Recognized as the most significant composer from New Spain in the early eighteenth century, Manuel de Sumaya (ca. 1678–1755) oversaw musical activity at Mexico City Cathedral during a time of stylistic change. Sumaya, who was locally born and ordained as a priest, wrote music that mixes the counterpoint and rhythmic vigor of seventeenth-century Hispanic music with more modern Italianate gestures prescient of international taste in the eighteenth century. This edition of all thirty-four villancicos with music by Sumaya conserved in the Estrada Collection at Mexico City Cathedral reveals the expressive diversity and formal flexibility of the villancico in the 1710s and 1720s. Scored for one to twelve voices with basso continuo and sometimes violins, these pieces communicate theological, doctrinal, and historical ideas about St. Peter, St. Rose of Lima, the Virgin of Guadalupe, Christmas, Corpus Christi, and other celebrations of the Catholic Church. Complete translations of the baroque texts into English and commentary on historical performance practices included in the edition aim to facilitate revival of this key repertoire of colonial music.
- ISBN: 9781987202021 (1987202023)
