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.

By showing how music intersected with wider cultural affairs, such as philosophy and criticism, this book connects music and the modern in eighteenth-century Spain within the context of Enlightenment thought. Histories of modern Europe often present late eighteenth-century Spain as a backward place, haunted by the Inquisition and struggling to keep pace with modernity. While Spain under Charles III (1759-1788) pushed for economic and cultural modernization, many elites and the public at large resisted Enlightenment ideas. For conservatives, the modern would in time show its fragility, and Spain would withstand the collapse thanks to its firm grounding in the pillars of monarchy, religion, and traditional forms of knowledge. One source of this solid foundation was long-established musical knowledge based on the rules of counterpoint. In contrast, modernizers argued that Spain could be true to its essence, yet modern and cosmopolitan at the same time: they favoured cosmopolitan genres, such as Italian opera and artistic expression rather than counterpoint rules. At other times, ambivalence toward modernity produced creative uses of music, such as reinterpretations of pastoral and sentimental topics to accommodate reformist political trends. To both sides, music was crucial to the integrity of the Spanish nation. Whether and how Spain became modern would in many ways be defined and reinforced by the kinds of music that Spaniards composed and witnessed on stage. Through the study of press debates, opera and musical theatre productions, this book shows how music intersected with wider cultural affairs, such as philosophy and criticism, medicine and the human body, civilization, Bourbon policy and sentimentality. Music and Modernity in Enlightenment Spain for the first time connects music and the modern in eighteenth-century Spain within the context of Enlightenment thought.

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.

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. Lavista was a relational composer; he did not write music as a private enterprise but for and alongside people with whom he established close relations. Understanding analysis as an affective practice, author Ana R. Alonso-Minutti explores the intertextual connections between the multiple texts--musical or otherwise--that are present in Lavista's music. Alonso-Minutti argues that, through adopting an interdisciplinary and transhistorical approach to music composition, Lavista forged a cosmopolitan imaginary that challenged 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, the author offers a nuanced, personal narrative informed by conversations with composers, performers, artists, choreographers, poets, writers, and filmmakers. Through an innovative mosaic of methodologies, from archival work, to musical and intertextual analysis, oral history, and (auto)ethnography, this book is the first in-depth study of Lavista's compositional career and offers a contextual panorama of the contemporary music scene in Mexico

"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 Companion to Music in the Age of the Catholic Monarchs, edited by Tess Knighton, offers a major new study that deepens and enriches our understanding of the forms and functions of music that flourished in late medieval Spanish society. The fifteen essays, written by leading authorities in the field, present a synthesis based on recently discovered material that throws new light on different aspects of musical life during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabel (1474-1516): sacred and secular music-making in royal and aristocratic circles; the cathedral music environment; liturgy and power; musical connections with Rome, Portugal and the New World; theoretical and unwritten musical practices; women as patrons and performers; and the legacy of Jewish musical tradition. Contributors are Mercedes Castillo Ferreira, Giuseppe Fiorentino, Roberta Freund Schwartz, Eleazar Gutwirth, Tess Knighton, Kenneth Kreitner, Javier Marín López, Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita, Bernadette Nelson, Pilar Ramos López, Emilio Ros-Fábregas, Juan Ruiz Jiménez, Richard Sherr, Ronald Surtz, and Jane Whetnall.

In this book, author Louise K. Stein analyzes early modern opera as appreciated and produced by Gaspar de Haro y Guzmán (1629-87), Marqués de Heliche and del Carpio and a distinguished patron of the arts in Madrid, Rome, and Naples. It also reveals his lasting legacy in the Americas during a crucial period for the growth and development of opera and the history of singing.