Selected Topics Seminar (535-0-2)
Topic
Latin Baroque
Instructors
Drew 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, mostly of the Catholic Church, including 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 Jerusalem. We will also consider the social, political, and ritual contexts in which music was created, including celebration for saints' days and activities of lay congregations. Finally, the class will situate the revival of these repertoires within the early music movement and explore how performers reimagine the colonial past as a way to foster contrasting ideas of community, diversity, exoticism, and nationalism, regardless of historical authenticity. 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. All materials will be on Canvas or in the library.