22 - Spain, ii : 1600–1640

Summary

ALTHOUGH the death of Philip ii in 1598 marked the end of an immensely important era in political history, it is difficult to draw a firm line of demarcation around the year 1600 in the history of Spanish music, because so many of the genres and musical techniques of the late sixteenth century were essential to Spanish music through the early seventeenth century, and the social place of music stayed much the same as well. For example, the association between reserved imitative contrapuntal polyphony and sacred Latin texts continued to shape the work of composers within the Church, especially when they set the invariable texts of the Mass. New textures and techniques were developed within vernacular religious genres, whose overtly expressive style included sections of homophony and solo song along with imitative counterpoint. As the seventeenth century progressed, Spanish society was especially desirous of the novelty, invention, enigma, artifice, and magnificent spectacle that scholars tend to associate with the culture of the Baroque. Great formal flexibility, bold contrasts, clear harmonic organization, sensitive text expression, and careful attention to text declamation are notable characteristics of Spanish music from the mid seventeenth century, whether in large-scale sacred pieces for one or more choirs, romances for two or three voices, solo settings of romances, or clever theatrical songs with improvised accompaniment.

While the seventeenth century is accepted as a Golden Age for Spanish culture, music, however, held a subsidiary place next to theater and the visual arts. The century did not produce a long list of extraordinarily innovative Spanish composers, pages of heated musical debate, tomes of erudite speculative writings on musical theory, or libraries full of beautifully prepared and bound scores—the sort of written legacy that modern scholars accept as evidence of historical investment in other musical cultures. The musical repertories from seventeenth-century Spain survive largely in manuscript copies on cheap paper and as humble performing parts. Of course, two of the largest collections of music by court composers were lost through natural disasters : in the fire that destroyed the royal library and music archive of the Royal Palace in Madrid known as the Alcázar in 1734, and in the earthquake of 1755 that took with it the great library of King John iv of Portugal.