This book provides the first comprehensive historical and codicological study of the forty manuscript cantorales of Lima Cathedral and offers useful and imaginative solutions to the challenges confronting researchers with such collections of large manuscripts from the New World. In three parts, with an introduction and appendices, the publication was recently awarded the ‘Premio de Musicología Lothar Siemens 2020’. This study offers a thorough introduction to the analysis of the copying of the music and the chant repertory in the cantorales, and is unique among codicological studies of music manuscripts in including an edition of a liturgy so comprehensive that it could be used for a performance.
The introduction begins with post-Tridentine documents of 1583 and 1613 pertaining to Lima that order visitors from the archbishops to check all books of churches to ensure that they conform to the Roman liturgy, which leads to the production after Roman-Sevillian models of the cantorales studied here. A brief history of the cathedral, its musicians and its music follows, usefully supplementing the earlier studies of Andrés Sas. The main church of Lima – a cathedral in 1541, metropolitan seat in 1546 and primatial seat in 1572 – at first had at least a cantor and an organist responsible for the two organs in the choir, then there is mention of ceremonial music in 1552, visiting instrumentalists in 1565 and chant books in 1597. There is little evidence for Renaissance mensural polyphony, but documents attest that in 1593 and later singers sang canto de órgano at Vespers, in the Mass and at some offices on important feasts (this is determined to be fabordón and consistently mentioned through the eighteenth century). The 1612 Constituciones for the chapel show that the chapel-master gave lessons in canto de órgano and counterpoint to musicians; it records that Latin and vernacular polyphony was included in the liturgy – Magnificats and the Te Deum alternating with chant, motets and chanconetas or villancicos sung especially at Christmas, Epiphany and Easter. The chapel-master had to compose new works for the Sundays of Advent and Lent. The cathedral archive has a copy of the Liber Vesperarum of polyphony by Guerrero of 1584 that was used through the eighteenth century, and documents mention a book of Magnificats from Castile that was sought for purchase in 1623 and a payment in 1633 for two books with music by Guerrero of which only the Vespers book of 1584 survives. By 1625, wind players (of the cornetto, chirimia, dulcian, sackbut and bassoon obbligato) and a harpist duplicated vocal parts and might alternate with the organs. In the eighteenth century, classical instrumental music with violins, transverse flutes and oboes replaced what had mainly been vocal music. There is reference to polychoral polyphony in many books that were probably sent from Seville to Lima by ship in 1689; they included forty-one masses, motets, psalms, litanies, works by Philip Rogier and three others, two volumes with organ music (tientos and obras) by Juan del Vado, also sixty-two responsiones that were villancicos, and sixty-five further works with only the number of voice-parts indicated. Only a few compositions from Lima are known; they include works by the chapel-master in 1676, Tomas de Torrejoń y Velasco, three pieces by Cristóbal de Belzayaga from Lima who was working in Bogotá, and others that only survive in Cuzco and Guatemala, for example. These fascinating details come from a thorough search of the abundant archives of Lima Cathedral.
The account of research on cantorales in New Spain and Hispanic America that follows is especially important for its useful list of the many locations where they survive and thorough bibliography including recent publications. Very many collections of cantorales exist but have not been catalogued. The archives and cantorales at Lima Cathedral are next described briefly: the cantorales are displayed in five vitrinas at the church and were digitised in 2018 but are not available online. The detailed index at the end of the book confirms that each liturgical item is found in only one book, meaning that the copying of the cantorales was planned to avoid redundancy. Nevertheless, their numbering from 1 to 40 does not correspond to any liturgical or other order. The cantorales include twelve graduals with the Temporale, six with the Sanctorale (lacking 29 October to 23 November), five with the Commons, one with votive masses, one with a Kyriale lacking Sanctus and Agnus settings, eight antiphoners with the Temporale, four with the Sanctorale (lacking 6 August to 28 October), four with the Commons, one psalter, one with Hours of the Virgin, and three with liturgies for new saints.
Part One uses Sas's earlier work, combined with evidence from the archives, palaeographical and codicological analysis of the cantorales, and comparative study of related sources from outside Lima, to show that all forty cantorales can be dated, mostly between 1615 and 1622, and their scribes (here called calligraphers and also working as such) can be identified. The cantorales were part of Archbishop Bartolomé Lobo Guerrero's plan after his installation in 1609 to follow the earlier renovation of the cathedral building after the model of Seville's in 1564 with his introduction and financing of a college of canons, three chaplains, six choirboys (seises) and six altar-boys to improve the choir. In 1620, new choir stalls were completed. To follow the liturgical directives of the Council of Trent, Archbishop Guerrero also commissioned the new set of cantorales to replace older books. To that end, books from Seville had been requested in 1613 before the copying began in 1614, when Cristóbal Muñoz, the first scribe, was hired. His long contract is transcribed as Appendix 3 with the corresponding numbers of extant cantorales given; copying payments corresponding to his cantorales are summarised on page 58. His work ended in 1615 when a new scribe, Francisco de Párama, was hired (pp. 59–60 shows the correspondence between Párama's copying from 1615 to 1630 and the surviving books). This scribe had sung in the churches of Toledo, San Lorenzo el Reál, Bogotá and New Granada, and he may have introduced chant from them; the use of elements from the rites of Toledo (which informed some Tridentine directives) and Salamanca are attested in Lima, but there is no evidence of chant from anywhere but Seville earlier on. Table 2 (pp. 46–7) lists the feasts made obligatory by the Councils of Lima of 1551–52 and 1583 and a Synod held in Lima of 1613, of which Blaise (3 February), Mark (25 April), Roch (16 August), Bernard (20 August), Francis (4 October), Luke (18 October), Simon and Jude (28 October) and the Expectation of Mary (18 December) are not in the cantorales, which have some gaps.
Crucial sources used for this study were the archives and surviving inventories of the cantorales of Lima Cathedral. The oldest cantorales of 1565–1604 had been prepared under Diego Jorge de Almoraz, who was said to have made new books for the cantoria in 1577. The first inventory from 1604 lists twenty-one parchment books that were prepared beginning in 1565 and are lost; the second from 1616 lists twenty books of which one was kept at the seminary where the choirboys learned Latin and chant; and the third from 1630 lists the twenty old books, which are no longer mentioned in an inventory of 1718, and thirty-six new books. The inventory of 1630 is transcribed in Appendices 1 and 2; the numbers of corresponding extant cantorales are indicated. An inventory of 1636 mentions these thirty-six large choirbooks again (p. 62). Book copying continued: Coral 33 was copied in 1695; Coral 15 in 1763; Corals 1 and 29 date between 1700 and 1718; and Coral 39 is only mentioned in 1837.
The calligraphy and decoration of the cantorales are thoroughly analysed and illustrated with colour images of initials on pages 92–104. (Like many calligraphed letters in manuscripts of Spain and New Spain, some in the cantorales of Lima (pp. 95, 97, 103) are of a style that can be traced back to the polyphonic manuscripts prepared by the Alamire workshop in Antwerp of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century.) The scribes, what they copied and in which chronological order, are identified: Cristóbal Muñoz, Francisco de Páramo, Jerónimo Bravo, Pedro Hazaña, Antonio Contreras and calligraphers A–F. Alphabets for the scribes identified by name and for anonymi are given in tables and discussed: a colophon of Muñoz is reproduced on page 79, and the anonymous scribes are listed pages 90–2.
To illustrate how the cantorales would have been used, Part Two reconstructs the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin from the cantorales with all texts, chant and choral music as it would have been celebrated in the cathedral in the late eighteenth century, with translations of the Latin texts into Castilian. The feast, which was of local importance, was already celebrated in Lima in 1656, but in 1761, King Charles III of Spain made the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception patroness of Spain and of Hispanic America; and in 1763 Pope Clement XIII (1758–69) decreed that the Franciscan office Sicut lilium and mass Egredimini should be used in all Spanish territories. There is a detailed discussion of the liturgy of the feast in Lima as it changed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The edition, using Coral 15 of 1763 with proper chants for the feast, includes everything performers would need except for organ music: the complete psalms set to complete tones; the invitatory tone in alternatim with chant in 2/4 time; sermons identified that are used for lessons; lesson tones; and complete responsory repetenda. No polyphonic Te Deum is in the archives, so a Te Deum in alternatim from the Liber Vesperale of Guerrero with a musician's signature suggesting that it was used is included with Toledan chant to match its mode (sources discussed pp. 124–6). Isolated editorial ficta are added to this Te Deum but not to the chant. Also included is a villancico (pp. 209–66) of 1769 by Antonio Ripa, Cruel tempestad deshecha, for two choirs of four singers, two oboes, two trumpets or horns, two violins, organ and basso continuo, which was intended for Matins of this feast and is edited here for the first time from two sources from Lima and Santiago de Chile. To the bibliography cited on page 107, two studies on the medieval office of the Conception, which was used on the Iberian Peninsula, should be cited: Solange Corbin, ‘L'Office en vers Gaude, Mater Ecclesia pour la Conception de la Vierge’, Atti del [I] Congresso internazionale di musica sacra (1952): 284–86, and Marie-Bénédicte Dary, ‘La Fȇte de la Conception de la Vierge Marie: son introduction en France et ses premiers développements, XIIe–XIIIe siècles’ (Doctorat Nouveau Régime, Université de Paris X-Nanterre, 1997).
Part Three, after an explanation of editorial procedures, is the catalogue, consisting of a description and complete inventory of each book and three indexes. The descriptions include the book-type, date, material, folios, dimension, state of preservation, presence or absence of flyleaves and foliation, and a list of feasts, named in Castilian, with their dates. Then, under the Latin rubrics for each feast of the book in question, all chant incipits are given. Since the cantorales are large books, the numbers of chants per book are small by comparison with medieval books. The Visitation Office by Jan of Jenstein Exsurgens Maria abiit deserves mention. It was probably included because of the Hispanic preference for biblical texts in the liturgy, which this office includes; the Visitation Office by Adam Easton has his own poetry. The indexes are, first, a list of the numerically ordered Vitrinas with their cantorales and the feasts in each book indicating the presence or absence of office and Mass; and second, of the liturgical year by feast in two columns, for the Mass and office, giving the Coral and folios of the feast. After the feasts, there follow the movable feasts, those of the Commons, commemorations and ferial prayers. Third is a long index of incipits of every included chant ordered by genre. Here, the presence or absence of the chant in Hesbert's Antiphonale missarum sextuplex and in Vatican editions (Missale Romanum, Editio Princeps 1570, Graduale Triplex, Liber Usualis), the number and folio(s) of the book, and liturgical occasion are given.
After the transcription of the inventory of 1630 in Appendices 1–2, a third Appendix includes a contract of 7 August 1617 between Cristóbal Muñoz and Lima Cathedral for the production of cantorales. Appendix 4 provides further colour images giving examples of the writing of scribes and of calligraphy in the cantorales. Appendix 5 can serve as a model for future studies: it is a table with a complete list of decorated initials giving the number of the book, folio, style, calligrapher, letter that was decorated and its liturgical position. The bibliography, table of contents and a useful list of the publications of the Sociedad Española de Musicología since 1978 are found at the very end of the book. An index of names would have been useful. This thorough and exemplary interdisciplinary study is a pioneering contribution to the study of Latin American cantorales.
