Forging Repertories: Cathedral Music in New Spain and Its Performance

Much engagement with the cathedral music of New Spain has been through lens of exoticism. This book challenges this view by uncovering how colonial repertories mixed European aesthetics with locally composed pieces to create canons both tailored to local liturgies and shaped by European tradition.

Building upon material from the archives of Mexico City, Durango, and Puebla cathedrals, author Drew Edward Davies examines how composers, some of them priests, communicated theological doctrine through music genres. The book also offers a new understanding of cultural encounter, both by assessing how music was used for indoctrination and by rethinking stereotypes in villancicos through the lens of topic theory. Illuminating the unique mix of devotional subjects stressed in New Spain, Davies argues that topicality rather than style differentiated New Spanish musical repertory from that of Europe.

Concluding with a history of the early music movement's revival of New Spanish music beginning in the 1960s, Davies suggests that exoticism and the imagination continue to shape performances in ways that may not be plausible historically, but nonetheless resonate with audiences in the contemporary world. In so doing, he invites performers and scholars alike to engage with broader repertories of New Spanish music moving forward.