Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T18:02:09.977Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Franciscan Mission Music in California, c.1770–1830: Chant, Liturgical and Polyphonic Traditions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Grayson Wagstaff  and
Robert M. Stevenson
Grayson Wagstaff
Affiliation:
The Catholic University of America
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Franciscan mission repertory in California, c.1770–1830, includes numerous collections of chant and polyphonic music. Scholars have assumed some direct connection with music used in Mexico, but this assumption remains difficult to prove on the basis of the surviving Mexican repertory, which is mostly associated with cathedrals. Chant and polyphonic settings from the Liturgy for the Dead in Californian sources are compared with those from Mexico. Mexican cathedral music, even in the 1790s, reveals connections with pre-Tridentine liturgical traditions; but the California repertory is based on different liturgical and chant traditions. This supports William J. Summers's hypothesis that polyphonic works in the California Missions are based on a peripheral tradition associated with the religious orders.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 126 , Issue 1 , 2001 , pp. 54 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

An earlier version of a portion of this study was presented at the National Meeting of the Society for American Music (then Sonneck) in February 1993. I would like to thank William J. Summers, John Koegel, and William Kearns of the American Music Research Center for having shared materials and offered suggestions on this article, which was completed with support from the Research Advisory Council of the University of Alabama. Finally, I dedicate this to Robert M. Stevenson, who has given me so much guidance and encouragement and who continues to be an inspiration to me.Google Scholar

1 On the connections with Spanish practices, see William J. Summers, ‘The Spanish Origins of California Mission Music’, Miscellanea musicologica, 12 (1987), 109–26 (pp. 111–17). Summers's recent studies include ‘Opera Seria in Spanish California: A Newly-Identified Manuscript Source’, Music in Performance and Society: Essays in Honor of Roland Jackson, ed. Malcolm Cole and John Koegel (Warren, MI, 1997), 269–90, and ‘The Misa Viscaina: An Eighteenth-Century Musical Odyssey to Alta California’, Encomium musicae: Essays in Honor of Robert J. Snow, ed. David Crawford and Grayson Wagstaff (Hillsdale, NY, forthcoming). For the contents of the mission sources, see Summers, ‘Recently Recovered Manuscript Sources of Sacred Polyphony from Spanish California’, Conference Report: After Columbus, the Musical Journey, Ars musica Denver, 7 (1994), 13–30, and ‘Recently Recovered Manuscript Sources of Sacred Polyphonic Music from Hispanic California’, Revista de musicología, 16 (1993), 2842–55. For a survey of research on music in the missions, see Koegel, John, ‘Spanish Mission Music from California: Past, Present and Future Research’, American Music Research Center Journal, 3 (1993), 78–111.Google Scholar

2 Silva, Owen da, OFM, Mission Music of California (Santa Barbara, CA, 1941).Google Scholar

3 Göllner, Theodor, ‘Two Polyphonic Passions from California's Mission Period’, Anuario (Yearbook of the Interamerican Institute for Musical Research), 6 (1970), 67–76, and ‘Unknown Passion Tones in Sixteenth-Century Hispanic Sources’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 28 (1975), 45–76.Google Scholar

4 Béhague, Gerard, ‘Hispanic-American Music’, The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie (New York, 1986), ii, 395–9. William Summers, ‘California Mission Music’, ibid., i, 345–7, states that ‘the notational symbols are squares and diamonds, the shapes associated with the long-abandoned mensural notation employed in the 13th century to the 16th; the perpetuation of this practice can certainly be traced to the Spanish tradition of using mensural notation in tutors on music well into the 19th century'.Google Scholar

5 Pacquier, Alain, Les chemins du baroque dans le Nouveau Monde: De la Terre de Feu à l'embouchure du Saint-Laurent (Paris, 1996), 27–79, gives an overview of the period.Google Scholar

6 Juan José Escorza, ‘La música en la conquista espiritual de Mexico’, Pauta, 22 (1987), 55–9, examines references to music in documents associated with the Orders.Google Scholar

7 Although my discussion of the missions stresses the positive aspects of music and its inclusion of native peoples, I do not mean to ignore the suffering and loss of culture that Spaniards caused during this time.Google Scholar

8 In the canonization process, Serra is now considered ‘Blessed'. Daniel Fogel, Junípero Serra, the Vatican and Enslavement Theology (San Francisco, CA, 1988), connects Serra to the problems of the ‘social system of the imperial frontier’, but also notes the extreme anxiety that Serra suffered over the hardships the Indians endured.Google Scholar

9 Serra's funeral and exequies may have included a larger number of participants than other death rituals, but the elements given musical importance were probably the same on the deaths of other Franciscan brothers.Google Scholar

10 Although the word ‘responso’ is used several times and the description of the procession is very specific about the number of stops made – four – the specific chants mentioned by the authors do not appear in Palóu's account.Google Scholar

11 Don DeNevi and Noel Francis Moholy, Junípero Serra: The Illustrated Story of the Franciscan Founder of California's Missions (San Francisco, CA, 1985), 208–10. This account is based on Francisco Palóu, Relación historica de la vida y apostolicas tareas del V. P. Fray Junípero Serra (Mexico City, 1787).Google Scholar

12 Palóu, Relación historica, 280.Google Scholar

13 One example from Mexico is Manuale sacramentorum secundum usum ecclesiae Mexicanae (Mexico City, 1560). This manual, though created for parish use, includes basically the same items as books based on Franciscan traditions; of course, the melodies and texts for certain items would have been different because Spanish and Mexican cathedrals used different versions of the Office, not the Franciscan one, which later became the Tridentine reformed version.Google Scholar

14 Palóu, Relación historica, 283.Google Scholar

15 Matins begins with an invitatory consisting of an antiphon and Psalm 94, Venite exsultemus. The antiphon was normally Regem; however, under some circumstances in both Spain and Mexico, another text – Circumdederunt me – was substituted for Regem. Each of the three nocturns of Matins consisted of three psalms with the framing antiphons, and three lessons, each of which is followed by one of the so-called ‘great’ responsories.Google Scholar

16 The contents of these choirbooks and the use of polyphonic music in the Liturgy for the Dead in Mexico during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is examined in G. Grayson Wagstaff, ‘Music for the Dead: Polyphonic Settings of the Officium and Missa pro defunctis by Spanish and Latin American Composers before 1630’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1995), 324–64, 391–5, 529–49 and 567–82. The possibility that Morales's five-voice Missa pro defunctis was sung in honour of Charles V in Mexico in 1559 is examined in Wagstaff, ‘Cristóbal de Morales’ Circumdederunt me, an Alternate Invitatory for the Dead, and Music for Charles V, Encomium musicae, ed. Crawford and Wagstaff.Google Scholar

17 There are some later settings by eighteenth-century composers in Mexico City – works that have orchestral accompaniment. The later works reveal the same approach to the manner in which these texts should be set polyphonically as the sixteenth-century settings.Google Scholar

18 My examination of works used in California is based on the sources associated with Fray Juan Bautista Sancho, who brought several manuscripts to Mexico from Majorca in 1802. Sancho arrived in California in 1804, was stationed at Mission San Antonio de Padua, and remained there until his death in 1830. Given this later date, these works could not have been in circulation at the time of Serra's death, discussed above. See Summers, ‘Recently Recovered Manuscript Sources’, 13–15. I would like to thank Prof. Summers and William Kearns of the American Music Research Center for help in acquiring copies of some of these sources.Google Scholar

19 Summers, ‘Recently Recovered Manuscript Sources’, 22–3. He also discusses the use of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, sung at Matins during Holy Week.Google Scholar

20 Although it is not possible to link this compositional practice with any particular Iberian establishment, we can indulge in educated speculation on the basis of the work of Michael Noone, ‘Music and Musicians at the Escorial, 1563 to 1665’ (Ph.D. thesis, King's College, 1988). Admittedly, the magnificent Jeronymite monastery and mausoleum El Escorial is not a typical religious house, but the differences in both style and usage of polyphony developing between that institution and Spanish cathedral traditions as early as the last quarter of the sixteenth century does support Summers's hypothesis that there were peripheral monastic musical traditions different from what we know as mainstream Spanish sacred music. Although the Franciscan missionaries in California did use polyphonic music on particularly important days, this difference in level of elaboration between the Mass and the Offices in general is probably a contributing factor to the small number of works surviving in this repertory for the Office for the Dead. Noone notes that even at El Escorial in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was little written polyphonic music for the Office in general, but there are numerous statements referring to some kind of formulaic or improvised polyphony.Google Scholar

21 This is the monophonic responsory.Google Scholar

22 Summers has recently discovered a fragment of a published music book employing the same notational system as the manuscripts in the California repertory. This fragment contains a portion of Psalm 94, Venite exsultemus, normally the invitatory for Matins for the Dead. The fragment was used as a set decoration on the CBS television series The Nanny. Although the original sheet seems to have been destroyed or lost, Summers shared with me a xerox copy of the fragment.Google Scholar

23 There were liturgical traditions in other areas of Europe that included lessons from other books of the bible. All Spanish and Latin American liturgical books that I have examined include the standard lessons, all from Job, used in the reformed Tridentine liturgy.Google Scholar

24 On the ‘optional’ items included in Morales's four-part Mass for the Dead, found in Valladolid Cathedral, MS without shelfmark, see Wagstaff, ‘Music for the Dead’, 453–67. Multiple options are included for the gradual, tract and communion.Google Scholar

25 Ottosen, Knud, The Responsories and Versicles of the Latin Office for the Dead (Aarhus, 1993).Google Scholar

26 The use of polyphonic responsories in the processions was an important part of later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century traditions in Spain and Mexico.Google Scholar

27 These later publications include those issued by Pedro Ocharte in Mexico City.Google Scholar

28 On the Franciscan period of Santa Clara, see Hoskin, Beryl, A History of the Santa Clara Mission Library (Oakland, CA, 1961), 22–8.Google Scholar

29 For a similar mixture of ‘old’ and ‘new’ things in Franciscan collections, see Foussard, Michel, ‘Le plain-chant baroque: Permanence de la pratique et manuscrits anciens dans les terres neuves de Provence, particulièrement dans le Comte de Nice et en Corse’, La musique dans le Midi de la France: XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1996), 215–25. Foussard describes polyphonic settings influenced by eighteenth-century music as well as simple, falsobordone-like compositions. The author compared local performance traditions of chant with the notation of several manuscripts.Google Scholar

30 Summers, William John, ‘Music of the California Missions: An Inventory and Discussion of Selected Printed Music Books Used in Hispanic California, 1769–1836’, Soundings: University of California Libraries, Santa Barbara, 9 (1977), 13–29.Google Scholar

31 For comparison, I have studied the edition of 1777. Summers states that three copies found in the missions bear the date 1816; there is another copy without date.Google Scholar

32 Vicente Pérez Martínez, Prontuario del canto-llano gregoriano, para celebrar uniformemente los divinos oficios todo el año, asi en las iglesias catedrales como en las parroquias y conventos de estos reinos, segun práctica de la muy santa primada iglesia de Toledo, real capilla de S. M. y varias iglesias catedrales, corregido todo del mal acento y otros defectos notados en los libros antiguos, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1799–1800).Google Scholar

33 Mission Santa Clara houses a number of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century published breviaries and missals. Interestingly, most were published outside Spain despite the number of Tridentine liturgical books issued in the country. See Hoskin, A History of the Santa Clara Mission Library.Google Scholar

34 This setting may be by Hernando Franco (1532–85), an important composer who worked in both Guatemala and Mexico City.Google Scholar

35 Wagstaff, G. Grayson, ‘Music for the Dead and the Control of Ritual Behaviour in Spain, 1450–1550’, Musical Quarterly, 82 (1998), 551–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 The difference between ‘settings’ that incorporate the melodies and structures of monophonic chants and ‘motets’ that are freely composed is a difficult problem for scholars of Renaissance sacred music. At least in Spain, there seems to have been an understanding about the use of settings destined to replace a chant and freely composed motets, which could be used as occasional pieces at Mass or for other special events.Google Scholar

37 Stevenson, Robert M., Music in Mexico: A Historical Survey (New York, 1952), 87–90.Google Scholar

38 This is obviously not the setting, dated 1796, in the key of E♭ catalogued by Robert M. Stevenson, Renaissance and Baroque Musical Sources in the Americas (Washington, DC, 1970), 157. That Juanas made at least two settings of this text reveals the continuing importance of works for the Office for the Dead in Mexico into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.Google Scholar

39 As mentioned above, the earliest surviving settings for the Liturgy for the Dead seem to have been written by composers employed by Isabella and Ferdinand, the Catholic monarchs, during the 1490s. However, these works were quickly disseminated to various regions of the country and spawned various local traditions.Google Scholar

40 Summers, ‘Music of the California Missions’, lists three copies of the edition published in 1816 and one copy of an undated edition. One of the four copies extant in mission archives contains the signature of Juan Sancho.Google Scholar

41 On Guerrero's Mass, see Merino, Luis Felix, ‘The Masses of Francisco Guerrero (1528–1599)’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1972), 159–210.Google Scholar

42 This Mass is dated 1796 in the manuscript.Google Scholar

43 William Summers, ‘Spanish Music in California, 1769–1840: A Reassessment’, Report of the Twelfth Congress [of the International Musicological Society], Berkeley 1977, ed. Daniel Heartz and Bonnie Wade (Kassel, 1981), 360–80.Google Scholar

44 Summers, ‘Recently Recovered Manuscript Sources’, 20.Google Scholar

45 As Summers, ‘The Spanish Origins’, 109–10, states, there were four important ‘secular’ communities adjacent to missions: at San Diego, Santa Barbara, Carmel and San Francisco. These were all royal presidios governed by the military that were created to protect the Franciscans. Since citizens of the presidios attended services at the missions, there was no need for secular churches. Thus, there was no separate church life in the presidios. The fact that such polyphonic music was an important aspect of civic ritual in Spain and colonial Mexico is examined in my dissertation, ‘Music for the Dead'.Google Scholar

46 Snow, Robert J., A New World Collection of Polyphony for Holy Week and the Salve Service: Guatemala City, Cathedral Archive, Music MS 4, Monuments of Renaissance Music, 9 (Chicago, IL, 1996), provides an overview of the development of the musical repertory during the sixteenth century at this important cathedral.Google Scholar

47 On the relationship between the Colegio in Mexico and the California missions, see Geiger, Maynard, Franciscan Missionaries in Hispanic California, 1769–1848 (San Marino, CA, 1969).Google Scholar

48 These would have included items like the manual mentioned during the account of the services in honour of Serra.Google Scholar

49 For discussion of related repertories in Mexico, see Lemmon, Alfred, ‘Research in Colonial Mexican Music’, The Americas (Academy of American Franciscan History), 35 (1979), 391–8, and Inventory of the Archivo Musical of the Colegio de San Gregorio, 1838–1844’, ibid., 45 (1988), 251–62. Lemmon has also published a number of studies of Jesuits in Mexico and Guatemala. The bibliography on Jesuits in South America is much larger than that on Franciscans.Google Scholar

50 Poole, Stafford, Christianity Comes to the Americas: 1492–1776 (New York, 1992), 31.Google Scholar