Selected Topics Seminar (535-0-1)
Topic
Latin Baroque
Instructors
Drew Edward Davies
847/467-3367
dedavies@northwestern.edu
Specialist in 16th- through 18th-century musics of Latin America and Iberia in global contexts, and 20th-century Britain. Articles and reviews published in Eighteenth-Century Music, Sanctorum, Revista Portuguesa de Musicologia, Journal of the Society for American Music,Heterofonía, BoletínMúsica (Havana) and The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Dissertation <cite>The Italianized Frontier: Music at Durango Cathedral, Español Culture, and the Aesthetics of Devotion in Eighteenth-Century New Spain</cite> received the 2006 Wiley Housewright Award from the Society for American Music. Mexico City Regional Coordinator for Musicat, the Seminario Nacional de Música en la Nueva España y el México Independiente (National Seminar on the Music of New Spain and Independent Mexico) at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Monograph Music and Devotion in New Spain under contract with Oxford University Press.
Meeting Info
RCMA Lower Level 113: Mon 2:00PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
This graduate seminar focuses on the music of colonial Latin America, specifically late 16th through early 19th century New Spain (Mexico) and the performance practices that have developed for it since the 1980s. Within an interdisciplinary context that involves visual art, Latin American history, baroque poetry, and religious studies, students will critically engage music genres such as the villancico and the Mass, including works by composers such as Hernando Franco, Francisco López Capillas, Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla, Juan García de Céspedes, Manuel de Sumaya, Antonio de Salazar, Santiago Billoni, and Ignacio JerusalemWe will also consider race and social status of musicians and publics and try to understand the political and religious contexts in which music was created. Methods will include engaging primary, unedited sources from Mexico City Cathedral, but also consider evidence about indigenous and European oral traditions. Finally, the class will situate the revival of these repertoires within the contemporary history of the early music movement and explore how performers reimagine the colonial past as a way to foster ideas of community and diversity in early music practice, regardless of historical authenticity. As such, the Latin Baroque is a contemporary construction. Knowledge of Spanish is helpful but not required.
Learning Objectives
• Acquire nuanced knowledge about the musical repertories that survive from colonial Latin America;
• Practice archival research methodologies;
• Develop strategies to understand the musical choices made in the production of sound recordings;
• Learn basic history and geography of Latin America.
Class Materials (Required)
There are no required purchases for this course.