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Esperar, Sentir, Morir
Songs and Dances from the Hispanic Baroque

Charivari Agreable

Programme

The Spanish baroque received its kick start during the reign of Philip III. He is generally, if inaccurately, remembered as an indolent and pallid king, given to extremes of sanctimonious piety and ostentatious court festivities. It is the latter preference that saw a significant gravitation towards secular tastes, a refreshing departure from his father Philip II’s dour commitment to sacred music. Philip III (himself a singer, viola da gamba player and an avid dancer) not only displayed a considerable interest in secular music, but re-nationalized the royal chapel by replacing Flemish with Spanish musicians, whom he then called on to participate at court as músicos de cámara [chamber musicians]. He died in his bedchamber in 1621, apparently asphyxiated by the fumes of a charcoal brazier.

One of the first to congratulate the new king Philip IV on his accession was the Count Palatine of Neuburg — whose wife, like Philip’s mother and grandmother, belonged to the ducal house of Bavaria — and his state visit in 1624 occasioned grand celebrations and a royal gift of a manuscript compilation of the best tonos sung at court. These were put together by the chief copyist of the royal chapel Claudio de la Sablonara. The resultant Cancionero de la Sablonara, as it is now called and which is located in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, comprises songs by the main composers at court, including the maestro de capilla Mateo Romero and the famous singer, guitarist and theorbo player Juan Blas de Castro. Either one of them could have been the composer of the unattributed cancion entitled ‘Solo, triste y ausente’.

Absence, solitude and sweet melancholy were themes that pervaded vocal music of the 16th and 17th centuries, eliciting from their composers settings of heartfelt introspection. ‘Que se ausenta’, an Ascension Day villancico for two tiples [trebles] and acompañamiento, is the work of the Carmelite friar Francisco de Santiago, one of numerous Portuguese musicians who achieved success in Spain. His popularity reached far beyond Seville (where he was maestro de capilla at the cathedral): three generations after his death a copy of the piece was made for Bogotá Cathedral.

Another song in a similar vein is the anguished tono ‘Filis, yo tengo’ by Clemente Imaña, a native of La Rioja who became a choirboy at Valladolid cathedral towards the end of the 1670s. Little else about him is known, apart from some works in manuscript in Latin and Castillian.

Seville Cathedral was the most important musical centre of southern Spain and the architectural and musical model for Latin America. In the Andalusian capital Sebastian Durón earned his spurs as cathedral sub-organist from 1680 to 1685 before moving on (via Burgo de Osma and Palencia) to the royal chapel in Madrid, where he eventually became maestro de capilla in 1702. Durón calls his ‘Corazón, causa tenéis’ a tonada sola, synonymous with tono, tono humano and solo humano, and indistinguishable from the villancico in its alternation of estribillos [refrains] with coplas [strophes]. Adding to the semantic confusion by assuming a semi-sacred guise, it expresses divine love and teases word-painting effects out of the word suspiráis [you sigh]. Flutes are specified, but only one melodic instrumental part is extant. It is played here by a viol, and accompanied by the preferred chordal instruments of the day, the harp and organ. Durón suffered a serious reversal of fortune for supporting the wrong side in the War of the Spanish Succession. Fleeing to his exile in France in 1707, he left behind him a prodigious output of sacred and secular music, and the distinction of being a composer ‘without equal’ for the theatre, even though his career as a theatrical composer had been brief and he was vilified by his contemporaries for introducing Italian features into his music.

Spain’s most prolific and important composer for the theatre, however, was the harpist of the royal chapel Juan Hidalgo. Best known as Philip IV’s chief composer of secular songs and villancicos, he was also the director of the court’s chamber musicians. His superiority was unchallenged in such genres as the autos sacramentales (allegorical religious plays performed in public for Corpus Christi), spoken comedias, zarzuelas, and operas. Many of these benefited from his partnership with the superlative