concerned with realism, but intent on offering a triumphal, religious and official image of the procession: ‘the sounding reality of such a procession was far removed from this meagre representation’.Footnote ³ But, to what extent can an imaginary depiction of the procession (similar, in this sense, to Braun and Hogenbergs' urban plan, which the author studies) allow such a precise identification to be made? On the other hand, to our knowledge the Corpus villancicos were mainly performed inside the cathedral (during Matins on both the days of the octave and the main feast). Although their performance in the procession was feasible, this was subject to local variants and it is generally agreed that the music most often performed during the procession was Latin hymns. A book of ceremonies from Mexico Cathedral, where Corpus Christi was also celebrated with magnificence, expressly prescribes that the procession should include the chapel of ‘musicians with their instruments singing and playing the hymns from the processional book for the whole year and where they made a stop singing the antiphon O quam suavis est Domine’.Footnote ⁴ Baker's interpretation of another of the paintings, from the indigenous parish of Hospital de los Naturales (fig. 6), is even more complex and interesting. The painting depicts a procession of the indigenous nobility of that Indian parish; above the central element, a cart, are three musicians of Spanish appearance with European instruments, supposedly playing European music. For the author, the presence of these Spanish elements has a highly symbolic content, as they represent a ‘refusal to perform difference through a display of exoticized [Andean] music’ (p. 53). Instead, the indigenous elite appropriated elements of the culture of the colonisers, thus cancelling out everything different and subordinate about the colonial system; in sum, this was a subtle attempt at resisting the authorities' programme and introducing an(other) dissonance in the imagined harmonic order. This interpretation of music as an instrument of mediation between the two republics and as a practice used to dissolve the cultural, social and racial differences is suggestive and reflects the author's capacity to go beyond mere first impressions.

One of the main differences in the musical organisation of Cuzco Cathedral with respect to the metropolis was its dependence on the music chapel of the seminary of San Antonio Abad, the leading music ensemble of the city both in terms of size and prestige.Footnote ⁵ The seminary had its own music chapel, independent of that of the cathedral, which regularly participated in ceremonies held at the cathedral itself and in other urban institutions with polyphonic music, especially from the 1610s onwards, when the creation of two new dioceses led to a sharp decrease in the cathedral's income. This unusual musical prominence of a seminary that supplied singers to the cathedral chapel itself grew over time to the extent that it wound up replacing it during the eighteenth century. This deconstructs the myth of the musical importance of cathedrals (Cuzco in this case), which, in contrast to the mono-cathedral vision transmitted by scholars, including Stevenson, had a limited role in the city's musical life from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. Although faced with the limitations of not being able directly to consult the seminary's documentation, Baker tries to clarify the musicians on the staff. Basing his thesis on the literal interpretation of a document from the seminary's rector dating from 1669, according to which there were over fifty student singers in the seminary, Baker affirms that ‘the seminary capilla de música must have constituted one of the most formidable musical forces in the Hispanic world at this time’ (p. 77). Similar references to grandiose ensembles appear in Mexico, Puebla and La Plata, which indicates that it is worth asking to what extant this theory is one of the narrator's imaginary constructions. Once again, Bernardo Illari has demonstrated that polychorality was closely associated with the ideas of prestige and power during the Baroque, so its mention in official sources of the colonial authorities all over the continent is not surprising. Not even the Royal Chapel of Madrid, probably the institution with the most resources in the Empire, had such a sizeable staff. In another important colonial institution, Mexico City Cathedral, where there are references to polychorality from the second half of the sixteenth century and extensive documentation that can be used to analyse the evolution of the musicians on the staff, I have been unable to document fifty musicians simultaneously at any point in its colonial history. Myth or reality?

Among the most valuable contributions of Imposing Harmony is its discussion of the treatment of marginal groups such as the indigenous and mixed-race people, elusive in historical (as well as musicological) sources, and its position with respect to the problematic and polemical issue of the compositional capacities of the indigenous people. In regard to the former, Baker aligns himself with the arguments of Bernardo Illari, who has also established a fruitful line of research in this terrain.Footnote ⁶ Baker maintains the dichotomy of Spanish singers vs indigenous ministriles and highlights the limited penetration of Andean musicians into important musical posts, an ‘institutionalised racism’ (p. 85) that Cuzco Cathedral shared with La Plata, Bogotá and Lima. In the face of such an adverse reality, the natural way out for the Andean musicians was in the parish churches, not in the cathedrals, which were centres of the official culture in which advancing to become a simple ministril was almost impossible. As a way of maintaining the stability of the colonial system, the Spanish authorities prohibited the ordaining of natives and Africans who were not of legitimate birth or with limpieza de sangre (purity of blood); this theoretically limited their possibilities of holding posts of musical responsibility in the cathedrals. However, given the lack of alternatives, in the case of outstanding musical qualities or in certain geographical contexts, there were frequent exceptions, and there would be even more if the sources for studying cathedral music were not official documents pertaining to the institution itself, and not very explicit in relation to the racial origin of the musicians. The native Juan Mathías was maestro de capilla at Oaxaca Cathedral between 1655 and 1667, while during the same period the post of maestro de capilla at Durango Cathedral was in the hands of the mulatto Alonso Asensio (1657–63). At Mexico City Cathedral, a metropolitan see perhaps slightly different compared with the provincial cathedrals, one of the most important singers of the cathedral chapel during the early seventeenth century was the mulatto slave Luis Barreto, bought by the cathedral fábrica and spoiled by the authorities ‘for possessing as he does a unique voice and talent for canto de órgano’. Another case reinforcing the sporadic, but real presence of the social outcasts in musically important posts was that of the indigenous Zapotec Juan de Velasco, respected first organist of the metropolitan cathedral, with a higher salary than the Italian Ignacio de Jerusalem, or that of Simón de la Peña, cacique from Tlalelolco, who went from choir assistant at Mexico Cathedral to the respected post of succentor of Guadalajara Cathedral.Footnote ⁷ These examples indicate that the problem cannot simply be reduced to the binary opposition Spanish singers vs Indian instrumentalists: this issue should be examined in the colonial mentality and context rather than with the eyes of a modern historian of the twenty-first century.

In regard to the creative capacity of the indigenous people, a sensitive issue subject to lively debate in academic circles, Baker puts forward the unknown case of the native Andean Matías de Livisaca, maestro compositor de música and the composer of two psalms for the convent of Santa Catalina.Footnote ⁸ The fact that this convent, a bastion of Spanish culture in Cuzco, bought works by Livisaca suggests its complete mastery of the European musical language. The main problem is that Livisaca's works cannot be studied and, consequently, comparisons may not be drawn. Clearly, the indigenous population was perfectly capable of learning composition as well as any Neapolitan musician, but Cuzco did not have centres with such a high level of technical training at its disposal: the principal musical institution was a seminary chapel made up of young, non-professional singers while the cathedral, traditionally the most important centre for learning counterpoint, played a limited role in the city's musical life.

In chapter 3 Baker delves into the analysis of the musical activity at convents, monasteries, hospitals, and schools in Cuzco, institutions that were decisive for two traditionally marginalised groups: women and the indigenous. The presence of polyphony at these institutions was as constant as in Madrid or Milan, due to the large market of singers available in the city who were hired on a regular basis to perform for the most important feasts celebrated at those institutions, for the confraternities they housed, or simply to teach music. Given the symbolic role of convents as institutions that reproduced Spanish culture, it is not surprising that the authorities themselves encouraged their musical activity, comparable to that of some cathedrals. The high degree of musical autonomy of the convents of Cuzco does not seem to have been an exception in the New World. Perhaps the best-known case is that of the convent of the Encarnación in Mexico City, one of the city's richest, and the origin of six books of polyphony currently held in Chicago. Although part of the repertory comes from the cathedral, it serves to confirm that polychorality was regularly practised at this convent.Footnote ⁹ Particularly attractive are the sections devoted to beaterios, a kind of small-scale convent principally destined for women from the native elite, and the hospitals, where music had a continuous and important presence, at times associated with therapeutic practices.

The institutions with the greatest presence of native Andeans were the eight parroquias de indios of Cuzco, a privileged area for the socially marginalised to express their identity, discussed in chapter 4. Their role in the musical life of the city was much more important than supposed, as their activities were projected at a wide spectrum of the urban population. The constant references to the musical development of parishes in documents governing the diocese (provincial councils of Lima, constituciones sinodales, etc.) demonstrate the authorities' desire to use music as an instrument of conversion. As a result, the urban parishes had permanent, independent and self-sufficient music chapels that regularly performed polyphony, making these institutions important centres of musical instruction. They were led by a chapelmaster or maestro de capilla, also known as a maestro cantor, maestro de coro or maestro de escuela. Through music, many native parish maestros reached a high social and financial status and a much more favourable lifestyle than that offered at a cathedral: a ‘musician's status within the Andean world was proportional to their distance from the colonial center’ (p. 179).

In order properly to comprehend the unique musical organisation of Cuzco, the different way in which music was viewed as a profession must be considered. In contrast to Spain, where musicians were professionals paid for their musical skills and with a heightened market awareness that led them almost impulsively to move in search of a better salary, the music profession among the indigenous population from Cuzco was seen as a way of serving the community, as a means of promotion in terms of prestige and honour or as one of the later stages of the ecclesiastical career. This explains why many maestros combined their musical duties with other ecclesiastical positions and commercial activities (the buying and selling of land, loans, sureties, etc.), thus forming part of the city's elite. This partial deprofessionalisation of music careers (if not their complete dissolution) led to the existence of a large local market of musicians and contributed to the city's extraordinarily flourishing musical life, but, at the same time, restricted their possibilities of circulation. In fact, although Baker demonstrates a deep interest in the phenomenon of the mobility of musicians, devoting specific sections in various chapters, the main conclusion he reaches is, paradoxically, an extremely low circulation of musicians. Together with the lack of professionalisation of the musicians, other factors must be mentioned, such as the city's geographical isolation, poor communications and unattractiveness to external candidates due to insufficient income. This situation contrasts with the panorama offered in New Spain where, despite the considerable distance between some of the cities, there was an intense circulation of musicians between the cathedrals situated in the centre of the viceroyalty (Mexico, Puebla, Valladolid, Guadalajara, Oaxaca, and even Durango), thus aligning them with a peninsular practice not followed in Cuzco.

One of the aspects Baker resolves more brilliantly in this chapter and in chapter 5 is the treatment of the documentary evidence. In a musicological tradition in which the content of the sources is raised to the category of absolute truth, the author has no qualms about finding problems with their content and highlighting their limitations, as many aspects of the musical life of the parroquias are invisible in written records. In general, the fiscal sources from Cuzco only register payments to maestros de capilla and professional instrumentalists, not those made to singers and other ministriles. Baker demonstrates that musicians could receive income from other parish funds, not only from the fábrica, and that in some cases they were directly paid by the cacique, with no documental trace remaining today. Moreover, they could be paid in kind (food, clothing, etc.), a practice deeply rooted in Cuzco since the period of the Incas.Footnote ¹⁰ In other cases, instead of receiving a salary as such, they were granted an exemption in the payment of taxes or any other kind of labour levy. Baker's analysis of the lack of references to music in the parochial documentation consulted is revealing: ‘their silences [of the sources] may speak volumes about the ways in which musicians perceived their duties and the ways in which the patronage of music was drawn partially away from the church’ (p. 234). This alternative look at the written sources and the importance given to oral practices is uncommon in historical musicological studies and pre-empts some of the future research interests of the author, who is currently preparing a book on contemporary popular music in Havana.

The novelty of chapter 5 is that is it the first study of music in a rural setting, an issue of the utmost importance given the dispersion of the population. The traditional emphasis on urban music-making is deceptive, since a large part of the Latin American population (85 per cent in the case of the diocese of Cuzco) lived in the country. The musical organisation of the 137 rural parishes or doctrinas of the bishopric of Cuzco was practically the same as that of its urban counterparts. In fact, the majority of the arguments put forward in this chapter are a reiteration of those set out in the previous chapter: the multifaceted maestros de capilla who, at the same time, were teachers of beginners; the compensation for musical services through cash payments or tax exemptions and the non-payment of personal services, and the presence of a large number of musical instruments in inventories, which implies the performance of polyphony.

However, in a study with such a spatial orientation and in which there is an abundance of references to a whole constellation of urban institutions and rural towns, the absence of maps, whose presence is almost compulsory in urban studies, is surprising. Although the author reproduces and comments on two period maps in chapter 1 (one taken from Braun and Hogenbergs' Civatates orbis terrarum (1572) and the other from Guaman Poma de Ayala's El primer nueva corónica (1613)), he analyses them from the point of view of their symbolism, in the former as an ideal and abstract map and the second as the colonial reinvention of pre-Hispanic Cuzco. One would expect to encounter, for example, a map showing the distribution of the population in the city, the location of the urban institutions and the route of the Corpus Christi procession, indicating the points of musical interest. Presumably, the proximity of the institutions would determine their degree of musical interaction; for example, the close relationship between the seminary musicians and those of the cathedral are discussed. We cannot speculate about the existence of similar relationships in the remote doctrinas de indios, as no map indicating its location inside the diocese is provided; this would also have helped geographically and visually to demonstrate the real dispersion of music-making. Similarly, it would have been useful to devote space to the city's demographic evolution in order to analyse the impact of the 1650 earthquake or the 1720 plague (whose musical consequences are analysed in chapter 1), as well as the occupational structure of the population, basic ingredients from an urban perspective.

It is not known whether it was due to the publisher's limitations or the author's express wish that the valuable collection of documents of musical interest (thirteen documents including contracts for teaching or building organs, wills, extracts of confraternities and constitutions, etc.) was not printed in the book itself but rather on the author's professional web page (<www.rhul.ac.uk/music/Staff/GeoffreyBaker_D.html>). This is unusual in the musicological tradition of cathedral studies and symptomatic of the relative value Baker places on the documents as a means instead of the final aim of his research. At this point it is fair to point out Baker's excellent mastery of the seventeenth-century Spanish he has had to ‘struggle’ with in the fearsome notarial archives, which is translated with a high level of accuracy; errors are few and far between and for the most part easily corrected. For this reason, and due to the interest of the documentation itself, some readers perhaps would have found it useful and convenient to include these documents (or, at least, a selection of them) in the book and index them together with the main text.

In my opinion, the issue of confraternities deserved a separate chapter, given their enormous proliferation in all contexts, the large number of natives they involved and their importance as institutions promoting musical activity in Cuzco. Baker assigns a central role to these associations, although, perhaps due to their nature as institutions within institutions, he disperses his reflections in different chapters. Although Latin American confraternities have barely been studied from a musical point of view, it would have been interesting to compare the situation in Cuzco with the Brazilian irmandades analysed by Curt Lange, in which the presence of music was at least as important as in Cuzco.Footnote ¹¹

On the other hand, and although Baker offers a commendable interpretation of the peculiarities of Cuzco in the peninsular framework (particularly courageous in the case under study, given the restricted access to certain archives), at times he tends to generalise about topics requiring further research. Thus, he transmits a frozen and unitary image of music-making in Spanish cathedrals, in which there was a substantial variety and can in no way be reduced to a ‘dominant cathedral capilla de música surrounded by weaker, dependent institutions’ (p. 88). Baker accepts the problematic and often-cited concept of the ‘Sevillian model’ (pp. 4, 72, and 272, n. 31) from colonial musicological historiography without questioning or explaining it and presents the lack of musical professionalisation as one of Cuzco's unique characteristics, although this phenomenon can probably be extrapolated to any small musical organisation, both in Latin America and Europe.Footnote ¹² Perhaps even more striking is the comparison of music-making in parishes in Cuzco and Spain. Although the author is probably correct in asserting that the musical life of both the urban and rural parishes of Cuzco was richer than in the majority of Spanish parishes (pp. 167 and 208), there is still a significant lack of studies of parochial music in Spanish musicology. The percentage and rate of continuity with which parishes encouraged the use of polyphony is still unknown, rendering it impossible to make a comparison founded on a solid base. Nonetheless, from the seventeenth century onwards, and in parallel to the demographic growth of the towns and the increase in the demand for musical services, many peninsular parishes had their own capillas de música. In large urban centres like Barcelona, Salamanca, Seville or Valencia, parochial chapels totally independent from the cathedral have been documented; the same can be said for many parishes in small towns (as in the case of Corella, Laguardia, Sanhüesa, Tafalla and Viana, just to mention five situated very close to each other in northern Spain), some of which still conserve important collections of music manuscripts (as occurs in Marchena, Seville, and Briones, La Rioja, to cite two parochial music archives catalogued in recent years). While it is true that the extraordinary musical development of parish churches in Cuzco is, to a certain extent, a consequence of the evangelising process, there is another important variable that Baker does not mention when comparing the phenomenon of parish chapels in Spain and the New World: the absence of collegiate churches, an institutional model halfway between a cathedral and a parish which almost invariably included a capilla de música. To what extent could the non-establishment of collegiate churches in Latin America have made music more important in parish churches?Footnote ¹³

Perhaps the most arguable aspect of Imposing Harmony is that it is written without taking the musical repertory into consideration and, in particular, the holdings of the seminary of San Antonio Abad, which the author himself describes as ‘one of the most significant on the continent’ (p. 2). References to the archive are few and dispersed throughout the study, with only a few paragraphs devoted to the theatrical repertory during the mid-eighteenth century (pp. 78–80) and the villancicos associated with convents (pp. 117 and 119). This may be explained, in part, because his objective is not the musical works themselves but rather the practice of music, and perhaps in part because of the inaccessibility of the scores (although since 2001 there has been a copy of the seminary's archive in the Instituto de Investigación Musicológica ‘Carlos Vega’ de Buenos Aires). Baker points out the limitations of previous studies of the seminary repertory by Vargas Ugarte, Claro Valdés, Stevenson and Quezada Macchiavelo, a list of scholars to whom Aurelio Tello, the editor of an important anthology of Peruvian music, should be added.Footnote ¹⁴ However, depending on the way in which they are treated, music manuscripts are undoubtedly valuable sources that may include messages carrying social contents and shed light on urban musical culture as a whole, the author's main interest. Important questions remain unanswered: what else can be said about the dramatic works conserved at the seminary, apart from confirming their widely known uniqueness? To what extent did the seminary archive reflect the low rate of mobility of the musicians or the location of the city on the route connecting Lima with Potosí and La Plata? What can be concluded about the processes of formation of the repertory or, more generally, about the musical relations between Cuzco and other urban centres? To what extent did the overwhelming predominance of local musicians (seemingly more acute in Cuzco than in other colonial cities) and the total absence of foreigners affect the musical climate of the city and the style cultivated there? How can the presence of peninsular composers such as fray Manuel Correa, Sebastián Durón and Agustín de Contreras in the seminary archive be explained? There is surprisingly little information about the circulation and dissemination of music (only one isolated case of vocal music purchased from Lima at p. 157 and another regarding books sent to Potosí, described as ‘a rare and fascinating example of the circulation of music material’, at pp. 182–3), one of the keys to the understanding of the city's musical culture. A more in-depth examination of the seminary archive, the study of the texts (the only example is on p. 118) and the introduction of musical examples, analysed with the perceptiveness with which the author approaches other issues, would have completed and enriched his text.

The same can be said about the parish churches: what kind of music did the large musical forces of the urban parishes and the doctrinas perform? The author claims that ‘there is ample evidence of polyphony with voices and instruments, in some cases accompanied by two organs’ (p. 237); indeed, the documentation suggests that some parish churches developed their own repertory of chanzonetas and entremeses and certain feasts included the performance of non-European music. A proper analysis of this topic should be set in the widest Latin American context possible, taking advantage of some of the materials available through the secondary literature. Paul Borg's study of the music manuscripts currently held at the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana, originally from various parishes from north-eastern Guatemala, is fundamental to our understanding of the repertory performed by the natives in rural contexts.Footnote ¹⁵ Some of these books were copied by Francisco de León and Tomás Pascual, maestros de capilla from the towns of Santa Eulalia and San Ixcoi, respectively, and contain pieces in Latin (Masses, motets, Magnificats), Spanish pieces (chanzonetas, madrigals, villancicos, coplas) and even works in native languages, together with an interesting repertory of fauxbourdons and pieces without texts or only with a textual incipit, which were probably performed by wind ensembles made up of indigenous minstrels, similar to those documented by Baker in the parish churches of Cuzco. Surprisingly, a substantial part of this Guatemalan repertory was originally of European origin and includes international composers such as Verdelot, Compère, Mouton, Sermisy, Peñalosa, Morales and Urreda, among others. As Leonardo Waisman has rightly pointed out, the statistical predominance of small, unpretentious pieces, some of which are clearly linked to the oral and improvised practices of the natives of the doctrinas, is striking.Footnote ¹⁶ Although I share Baker's idea that the indigenous influence can be seen in the professional organisation of music and in performance more than in the written music itself, which the author distrusts (‘music notation may be included among the tools of empire’, stated at p. 248), certain pieces from the colonial repertory such as those from Guatemala are indeed capable of bringing us fairly close to sounds that we can only imagine while viewing the plates of the scenes by Guaman Poma de Ayala.

These comments take nothing away from the value of this publication. On the contrary, they are a clear symptom of the sheer number of topics Geoffrey Baker addresses and the questions he raises. This is an excellent book that discusses critical issues central to our understanding of colonial music and society in an original manner and whose approach, spread over various disciplines, significantly widens the perspectives of the studies published to date. His reconsideration of traditional methods and sources and his open invitation to create a distinctively Latin American historical musicology less dependant on European models represent a considerable challenge for scholars of music in the New World.Footnote ¹⁷