In Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain, Eva Moreda Rodríguez presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of the diverse and often divergent writings of music critics in the early years of the Franco regime. Carefully selecting contemporary writings by well-known music critics, Moreda Rodríguez contextualizes music criticism written during the Franco regime within the broader intellectual history of Spain from the nineteenth century onwards.

Overture. Theater music and the problem of Spanish nationalism -- Theatrical and political revolutions in nineteenth-century Spain -- Urban life on the Spanish musical stage -- Staging history, staging national identity -- Regenerationism, Viennese operetta, and Spanish nationalism -- The romance of rural Spain and the failure of the restoration settlement -- Zarzuela and the operatic tradition -- Classicism and historicism

A monumental study of musical practices in 18th century Santiago de Chile, and the only English-language monograph about Chilean colonial music, A Sweet Penance of Music offers a comprehensive view of musicians within the city and their links with other Latin American urban centers in the wider colonial system. Author Alejandro Vera, recent winner of the International Casa de las Américas Musicology Prize for the Spanish edition of his monograph, provides a fascinating account of the quotidian cultural and social significance of music in varying physical spheres - from cathedrals, convents, and monasteries, to private houses and public spaces. He brings to life a city long neglected in the shadow of other colonial centers of economic power, asserting the importance of duality in the period and its music - particularly centering one nun harpist's conception of music as "sweet penance." Drawing from historical documents and musical scores of the period, A Sweet Penance of Music breaks new ground, laying the foundation for a revisionist approach to the study of music in the colonial Americas.

This significant volume moves music-historical research in the direction of deconstructing the national grand narratives in music history, of challenging the national paradigm in methodology, and thinking anew about cultural traffic, cultural transfer and cosmopolitanism in the musical past. The chapters of this book confront, or subject to some kind of critique, assumptions about the importance of the national in the musical past. The emphasis, therefore, is not so much on how national culture has been constructed, or how national cultural institutions have influenced musical production, but, rather, on the way the national has been challenged by musical practices or audience reception.

"Musical History as Seen through Contemporary Eyes", edited by Benjamin Knysak and Zdravko Blažeković, is a Festschrift published in honor of the musicologist H. Robert Cohen. Born in Baltimore, educated in New York, and with a career spanning France, Canada, and the United States, Cohen is the founder of the Répertoire international de la presse musicale (RIPM), the international project focused on the historic musical press. With research interests spanning print culture, music iconography, Hector Berlioz, musical France, and Giuseppe Verdi, this volume presents a collection of essays written by many friends and collaborators exploring these themes and many others. "Musical History as Seen through Contemporary Eyes" is a tribute to Cohen's contributions to musicology, librarianship, and information science spanning more than fifty years.

"Composer, pianist, editor, writer, and pedagogue Mario Lavista (1943-2021) was a central figure of the cultural and artistic scene in Mexico and one of the leading Ibero-American composers of his generation. His music is often described as evocative and poetic, noted for his meticulous attention to timbre and motivic permutation, and his creative trajectory was characterized by its intersections with the other arts, particularly poetry and painting. Understanding analysis as an affective practice, this study explores the intertextual connections between the multiple texts-musical or otherwise-that are present in Lavista's music. It argues that, through adopting an interdisciplinary and transhistorical approach to music composition, Lavista forged a cosmopolitan imaginary to challenge imposed stereotypes of what Mexican music should sound like. This imaginary becomes a strategy of resistance against imperialist agendas placed upon postcolonial peripheries. Departing from traditional biographical and chronological frameworks that exalt masters and masterworks, this book offers a nuanced, personal narrative informed by conversations with composers, performers, artists, choreographers, poets, writers, and filmmakers. Implementing an innovative mosaic of methodologies, from archival work, to musical and intertextual analysis, oral history, and (auto)ethnography, this book is the first to offer a contextual framing of Lavista's career within a panoramic view of contemporary music practices in Mexico during the past fifty years"--

The Indigenous musicians from the surrounding pueblos de indios took on a leading role in urban musical activity. Musical Practices and Mobility in Asunción: Indigenous Musicians in Colonial Paraguay sheds light on dynamics that go beyond the studies centered on the doing of Jesuits in missionary contexts and provides a more thorough comprehension of the urban musical models that were imposed and adapted. Indigenous musicians were transferred to the city from the Jesuit reductions and the pueblos under the care of secular and Franciscan priests for festivals and celebrations. Without them, and without the mobilities that placed them in both contexts, Laura Fahrenkrog Cianelli argues the urban institutional-musical model would not have been possible to maintain in that distant corner of the empire. By transcending the city limits imposed by urban approaches, this book enables a novel reading of musical practices in a city connected with its hinterland, revealing the different musical physiognomies of the empire in distant contexts.