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Musiques de la foi / Musiques du pouvoir. Construction et affirmation des identités politiques, religieuses et culturelles des cours catholiques européennes (1648-1748)

Music for a Dead King

The image of Philip IV and Charles II of Spain and the music for the royal funeral
Luis Antonio González-Marín

Résumé

The minutes of the Diocesan Synod held in Toledo in 1682 contain an explanation of the customs relating to funeral ceremonies in the Catholic kingdoms: ‘It is an ancient and holy custom that the bodies of the faithful are taken to be buried publicly with the cross, […] ecclesiastical accompaniment before the coffin, singing of psalms and prayers, sounding of bells […] being so mysterious, this act benefits the souls of the dead and constitutes a warning and an example for the living’. The role of music was fundamental in these ceremonies, even more so in royal funerals. Music was expected to represent the gravity and solemnity of the moment – the past – but also the majesty of the deceased. Music was thus a relevant element in the creation and transmission of the king’s image in every period of his life, from birth to death. Fortunately, and in spite of the destruction of the Real Alcázar and the archive of the Spanish Royal Chapel in 1734, we have some important examples of the funeral repertoire – liturgical (Officium Defunctorum, Requiem mass) and paraliturgical (motets, Spanish tones) – intended for the Spanish royalty in the seventeenth century. The study of these sources reveals some interesting changes in the composition of funeral music between the time of Philip IV (d. 1665) and his son Charles II (d. 1700). These musical changes suggest new nuances in the image of death and the image of the Monarchy. This article proposes an overview of the above aspects of royal funerals, through some specific examples.

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Notes de l’auteur

This paper is one of the results of two successive research projects (Lo que no se escribe en la música que se escribe: el peso de la tradición oral en la actividad musical profesional y las fuentes en el ámbito hispánico, Ministerio de Economía y Competitiviad, Gobierno de España, HAR2013-48181-C2-1-R; and El patrimonio musical de la España moderna (siglos XVII-XVIII): recuperación, digitalización, análisis, recepción y estructuras retóricas de los discursos musicales, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Gobierno de España, HAR2017-86039-C2-1-P). It also benefits from the agreement signed between the CSIC (Spanish Council for Scientific Research) and the archbishopric of Saragossa for a comprehensive research on the Archivo de Música de las Catedrales de Zaragoza (Music Archive of Saragossa Cathedrals, E-Zac).

Texte intégral

Ictu oculi – Finis gloriae mundi

  • 2 Miguel de Mañara Vicentelo de Leca (1627-1679) was a Sevillian nobleman of Corsican origins, who, (...)

1Two well-known paintings by Juan de Valdés Leal entitled In ictu oculi and Finis gloriae mundi (1672), conceived for the Hospital de la Santa Caridad (Holy Charity Hospital) in Sevilla, where they are today preserved, clearly illustrate one of the most frequent topoi of the theme of vanitas, current at least since the late Middle Ages, and of course in seventeenth-century moral philosophy: the idea that Death comes necessarily and without warning, and that it makes everyone – kings, beggars, popes, peasants, rich and poor people… – equal. An almost perfect codification of this Spanish theme of vanitas can be found in the Discurso de la Verdad (“Discourse on the Truth”, 1671) written by Miguel de Mañara, founder of the Hospital de la Santa Caridad in Sevilla, and the inspiration of Valdés Leal’s vanitas paintings.2

2However, the death of a king – or a member of the royalty – was neither intellectually nor socially perceived like the death of an ordinary human being. It had many other important implications and provoked the organization of impressive public ceremonies – we may say spectacles – that involved every kind of artistic activity. The king was not an ordinary person: he was imbued with sacredness, and his death should therefore become a sobering and admonitory spectacle for his subjects.

  • 3 Con la menor pompa que fuere posible is the prescription included in Philip III’s will. Cited by M (...)
  • 4 There are some impressive images of these ceremonies in which the royal corpse was exhibited; for (...)
  • 5 There is a huge bibliography about the capelardentes or ephemeral structures for royal funerals in (...)

3Although the Spanish Habsburgs had established a strong, almost monastic idea of austerity in everything related to royal funerals, in conjunction with the monastery-palace-mausoleum of El Escorial projected by Philip II, where the monarchs should be buried “with the least pomp possible”,3 in fact many other social manifestations took place, not only at court but also in the most important cities of the Spanish monarchy such as Toledo, Sevilla, Saragossa, Valencia, Barcelona, Naples and Mexico City. At court there was a public exposition of the body of the deceased,4 sheltered under sumptuous – though mournful – ephemeral structures (catafalques) full of symbols and emblems, in one of the royal churches in the city. Since Madrid was capital of the kingdom, these ceremonies were celebrated in the church of the Monastery of San Jerónimo el Real, and later, from 1665 onwards, such events were transferred to the Royal Monastery of La Encarnación. This was then followed by the processional transfer of the royal remains to their place of burial – usually the pantheon at El Escorial –, a solemn funeral in situ and, during the following six months, funeral masses in churches in the capital and other cities. In those other important cities (for example, Saragossa, capital of the kingdom of Aragon, or Mexico City, capital of the viceroyalty of Nueva España), a simulacrum of the different components of the festive mourning was provided: the public exposition of the corpse was replaced by the erection of catafalques – with or without an image of the royal corpse –,5 and there were processions and solemn funeral officia and masses as well.

Fig. 1 – Catafalque for the funeral of Philip IV in Saragossa, 1665 [from Juan Antonio Jarque, Augusto llanto, finezas de tierno, y reverente Amor de la Imperial Ciudad de Zaragoza. En la muerte de su Rey, Filipe el Grande, Quarto de Castilla, Tercero de Aragón, Zaragoza, Diego Dormer, 1666; historical collection of the María Moliner Library, University of Saragossa]

Fig. 1 – Catafalque for the funeral of Philip IV in Saragossa, 1665 [from Juan Antonio Jarque, Augusto llanto, finezas de tierno, y reverente Amor de la Imperial Ciudad de Zaragoza. En la muerte de su Rey, Filipe el Grande, Quarto de Castilla, Tercero de Aragón, Zaragoza, Diego Dormer, 1666; historical collection of the María Moliner Library, University of Saragossa]
  • 6 “Antigua y santa costumbre es de la Iglesia Católica que los cuerpos de los fieles difuntos se lle (...)
  • 7 A state of the art on the studies of educational moral literature for royalty (espejos de príncipe (...)

4The funeral ceremonies of any individual had in any case an exemplary character, as various texts indicate, including the proceedings of the Synodo diocesano held in 1682 in Toledo, at the request of Cardinal Portocarrero, which contain an explanation and a justification of the customs concerning funeral ceremonies in the catholic kingdoms, particularly in Spanish territories.6 The exemplary nature of funeral ceremonies is reinforced in the case of royal funerals, the king being considered a “mirror of virtues” in which the subjects must look at themselves.7

  • 8 Jarque 1666.
  • 9 Beautifully confirmed in a Federico García Lorca’s well known – and maybe apocryphal – quotation: (...)
  • 10 About Holy Week processions and ceremonies in Spain and particularly in Aragon in the seventeenth (...)

5Above and beyond the exemplary nature of real persons, a symbolic identification between the king and divinity can also be traced, at least in the context of the Spanish Habsburgs. The seventeenth century is the time in which the deification of the monarchs reaches its climax. Therefore, a hyperbolic – and almost heretical – parallel often established between the king’s death and the death of Christ, King of kings, should not surprise us. We find this identification, for instance, in the funeral sermons devoted to the death of the Spanish king Philip IV – known as the Rey Planeta – compiled in a sermon book – Augusto llanto, finezas de tierno, y reverente Amor… (August tears, compliments of tender and reverent love…) – written by the Jesuit Juan Antonio Jarque and published in Saragossa in 1666.8 In their sermons, Jarque and other orators often state a comparison between de death of the king and the death of Christ in several terms: for instance, the joy of enemies of the king and his nation in the death of the monarch would be put at the same level as the taunts inflicted on Jesus Christ during his Passion – since those enemies were Protestants and Muslims or Jews or Romans, always considered a representation of evil. In both cases – the death of a king and the death of Christ – storms and other climatic disturbances are manifestations of the universal sorrow caused by the passing of the royal-divine person. This conceptual parallel becomes an actual similarity between the funeral pomp dedicated to the monarchs and the public devotional ceremonies commemorating the death and, more precisely, the burial of Christ. In the case of the later, I mean the processions and devotional staging plays that took place – and still take place today – during Holy Week in most cities of catholic countries, and particularly in the Hispanic or Iberian context (Spain, Portugal, Latin America, and some places in Italy in which there was a Spanish political domination for centuries: Naples, Sicily, Sardinia): even with all the precautions imposed by historical distance, some of these processions called Santo entierro are quite useful in understanding baroque royal burial ceremonies in Spain. It is possible that this tradition of celebrating the death of Christ, maintained for centuries in Hispanic territories,9 had influenced, at least from the seventeenth century onward, the mise en scène both in royal funerals and in Holy Week performances.10

  • 11 See Reula 2019.

6Royal funerals in seventeenth-century Spain will therefore pose a contradiction between the austerity proper to mourning, on the one hand, and the ceremonial pomp due to majesty, particularly in the case of royalty equated with divinity, and become a public display of grief, for which no expense is spared (far from the alleged will of King Philip III to be buried con la menor pompa que fuere posible), an edifying spectacle that all must behold, in accordance with the great consideration of the contemplation of death (and of the objects related to it) as an edifying moral exercise, which is very present in Hispanic neo-Stoic thought of the seventeenth century.11 The official and social mourning caused by a royal death imposed the prohibition of all festive manifestations such as comedias (plays), corridas (bullfighting), bailes (dances) which were replaced by the ostentation of funeral ceremonies and a particular sound of death. The music, as well as other elements that make up the audible landscape of funeral ceremonies, contributes to the creation of this mournful spectacle. The role of some peculiar sounds – the knells, for instance – and music was fundamental in these ceremonies. Fortunately, we have a certain number of musical and documentary sources that allow us to reconstruct some of the aural aspects of these ceremonies. Music was expected to represent the gravity and the solemnity of the moment – the passing –, but also the majesty of the deceased. Majesty, exemplariness, mourning, and hope must be put together in this theatre of Royal Death.

7In the following pages, we will provide an overview of the composition of royal funeral music in seventeenth-century Spain, focusing on some works that can be considered outstanding for various reasons – their traditional or novel character, whether or not they belonged to the strictly courtly sphere, within the liturgy or outside it –, with the aim of tracing how funeral music could have contributed to the creation of an image of the Spanish Habsburg monarchy. To this purpose, a critical study of various documentary sources and of a selection of surviving musical sources, both liturgical and paraliturgical, is necessary.

Fig. 2 – Detail of the Catafalque or ephemeral structure for the burial of Christ, traditionally staged in the Holy Week celebrations in Saragossa, church of San Cayetano (photo 2012, by the author). The statue representing dead Christ is an anonymous sculpture from the seventeenth century. The Virgin and the staging components come from the nineteenth and early twentieth century, replacing older elements.

Fig. 2 – Detail of the Catafalque or ephemeral structure for the burial of Christ, traditionally staged in the Holy Week celebrations in Saragossa, church of San Cayetano (photo 2012, by the author). The statue representing dead Christ is an anonymous sculpture from the seventeenth century. The Virgin and the staging components come from the nineteenth and early twentieth century, replacing older elements.

Music for the royal funeral of the late Spanish Habsburgs. Sources and contexts

  • 12 There are some funeral compositions of the seventeenth century related to the Royal Chapel, now pr (...)

8It is neither simple nor completely possible to reconstruct the official music of the obsequies for Philip IV (1665) celebrated in Madrid, the city in which the court was established and, consequently, the place in which the monarchy carefully designed and exhibited its public image. A great part of the seventeenth-century repertory of the Royal Chapel and other music chapels of royal foundation in Madrid, such as the convents of La Encarnación, las Descalzas, San Jerónimo, etc., was lost in different tragedies and circumstances such as, for instance, the fire in the Real Alcázar in 1734 that destroyed the Royal Chapel, the dismantling of the Real Colegio de niños cantorcicos – the Spanish royal choirboys college in Madrid –, the war against Napoleon’s army, or the nineteenth-century monastic confiscations. No traces of the music used in Philip IV’s funeral at court are now available in the archives and libraries in Madrid. In fact, fairly little music composed for royal funeral rites during the seventeenth century in Spain has been preserved;12 moreover, its authorship is often difficult to ascertain, and it seems that most of the surviving pieces were destined for ceremonies held outside the court. But, fortunately, those examples of outlying or peripheral pieces that have been preserved provide us with some clues about what the official music for the obsequies of Philip IV could have been like:

  • In the first place, liturgical compositions – or rather musical sources – kept in archives outside the court but containing music that surely comes from the court. For example, a Requiem mass certainly by Juan Pérez Roldán, composed – and probably used ‑ at the monastery of La Encarnación but preserved today in the Archivo de Música de las Catedrales de Zaragoza (Music Archive of Saragossa Cathedrals). Sources like this one arrived in outlying archives by exchanges between musicians and institutions, or were even carried by their own composers or other musicians when changing jobs and cities;13 this seems to be the case of Roldán’s composition.
  • In the second place, non-liturgical compositions coming form the court. These pieces were probably not composed for the official obsequies but are directly related to the death of the king and to the themes addressed in funeral sermons. These pieces are not peripheral in a geographical sense but in a typological sense. The best example of this type of piece is a famous tono humano entitled Las campanas (“The Bells”), of which there are six different versions contained in as many musical sources, attributed at least to three composers: Juan Hidalgo, Juan del Vado and Luis de Garay.
  • And, in the third place, liturgical and paraliturgical compositions that we know were composed and performed in the royal obsequies celebrated not in Madrid but in other relevant cities, for instance, Saragossa, which during the Hapsburg period and until the end of the War of the Spanish Succession (1714), was the capital of Aragon, which at that time included the kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca, the principality of Catalonia, Naples, Sicily and Sardinia. The most interesting example of this type of pieces is a setting of the motet Versa est in luctum attributed to Miguel Juan Marqués.

Liturgical compositions related to the court: the sixteenth-century polyphonic tradition

  • 14 See, among others, Bottineau 1972; Varey 1973; Varey 1974; Lisón Tolosona 1992; De La Torre García (...)
  • 15 Some later documents, such as Rodríguez de Monforte 1666, still attest to the traditional custom o (...)

9As has already been said, the obsequies of the Spanish Monarchy were celebrated according to strict ceremonial rules, which combined elements from the old Castilian tradition with others influenced by Burgundian patterns, as introduced by the emperor Charles V in certain aspects of life at court, marked by an external appearance of sobriety, which was characteristic of the construction of the royal image of the Spanish Habsburg.14 These rules possibly concerned music as well. According to the preserved musical sources, we can assume that, at least since the time of Charles V, custom dictated that some sections of the Officium Defunctorum should be composed and performed in canto de órgano (polyphony or mensural music). Polyphonic compositions are most frequently found in the so-called Vigilia, that is, the first nocturn of Matins including the Invitatorium (Regem cui omnia vivunt), two lessons (Parce mihi Domine and Taedet animam meam) and occasionally some psalms and responsoria.15 In addition to this vigilia, some pieces of the proprium and the ordinarium of the Missa pro Defunctis were normally composed in canto de órgano (Introitus, Kyrie, Offertorium, Sanctus-Benedictus, Agnus Dei, Communio-Lux aeterna). Other pieces of the divine office or the mass could also be set in polyphony. At least as early as Morales’ Officium Defunctorum (sung during the obsequies for Charles V in 1558 and those for Philip II forty years later in 1598), there is the established custom of inserting a motet in the mass, usually between Sanctus-Benedictus and Agnus Dei, sometimes in substitution for the Benedictus. These motets could be composed to different texts (Peccantem me quotidie, Manus tuae Domine, Circumdederunt me dolores mortis, Dominus meus et Deus meus or Versa est in luctum cithara mea), some of which coincide, at least in part, with those of antiphons and responsories of the Officium Defunctorum, although they often present numerous variations.

  • 16 See Knighton 1999.
  • 17 See Russell 1979 and Llorens Cisteró 1999.
  • 18 See González Marín 2000.

10The known first polyphonic settings of the Officium Defunctorum and/or Missa pro Defunctis composed by Iberian court musicians are those by Pedro de Escobar (Pedro do Porto), a Portuguese musician of Isabel of Castilla,16 and Juan García de Basurto,17 a chapel master at Tarazona and Saragossa in Aragón, whose pasticcio Missa in agendis mortuorum from 1525 includes parts of Ockeghem’s and Brumel’s Requiem masses. The works of both are written using the plainchant as a basis of the composition, a choice that conditions the modality (sextus modus or sextus tonus, in F with B flat). The use of a pre-existing cantus firmus from the Requiem mass – the Gregorian melody coming from the Roman tradition – gives these works a certain stylistic identity, although the sextus tonus is naturally also related to the sixth psalm tone and the Roman tonus lamentationum.18

  • 19 Its last published edition, containing the Officium and the four-part mass (there is another five- (...)
  • 20 See Robledo 1994 and Wagstaff 2004.
  • 21 See Suárez-Pajares – Del Sol 2013, particularly the paper by Rees 2013.

11This modal tradition of using the sextus tonus, coming from Gregorian chant, is kept in the famous Officium Defunctorum composed by Cristóbal de Morales19 that, after its use in obsequies for Charles V in different places – even in Nueva España –, was reused for Philip II in 1598 and, as some other of Morales’s works, repeatedly performed at the Royal Chapel until at least the beginning of the seventeenth century.20 Belonging to the same tradition as the works of Escobar, Garcia de Basurto, and Morales and still with strong links to surviving Franco-Flemish examples, the six-part Missa pro Defunctis of 1603-1605 by Tomás Luis de Victoria,21 composed for the obsequies of Empress María, sister of Philip II, seems to have established or consolidated some conceptual, structural, and formal elements that were maintained during most of the seventeenth century: composition in the sexto tono por bemolionian F –, use of the Gregorian plainchant as cantus firmus and in other ways, quiet flowing discourse occasionally interrupted expressively by unexpected dissonances; these latter constitute a new element, along with the considerable density of vocal texture caused by the use of a greater number of parts.

Polychorality: between modernity and invention of tradition

  • 22 Nevertheless, there is irrefutable evidence of earlier polychoral practices in Spain with an effec (...)

12The next step in this succession may be the Requiem de dos baxos composed by the Flemish musician Mateo Romero (or Mathieu Rosmarin), known as Maestro Capitán (chapel master at the Spanish court from 1598), and probably sung during the obsequies for Philip III in 1621. The title should be interpreted as Requiem for two bass choirs, i.e. a composition for two choirs with the distribution CATB-CATB, and not with a first high choir of CCAT, more common in Spanish polychoral music from the beginning of the seventeenth century. Today this work is considered the earliest polychoral Requiem mass composed or executed in Spain, or at least the earliest polychoral source of a Requiem mass known today in Spain,22 and, as we shall see, it seems that Romero’s work would become a new pattern for majestic funeral music.

  • 23 Mateo Romero, Misa de Requien a 8 del Pelegrino, Music Archive of Saragossa Cathedrals (E-Zac), B- (...)

13Romero’s Requiem is preserved in at least two sources: a well-known one, in the archive of Burgos cathedral, and a newly identified one, in the archive of the cathedral of Saragossa.23 This source, apparently anonymous, is entitled Misa de requien [sic] a 8 del pelegrino (Mass of the pilgirm: there is a play on words with the terms peregrino and romero, that have identical meaning in Spanish). Some traditional characteristics, which in one way or another shape a certain style of composition of the Requiem masses, from Basurto and Escobar to Morales and then Victoria, survive in the composition of Capitán: the use of plainchant and the sextus modus, a relatively low tessitura writing for the voices, appropriate to the gravitas of this kind of music – favored now by the absence of a Spanish high choir –, and a general sensation of calm in the slow-moving discourse of the harmonic rhythm interrupted only by the presence of dissonances – falsas. But the combination of these ‘old’ features with the ‘new’ polychorality, with its amplification of the sound spectrum in density, volume and harmonics and with the introduction of frequent antiphonal passages, gives this music a strong impression of monumentality, like a large heavy stone building, which manages to amalgamate concepts and sensations that are in principle contrary or at least very diverse, such as majesty (and therefore pomp) and austerity.

  • 24 An edition of some funeral compositions by Ruiz Samaniego, Manuel Correa and others can be found i (...)
  • 25 An edition of the funeral works by García de Salazar can be found in Iglesias 1989.
  • 26 See González Marín 2001a and González Marín 2001b. The source is preserved in the Music Archive of (...)
  • 27 Music Archive of Saragossa Cathedrals (E-Zac), B-9/161. See a critical edition and a brief study o (...)
  • 28 There is an interesting document about the funeral of Philip IV in Madrid (Rodríguez de Monforte 1 (...)

14Most of the known Spanish Requiem masses – and other funeral pieces – composed before the end of the seventeenth century followed this polychoral pattern, based on a vocal tradition; however, sources later in the century include instrumental parts, in addition to the bajo, or continuo part. This model of ‘monumental’ funeral music, related or not to royalty but apparently destined for especially important occasions, seems to have found a particular development in Spain. One can cite a considerable number of funeral compositions by Luis Bernardo Jalón (c. 1600-1659), Francisco Ruiz Samaniego (1618-1666), Gabriel de Mena (fl. c. 1650; not to be confused with a composer and singer of the chapel of Ferdinand the Catholic, at the beginning of the sixteenth century), Manuel Correa (c. 1600-1653),24 Juan García de Salazar (1639-1710),25 and others. We should pay special attention to a Missa pro Defunctis attributed to Juan Pérez Roldán (1602-c. 1672),26 of which the only known source is now preserved in Saragossa, although some calligraphic evidences show that the copy was probably made in Madrid, at the monastery of La Encarnación,27 where Pérez Roldán worked as chapel master between 1648 and 1666, before exercising similar functions in Segovia (1667-1670), Leon (1671) and the church of El Pilar in Saragossa (1672) where he probably died in 1672 or 1673. The Madrilenian church of La Encarnación was the temple in which the main events of the obsequies for Philip IV (September 1665) were celebrated, so it is not unreasonable to think that this work of monumental dimensions composed by Pérez Roldán could have been performed on that occasion, in front of the catafalque that contained the coffin with the corpse of the king.28

  • 29 Critical edition of this work in González Marín 2003.
  • 30 The plainchant citations in Roldán’s work follow the model of Requiem mass in canto llano offered (...)
  • 31 The traditional prohibition of using organs as accompaniment instruments in funeral, Holy Week ser (...)
  • 32 See González Marín 2000, where a historical summary of the composition of lamentations in Spain is (...)

15The eight-part composition in two choirs with acompañamiento continuo is written in natural clefs, with or without a flat depending on the key of each number; sextus tonus por F fa ut and primus tonus por D la sol re alternate in the succession of the six vast movements or numbers of the composition (Introitus, Kyrie, Offertorium, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Communio). The music can be described as a reinterpretation of classic models from the sixteenth century, or rather a synthesis of traditional funeral music in Spain (going back to Morales, Victoria and Capitán) adapted to the new musical Spanish standards of the middle of the seventeenth century, creating a new ancient style or stile antico which will survive in similar compositions until the second half of the eighteenth century, constituting perhaps a characteristic style of the funeral music of the Spanish monarchy. We can track some common elements even in works as late as the famous Requiem mass – particularly the Introitus – composed by José de Nebra in 1758 for the funeral of the queen María Bárbara.29 A resource utilized in order to confer such majestic grandeur to the composition is the use of compás mayor (cut time or alla breve) with very long notes, often deriving from the plainchant,30 which is occasionally taken as cantus firmus, sometimes in the form of small citations or as a basis for motives and pasos (imitations). The discourse of the continuo part going across the lowest regions of bass tessitura, probably increased by the addition of some 16-foot instruments (a violón grande, such as we find prescribed in some contemporary sources, and perhaps the contras – 16 feet pedal register – of the organ that would provide one of the accompaniment parts),31 gives a sufficient and adequate support to the dense eight-part polyphony and emphasizes the sensation of gravity and monumentality. In addition to these characteristics, the composition is colored by numerous dissonances (falsas), chromaticism and false relations (pasos ásperos), sometimes used as word painting, quite appropriate to this kind of sorrowful music, in the same fashion as the Spanish polyphonic or polychoral lamentations (Tenebrae lessons) of the time, in the development of which in Spain (since the late fifteenth century in polyphonic settings) could be found certain parallels with the music for the funeral liturgy, such as the thematic use of the tonus lamentationum, either the traditional Hispanic or the Roman (which offers some similarity to the Gregorian melodies traditionally used for the Requiem mass) or the creation of gravity in the composition through conventional resources (voices in low tessituras, slow harmonic rhythm, use of pasos ásperos, etc.).32

New compositions with independent instrumental parts

  • 33 About the instrumental ensembles frequent in sources of Spanish religious music of the seventeenth (...)
  • 34 Copies are kept in the National Library of Madrid, the El Escorial Archive and the Monastery of Mo (...)
  • 35 As Arnaldo Morelli has pointed out, the a cappella practice without instruments in the papal chape (...)

16The surviving seventeenth-century Hispanic religious repertoire has left a good number of compositions that include independent instrumental parts (choirs of bajoncillos, chirimías y sacabuches – shawms and sackbuts –, violins and violones, etc.).33 However, we only know at present one major composition for royal funerals undoubtedly prior to 1700 with independent instrumental parts: a lesson, Taedet animam meam, by Carlos Patiño (1600-1675), probably composed for the funeral of Philip IV.34 We may be facing a general problem of conservation, but we should not neglect the idea that the use of independent instrumental parts, except the continuo, may have been intentionally limited in funeral music (as in other ways happens in the repertoire for Holy Week) in order to reinforce feelings of austerity and timelessness.35

  • 36 Durón expressed his support for the Habsburg bloc – the losing side – against the Bourbons in the (...)

17Perhaps we can appreciate a remarkable change in the funeral of Charles II (1700), the last Spanish Habsburg. An Oficio y Misa de Difuntos attributed to Sebastián Durón, chapel master during the last years of the reign of Charles II, could have been composed for the funeral of that king, as some scholars maintain, or at least used for some of its anniversaries. The preserved sources could be late, perhaps from the second decade of the eighteenth century, possibly later than Durón’s departure from Spain into exile in 1706,36 and perhaps posthumous – later than Durón’s death in 1716 –, so the attribution of certain elements of this work as preserved today – for instance, some characteristics in the instrumentation –, and even the attribution of the work itself to Durón, should be considered with caution.

Fig. 3 – Beginning of the introitus of the Requiem mass by Sebastián Durón, edited by Hilarión Eslava (Lira sacro-hispana, 1860).

Fig. 3 – Beginning of the introitus of the Requiem mass by Sebastián Durón, edited by Hilarión Eslava (Lira sacro-hispana, 1860).
  • 37 Apart from an interesting partial transcription of the invitatorium published by Hilarión Eslava i (...)

18The ambitious and impressive polychoral composition consists of a five-choir Vigilia (the part of the Officium Defunctorum comprising in this case only the Invitatorium and the second Lesson of Matins, Taedet animam meam) with two violin parts, two flutes (or perhaps recorders, it is not completely clear), and two trumpets (clarines), followed by a three-choir Requiem mass with two violin and two flute parts. There are two complete surviving copies of the vigilia and the mass and a third later copy containing only the mass movements, all of them in separate parts. The complete copies are preserved now at the Abbey of Montserrat (Barcelona) and at the Archivo del Monte de Piedad (the archive of the historical charity pawnshop) in Madrid, and come respectively from the Monastery of La Encarnación (where royal obsequies were normally celebrated since 1665) and the Monastery of Las Descalzas, both royal monastic foundations in Madrid; both copies were written by the same scribe, at least partially, probably in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The copy containing only the Requiem mass is preserved in the Archivo General de Palacio, at the Royal Palace in Madrid, and it seems some years later than the others: it was probably written by Isidro Montalvo, a copyist of the Royal Chapel, after the aforementioned fire of 1734. Concerning the instrumental parts, the sources differ and show two different ideas of instrumental participation, which may involve different plans for performance. While the flute parts are individual (“one per part”) in every source, this is not the case with the violins. The presumably earlier sources (Montserrat, Monte de Piedad) include one Violin I part and one Violin II part, while the later source (Royal Palace) presents three copies of each violin part, which implies the use, we could say, of an orchestra, far from the common “one instrument per part” performances at seventeenth century Spanish music chapels, even at the Royal Chapel. These later copies were probably in use around the middle of the eighteenth century, when the Royal Chapel, under the direction of Francesco Courcelle and José de Nebra, had a large orchestra at its disposal.37

  • 38 That is the case of the Miserere a 12 with violins and flutes preserved at El Escorial and some la (...)
  • 39 See a summary and some sources in Rodríguez López 2010.
  • 40 The use of pífanos (fifes) is documented, for example, in the procession of the Holy Burial of Sar (...)
  • 41 About the participation of these instruments in Autos de fe, see the famous painting by Francisco (...)
  • 42 It is extremely risky to look for links between the use of flutes or recorders in, for example, Fr (...)

19We cannot be completely sure that the flute parts are original, but we know that Durón used flutes in works for Holy Week copied before his exile and possibly written before the dynastic change.38 The use of a pair of flutes to give a funereal character to the music goes back to Antiquity, or rather to the way in which Antiquity was viewed by cultured people of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is usual to find wind instruments – aulos – in representations of ancient – Greek and Roman – funeral cortèges,39 and to wrongly identify aulos with flutes; in that way, flutes and recorders were commonly used, at least from the last decades of the seventeenth century, to represent death or the world of the dead. Just as in Spain the processions of the Santo Entierro in Holy Week were invariably accompanied by the sound, among others, of fifes40 (a pair of pífanos and distended drums, played by military musicians, participated as well in other ceremonies of death, as, for example, the autos de fe41), the widespread presence in various European countries of flutes in music for Easter or for funeral services and even in operatic funeral or ‘afterlife’ scenes, does not seem to be merely coincidental.42

  • 43 Some later Spanish composers such as José de Nebra used both instruments. Nebra was sometimes part (...)
  • 44 It is known that, for her wedding to King Charles II, Marie-Louise d’Orléans came to Madrid accomp (...)
  • 45 This happens in works by José de Torres, Francesco Corselli, José de Nebra and others.

20Often the sources do not distinguish clearly if transverse flutes or recorders were intended to play; this happens in very late Spanish sources.43 Nevertheless, tonal and tessitura reasons suggest that flutes – and not recorders – should be preferred in Durón’s work. The entire composition – the vigilia and the mass – was written in the key of D, with two sharps, which makes it more comfortable to be played on flutes in D. The probably new use of flutes in Spanish royal funeral music, which can be related to the introduction in Spain of those ‘modern’ instruments thanks to French and Central European musicians,44 makes use of a sound cliché linked to the Holy Week processions and therefore to the funerals (the pífanos), and this presence of flutes will be the norm in later funeral music – as well as in Holy Week lamentations – composed or performed around the Royal Chapel, already in the time of the Bourbon dynasty,45 so that Durón’s work, as far as we know, may be a turning point in the tradition of royal funeral music in Spain. The new sound – new instruments, but related to traditional practices, and a new tonal concept – will also imply, with the addition of other instruments – the clarines –, a change that affects the sense of the funeral composition as a vehicle for the transmission of the royal image.

  • 46 We know some sources of villancicos of Urbán de Vargas composed in the 1650s, and some documents a (...)
  • 47 About the use of sordinas in Holy Week Spanish processions, see again González Marínez 2020, p. 80 (...)
  • 48 The use of D major, with two sharps in the key signature, is unusual in Spanish religious music ev (...)

21Trumpets (clarines) have a strong symbolic value, as a representation of power. With an unquestionable military link, they always evoke the presence of political power, and above all, of monarchy. These instruments had rarely been used in Spanish ecclesiastical music before this time,46 and it is precisely in the period when Durón was chapel master to Charles II that they begin to appear frequently in musical – religious and theatrical – sources, always in contexts that represent majesty. The new use of trumpets in royal funeral music could be interpreted as reinforcing the image of royal power. In addition, it offers again a reference to the sound landscape of the representation of the “royal funeral par excellence”, the burial of Christ, the King of Kings. We find the term sordina (“mute”) in some places in the trumpet parts in the vigilia composed by Durón, which again establishes a sound parallel with the processions of the Santo entierro, in which the participation of ensembles of sordinas, cajas veladas y destempladas (muffled drums, with loosened drumheads covered with cloth) and small bells, was mandatory.47 The combination of those traditional and new elements – particularly the use of clarines and, because of it, of the triumphant key of D 48 – increases the feeling of pomp and majesty that this music transmits, rather than the austerity that previous compositions proposed, and this happens precisely in the context of the death of the last of the Spanish Habsburgs and on the verge of a long and bloody war for the succession of the Spanish throne. The use of a transposed tone – in D – and the presence of the trumpets – probably accompanied by a pair of kettledrums, as usual not written –, bring a completely new appearance to this music, related to a new vision of royal death, more worldly and spectacular: the celestial serenity of earlier works – occasionally interrupted by infernal dissonances and pasos ásperos – is replaced by worldly pomp and majesty. In that way the propaganda apparatus of the Spanish monarchy becomes more modern.

Tonos humanos and non-liturgical compositions coming from the court

  • 49 We know four sources of this tono humano for solo soprano and continuo, preserved in the National (...)
  • 50 A brief review of the sources, a bibliography and a study and edition of the source preserved in M (...)

22Far from the liturgical context, there is a composition in the vernacular language (in this case it is not a religious villancico, but a tono humano), preserved in at least five sources and in various arrangements – which present few relevant variant readings –, attributed to different seventeenth-century composers: Juan Hidalgo, Juan del Vado and Luis de Garay.49 Its text puts the composition in direct relation with the death of Philip IV (1665) and his funeral. As it has been said, the tono humano – or solo humano – entitled Las campanas (“The bells”) is an excellent example of a non-liturgical funeral composition coming from the court. This piece was obviously not supposed to be performed during the solemn obsequies: tonos humanos are chamber or theatre music. Its subject is a lament over the death of Philip IV, its text being an elaboration of earlier lyric and dramatic texts: we find it, of course without references to Philip IV, in at least three earlier sources: the comedy Las tres edades del mundo by Luis Vélez de Guevara, 1644; a romance preserved at the Hispanic Society of America, and a manuscript in Toledo discovered by Rita Goldberg.50

Fig. 4 – Two excerpts from the tono entitled Las campanas, transcribed from the Valladolid source (E-VA Leg. 68/31) [ed. by the author].

Fig. 4 – Two excerpts from the tono entitled Las campanas, transcribed from the Valladolid source (E-VA Leg. 68/31) [ed. by the author].

23Whether it was composed by Vado, Hidalgo, Garay or someone else, the piece successfully exploits some elementary word-painting resources, such as the sound of the death-knell of the bells, a sort of carillon des morts. The text emphasizes some key words as aviso (warning), ejemplo (example), and constitutes a brief oratio funebris, like a shortened sermon which keeps its essential parts according to rhetorical rules: an exordium (the bells sound everywhere), a deploratio (there is universal sorrow for the death of Philip), a laudatio (great deeds of the dead king), and a conclusio in which the main moral lesson is explained, the essential element of vanitas or desengaño thought: death makes everyone equal. If the solemn liturgical music of funerals, in spite of its alleged austerity, magnifies the image of the king by bringing him closer to the sacred sphere (and by equating the royal funeral pomp to the very burial of Christ commemorated during Holy Week), on the contrary, the tono humano emphasizes the mortal condition of the sovereign, as a ‘terrestrial’ counterpart. In any case, it does not seem that this tono has to do with official celebrations, but that it belongs to the private – although courtly – sphere of chamber music, and as such it has been preserved in some sources that compile tonos of very diverse character and subject matter.

Fig. 5 – Excerpt from the three-part version of Las campanas by Luis de Garay [ed. by the author].

Fig. 5 – Excerpt from the three-part version of Las campanas by Luis de Garay [ed. by the author].

24Here is a transcription of the most complete – and presumably original – version of the text, taken from sources in Segovia, Valladolid, and Mallorca:

[Romance]

Empezó la noche toda,
sin cesar clamorearon
las campanas de su corte
al grande Filipo Cuarto.
A los clamores en ecos
respondieron los peñascos
qué haríanle a los corazones
heridos con el quebranto.
Fue el más clemente y piadoso,
delicia de sus vasallos,
tanto que de su clemencia
se fabricaron ingratos.
Él, devoto de la Virgen,
que aunque heredó imperios tantos,
fue para Rey de españoles
juntar el cetro y el mando.
Él, que a su fe se rindieron,
las centellas y los rayos
respetando por ardiente
su celo en más alto grado.
Decoro tanto atropella
ley universal, que es llano
que no excusa el ser más digno
pagar la pensión de humano.

[Estribillo]

Las campanas dan, dan y darán,
y sus clamores se oirán
para el aviso y ejemplo
que de la fama en el templo
a todos los siglos dan.

Fig. 6 – Excerpt from the four-part anonymous version of Las campanas edited by H. Eslava (Lira sacro-hispana, 1858).

Fig. 6 – Excerpt from the four-part anonymous version of Las campanas edited by H. Eslava (Lira sacro-hispana, 1858).
  • 51 Eslava 1858, V, p. 35-40. As an editor, Eslava often introduced unnoticed changes in his transcrip (...)
  • 52 The word painting features include imitation of the sound of bells (as in the preceding compositio (...)
  • 53 An example is the tono a la pasión de Cristo entitled Cuando muere el Sol, attributed to Sebastián (...)

25In 1858, Hilarión Eslava published a different anonymous four-part version of this tono, with some changes introduced in the text in order to adapt the piece for the death of Charles II. We do not know the source that Eslava used, which he suggests can be attributed to José de Torres (c. 1670-1738), indicating that other scholars – not cited by Eslava – preferred an attribution to Sebastián Durón (hay quien la atribuye á D. Sebastián Durón []).51 The piece published by Eslava is a parody of the work composed by Vado – or Hidalgo – and arranged for a three-voice ensemble by Luis de Garay. Some passages are quite similar to the original, but both music and text present some new elements, such as many word painting resources, along with a new identification of the monarch with the Sun, which was not a recurrent cliché referring to Charles II but to his father, Philip IV, who was usually so-called Rey Planeta (“Planet King”).52 Unlike the text of the original tono, this one insists on the sacred image of the king and brings to mind some tonos for Holy Week (para después del Miserere) or referring to the death of Christ, composed around the passage from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century.53

Music for royal funerals held outside the court

A funeral motet: Versa est in luctum

  • 54 At this point we should recall the ingenious satirical phrase, perhaps apocryphal, attributed to F (...)
  • 55 Juan Antonio Jarque includes in his sermon book a quite detailed narration, not exempt from some p (...)
  • 56 In Spanish cities, market squares were usually the main public spaces of the town, where diverse s (...)

26The name Rey Planeta or Rey Sol referring to Philip IV – who was also called El Grande54 – was common in Spanish courtly literature, and it is used by the aforementioned Juan Antonio Jarque in his sermon for the obsequies celebrated in Saragossa in November 1665.55 Funeral ceremonies took place on November 3rdand 4th – just after All Saints day and coinciding with a local holiday, that of the Innumerables mártires of Saragossa –, in two different locations: inside the cathedral – called La Seo – and in the market square.56

Fig. 7 – Plan of the market square in Saragossa, with ephemeral buildings, during the obsequies for Philip IV [from Juan Antonio Jarque, Augusto llanto, finezas de tierno, y reverente Amor de la Imperial Ciudad de Zaragoza. En la muerte de su Rey, Filipe el Grande, Quarto de Castilla, Tercero de Aragón, Zaragoza, Diego Dormer, 1666; historical collection of the María Moliner Library, University of Saragossa].

Fig. 7 – Plan of the market square in Saragossa, with ephemeral buildings, during the obsequies for Philip IV [from Juan Antonio Jarque, Augusto llanto, finezas de tierno, y reverente Amor de la Imperial Ciudad de Zaragoza. En la muerte de su Rey, Filipe el Grande, Quarto de Castilla, Tercero de Aragón, Zaragoza, Diego Dormer, 1666; historical collection of the María Moliner Library, University of Saragossa].
  • 57 Jarque explains the bad weather in quite poetical terms: se texieron, y cortaron lutos de espesas (...)

27In both places, two impressive catafalques were built. Several processions moved from one place to the other, with the archbishop, chapter, clergy, viceroy, political representatives of the city and the kingdom of Aragón carrying an empty coffin, a symbolic representation of the royal corpse. The soundscape of the city centre was composed by the death-knell of the bells in the towers of the city, the small, muffled bells rung by acolytes in processions, and the constant singing of diverse miserere settings in plainchant and polyphony by clergy from different religious orders and several music chapels. As Jarque’s account states, the weather was severe: the sky was covered with clouds and there were sporadic episodes of heavy rain accompanied by windstorms.57 In front of the capelardentes, the hours of the divine office and several masses were sung in canto llano (plainchant) and canto de órgano (polyphony). On 4th November, at noon, the pontifical mass was celebrated inside the cathedral. As was usual since early in the sixteenth century, a motet would presumably be inserted in that solemn mass, after the singing of Sanctus and Benedictus, or instead of it. The motet performed in La Seo was a peculiar Versa est in luctum setting, whose source has been preserved to this day.

  • 58 See Steiner 2009. On the particularities of the use of this text in the Spanish funeral liturgy, s (...)

28A mélange of texts taken from the Book of Job – in the Latin Vulgata – was traditionally used in Spain as a responsory in the Matins of the Officium Defunctorum and as a motet in the catholic liturgy.58 The most complete combination of texts – as used by, for example, Francisco de Peñalosa – comes from Job 30:31 (Versa est in luctum cithara mea, et organum meum in vocem flentium), plus the second hemistich of Job 7:16 (Desperavi nequaquam ultra iam vivam parce mihi [Domine] nihil enim sunt dies mei), Job 30:30 (Cutis mea denigrate est super me et ossa mea aruerunt) and Job 6:2 (Utinam appenderentur peccata mea, Quibus iram merui et calamitas quam patior in statera).

  • 59 See Rico Manrique 2002.

29As is well known, in these texts the patient Job deplores his calamities caused by the Devil – who acts with permission of God –, considered as a prefiguration of the Passion of Christ. But from the late Middle Ages on, this text, which was modified in different paraphrases (like the one by Gautier de Chatillon59), was usually intended – and subsequently used – as a plaint of the sinner at the sight of unavoidable death, being his own future and predictable death or the death of others. Some of these fragments of texts are polyvalent, but always appear in the context of funeral ceremonies; for example, the second hemistich of Job 7:16 (parce mihi [Domine] nihil enim sunt dies mei) is utilized as the first lesson of Matins of the Officium Defunctorum.

30Within the old general custom of inserting a motet between Sanctus-Benedictus – even in substitution of Benedictus – and Agnus Dei in the Requiem mass, Spanish composers seem to have made preferential use of Versa est in luctum. The part of the text taken literally from the Book of Job was normally comprised of the verse Job 30:31 plus the second hemistich of Job 7:16:

Versa est in luctum cithara mea,
et organum meum in vocem flentium.
Parce mihi, Domine,
nihil enim sunt dies mei.
(Job 30:31 and 7:16)

  • 60 Martín de la Madre de Dios 1655, XXX: “Póngole este título de Arpa, para descubrir por medio de su (...)
  • 61 It can be seen, for instance, in a villancico by Joseph Ruiz Samaniego (fl. 1653-1670) composed in (...)

31The cithara (zither or harp) refers to David (who was a king and a prefiguration of Christ – born in Betlehem, etc.), and this instrument has a very special symbolic sense in the Spanish context, because the harp was – together with the organ and the bajón (curtal) – the most commonly played instrument in Spanish music chapels. Moreover, the harp is sometimes used as a symbol of the cross, as occurs in the book Arpa christífera by the Aragonese Carmelite Fray Martín de la Madre de Dios (Saragossa, 1654).60 In fact, in Spanish the Arma Christi or symbols of the Passion are called instrumentos de la pasión, a concept that allows baroque poets and composers to identify these symbols with actual musical instruments.61

32Some well-known settings of the motet Versa est in luctum, all them with the same text, are those by Alonso Lobo (c. 1535-1617) – a six-part motet CCATTB –, Tomás Luis de Victoria (from the Officium Defunctorum published in 1605) – again a six-part motet CCATTB –, Sebastián de Vivanco (c. 1551-1622) – with identical six-part disposition CCATTB –, Estêvão Lopes Morago (or Esteban Lopez Morago, c. 1575-after 1630; he was a Spanish-born composer who studied, lived, worked and died in Portugal) – a four part motet –, Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (c. 1590-1664) – a five-part motet CCATB –, and a late setting by José de Torres Martínez Bravo – a four-part composition CATB – published in his printed Missarum Liber (Madrid, 1703). Some of them come from royal funerals held at court, while others have a peripheral origin. And all these settings of the funeral motet, as all the seventeenth-century and even eighteenth-century Spanish funeral motets with other texts – for example, Circumdederunt me, Domine quando veneris, etc. –, are composed in a traditional polyphonic style and respect the “canonical” text. It seems that the widely spread works by Morales and Victoria could serve as a model for future generations of composers, at court and outside it.

  • 62 See Ezquerro Esteban 2000.

33Thus, the appearance – or discovery – of a work such as the motet Versa est in luctum by Miguel Juan Marqués (fl. 1641-1661),62 that we shall now analyze, is especially relevant, because it presents a manipulated ad hoc text and it is composed in a quite different – modern – style. This composition was presumably performed at the obsequies for Philip IV celebrated in Saragossa in 1665, but it was a revival, because the work was composed some years earlier and with a different dedication. In any case, perhaps its peculiarities, quite different from other settings of the motet, could be explained by the fact that it is a composition designed for a place outside the court, and therefore perhaps not subject to certain customs of royal funerals at court.

  • 63 Versa est in luto. a 7 / Marques, Music Archive of Saragossa Cathedrals (E-Zac), B-6/85. A modern (...)
  • 64 Motet texts composed of excerpts from various origins are common at the French court at that time. (...)

34This seven-part motet setting, preserved as far as we know in a unique source,63 proposes a new and original adaptation of the text, by an unknown author, here transformed into a dialog between two dramatis personae: a solo treble part who brings bad news and a six-voice polyphonic part that seeks information about the tragic incident. This previously unseen adaptation of the text makes use of quotations from many classic sources, in the manner of a centon: next to the text of Job we find quotations from Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Ovid, texts from other books of the Vulgata (Book of Kings, Lamentations of Jeremiah), and texts by unidentified authors known to have been used previously by other older composers, such as Jachet.64

Fig. 8 – Excerpt the motet Versa est in luctum by Miguel Juan Marqués [ed. by the author]

Fig. 8 – Excerpt the motet Versa est in luctum by Miguel Juan Marqués [ed. by the author]

Tab. 1 – Origin of the verses of the motet Versa est in luctum by Miguel Juan Marqués, Music Archive of Saragossa Cathedrals (E-Zac), B-6/85].

  • 65 Fenlon 1980, p. 73.
  • 66 See Menzel 2010.
  • 67 Biblia Sacra Vulgatae Editionis Sixti V Pont. Max. Iussu, with comments, additions, and amendments (...)
Versa es  in luctum cithara mea
Quid est causa luctus?
Casus est infelix
Quid petit casus?
Lacrimas petit
Quae est causa talis? Thomas Aquinas, Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici in Isaiam expositio, capitulus 47
Mors est Reginae [Mors est Philippi]
Quis tulit illam? [Quis tulit illum]?
Parca fatalis
Ploremus omnes, ergo ploremus omnes Jaquet [Jachet], Ploremus omnes et lacrimemur, a five-part motet for the death of Prince Cesare of Aragón, son of King Federico of Naples and brother of Fernando, Duke of Calabria, ca. 1519.65 A motet Ploremus omnes was also sung in some Descent plays (abajamiento) performed in Mallorca and other territories of the Crown of Aragón during the seventeenth century.66
Sint cantus nostri tristes oculique fontes
Pendamus plectra Free adaptation from Dante, De vulgari eloquentia, Liber Secundus, IV
Sub lugubri cupresso From Ovid, Elegy XII: “Altare funebre circundatum lugubri cupresso [...]”
Quibus solebamus cantare victorias Book of Kings, II, 20: “Filiae, id est, feminae, quae solent cantare victorias”.67
Et vos omnes quid auditis istud, dicite Lamentations of Jeremiah, Holy Week responsory, and a motet O vos omnes qui transitis per viam (of which Et vos omnes quid, [...] is a clear parody) was also sung in the mentioned Descent plays (abajamiento) performed in Mallorca and other territories of the Crown of Aragón during the seventeenth century.
Si est aliquis sicut dolor meus Lamentations of Jeremiah, Holy Week responsory

35The seventh verse, in which the reason for the sorrow is explained (Mors est Reginae [Mors est Philippi]), demonstrates that this work was conceived for the funeral of a Queen; the only Queen who died during the years of activity of Miguel Juan Marqués was Isabel of Bourbon, first wife of Philip IV, who passed away in 1644. Afterwards, someone wrote “Philipi”, correcting the word “Reginae”.

  • 68 About Sebastián Alfonso, see Ezquerro Esteban 2006.

36Miguel Juan Marqués, of whose life we do not know many details, was employed as chapel master at the colegiata (main church) in Daroca (near Saragossa, in the kingdom of Aragón) between 1641 and 1645. There he probably composed the motet in 1644, for the funeral of Isabel of Bourbon, who seems to have been the regina mentioned in the text. In 1645 Marqués moved to Calatayud (still in the kingdom of Aragón) and in 1653 he obtained the position of chapel master in one of the two main churches in Saragossa, El Pilar, where he stayed until 1661. His motet Versa est in luctum remained in the archive of the music chapel in El Pilar, and it probably was Joseph Ruiz Samaniego, Marqués’s successor as chapel master, who adapted – simply changing a few words – and reused the work for the funeral of Philip IV in 1665, in which he must have been responsible of some musical performances. Another candidate for this reutilization of the motet by Marqués for the celebrations of 1665 is Sebastián Alfonso, chapel master in La Seo at that time.68

37The source distributes the seven-part composition between two choirs (choir 1: SST; choir 2: SATB) plus continuo, but, in fact, several other combinations are used, providing considerable variety with relatively limited forces (the work could easily be performed by only seven singers and one continuo player). The piece starts with a solo “lament” section, with responses by the other six voices.

38The dialog between the solo and the rest of the singers continues. There is an interesting – and quite expressive – rhetorical pause in the vocal discourse just after the words “mors est Reginae” or “mors est Philippi”, in which the continuo part alone plays a Phrygian clausula.

39From bar forty-three onwards, all seven voices sing together, symbolizing that the entire Universe mourns the death of the queen – or the king (see tab. 2).

40Here is an outline of the structure and vocal distribution:

Tab. 2 – Outline of the structure and vocal distribution.

Solo (S1 from choir1) Versa est in luctum cithara mea
Six voices (S2 T ch1, SATB ch2) Quid est causa luctus?
Solo (S1 ch1) Casus est infelix
Six voices (S2 T ch1, SATB ch2) Quid petit casus?
Solo (S1 ch1) Lacrimas petit
Six voices (S2 T ch1, SATB ch2) Quae est causa talis?
Solo (S1 ch1) Mors est Reginae [Philippi]
Continuo ---
Six voices (S2 T ch1, SATB ch2) Quis tulit illam [illum]?
Solo (S1 ch1) Parca fatalis
Seven voices (SST ch1, SATB ch2) Ploremus omnes, ergo ploremus omnes
Three voices (SST ch1) Sint cantus nostri tristes
Four voices (SATB ch2) Sint cantus nostri tristes
Solo (S1 ch1) Oculique fontes
Seven voices (ch1 and ch2 in dialog) Pendamus plectra
Three voices (ch1) Sub lugubri cupresso
Seven voices (ch1 and ch2 in dialog) Pendamus plectra
Four voices (ch2) Sub lugubri cupresso
Seven voices (ch1 and ch2 in dialog) Quibus solebamus
Seven voices (ch1 and ch2 in dialog) Cantare victorias
Solo (S1 ch1) Et vos omnes quid auditis istud, dicite
Three voices (ch1) Si est aliquis sicut dolor meus
Seven voices (ch1 and ch2 in dialog) Dicite
Seven voices (ch1 and ch2 in dialog) Si est aliquis sicut dolor meus

41As a result, what traditionally was a lyric elegiac text becomes a dramatic one, and the polyphonic motet is transformed into a complex concertato composition. To our knowledge, this kind of dramatization in a funeral piece in Latin, inserted into the liturgy, was not previously known in the Spanish tradition, nor will it be in similar repertories in Spain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For these reasons – but also because of its obvious musical quality and expressiveness – this motet must be considered exceptional. Its exceptional form can perhaps be explained partly by the fact that it is a work outside the court, composed for royal funeral services in the provinces. This could be why its author, who never visited the court and was probably not familiar with the courtly funeral etiquette of the Habsburgs (as neither the patrons of Marqués in Daroca nor those of his successors in Saragossa were either), resorted to elements of musical representation that were familiar to him through other typologies (for example, the dialogued villancicos, in which a marked theatricality can be observed). In any case, Marqués’s motet Versa est in luctum, in text and music, like the tono humano Las campanas, escapes from the monumentality of the royal funeral pomp at court – even if it was conceived for the funeral liturgy – to take on a more intimate, more human character, contributing to the creation of an in absentia image of the deceased king that seems to involve a human concept of compassion.

Conclusion

42Spanish religious music of the seventeenth century develops in a tension between the strong weight of tradition and the assimilation of certain new elements. Music for royal funerals is no exception. The attachment to imitative counterpoint is traditional, as is composition based on patterns such as cantus firmus or the survival throughout the entire century of polychoral procedures, which were modern around 1600 but remained in use, with few alterations, until a century later. In the field of funeral music, as we have seen, the generalization of polychorality from the generation of Mateo Romero onwards could be a turning point. Towards the end of the century, another notable change would occur – coincident with the last years of the Spanish Habsburgs –, with the introduction of independent instrumental parts that were not very common until that moment (flutes, clarines) in works by Durón, and a new tonal concept inspired precisely by the use of those instruments.

  • 69 Among the recent studies on the incorporation of elements of French fashion at the court of Charle (...)

43The polychoral pieces by Romero, Patiño, or Roldán, among others, show a severe monumentality (dense polychoral writing, predominantly low tessituras, slow harmonic rhythm, etc.), a pomp that does not exclude austerity, but that fits perfectly with the external aspect offered by the Spanish monarchy: for most of the seventeenth century, as was the case earlier in the time of Charles V and Philip II, the Spanish Habsburg court shows an almost monastic external image of austerity, circumspection and darkness (an image that is reflected on the rigid ceremonial rituals and even in the dressing customs – black clothes, for example–, in sharp contrast with some social aspects of the time that we know through literature, history and different artistic manifestations, such as comic theatre short plays – bailes, mojigangas, follas). The new elements introduced into royal funeral music – as in other religious musical contexts – at the end of the seventeenth century could actually be described as “modern” dressing features added to traditional structures, creating a mix of tradition and modernity. The introduction of trumpets – “majestic” instruments – in funeral music straddling the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries contributes, in a certain sense, to the transmission a new public image of the monarchy, more worldly and extroverted. Perhaps the fact that this novel coating of royal funeral music in the late seventeenth century – always within a context of tradition – coincides with certain changes in customs which can be perceived (in the way of dressing, for example, which begins to imitate the French fashion, even before the advent of the Bourbon dynasty69) is not accidental. We cannot disregard the fact that these visual changes in, for instance, dressing, and some developments in the funeral music are both traces of a certain change in mentality and, of course, of the way the late Spanish Habsburg monarchy presents itself in public; but it is quite risky to draw such conclusions without many other arguments. In any case, the royal funeral music of the whole century presents elements that bring it closer to the music for the liturgical and paraliturgical ceremonies – processions of the Santo entierro – of the Holy Week, which emphasizes the sacralization of the image of the king.

44The cases of the music that, although being part of liturgical practices, can be considered paraliturgical, such as the motet Versa est in luctum, or of profane pieces like the tono humano Las campanas, are quite different. The motet by Marqués is an example of funeral – liturgical – pomp outside of the court, at a distance and absente cadavere regis; the tono humano was composed at court, by one of his musicians (Hidalgo or Vado), but obviously not intended to be performed in religious ceremonies, but probably da camera. Both the motet and the tono lend the dead king – or the queen in the case of the first version of the motet – a certain sacred character, which implies a universal mourning, as the texts, similar to those of some tonos a la Pasión de Cristo, make manifest. But these texts, and their expressive setting to music, also appeal to individual sorrow and therefore humanize the figure of the king, in an exercise of vanitas that brings us back to the first paragraph of this article.

  • 70 About funeral music at eighteenth century Spanish Bourbon court, see González Marín 2003.

45Seventeenth-century Spanish royal funeral music cannot be understood as a cohesive whole, but as a set of processes of construction of models that in a certain way introduce modifications in the public image of the Spanish Habsburg monarchy, in a more accentuated way just when it was coming to its end. However, some elements of these models of funeral music – especially the sense of monumentality and tradition expressed in the survival of some archaic features and compositional procedures – were destined to survive, somehow resisting the "modernization" of court music that the advent of the Bourbon dynasty would entail.70

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Bibliographie

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Notes

2 Miguel de Mañara Vicentelo de Leca (1627-1679) was a Sevillian nobleman of Corsican origins, who, after a life of dissipation, devoted his last years to charity and penitence. About Mañara, see Ros Carballar 2002 and Barrios 2007. There is a facsimile edition of an eighteenth-century reprint of Mañara’s Discurso de la verdad (Sevilla, Luis Bexinez y Castilla, 1778), Mairena del Aljarafe, Extramuros Ed., 2007.

3 Con la menor pompa que fuere posible is the prescription included in Philip III’s will. Cited by Martínez Gil 1993, p. 615.

4 There are some impressive images of these ceremonies in which the royal corpse was exhibited; for example, an anonymous portrait of the deceased Philip IV (Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia) and a painting by Sebastián Muñoz representing the obsequies for Marie-Louise of Orléans (1689) preserved in the Hispanic Society of America.

5 There is a huge bibliography about the capelardentes or ephemeral structures for royal funerals in Spain and the Hispanic territories in the seventeenth century. One of the seminal studies is the paper by Esteban Lorente 1973. Equally interesting is Esteban Lorente – Allo Manero 2004.

6 “Antigua y santa costumbre es de la Iglesia Católica que los cuerpos de los fieles difuntos se lleven a darles sepultura públicamente con cruz, párroco, acompañamiento eclesiástico, que con luces preceda al féretro cantando psalmos, preces y oraciones, señal de campanas y otras ceremonias eclesiásticas, y siendo este acto de tan misteriosas significaciones, utilidad de las almas de los difuntos, desengaño y ejemplo de los vivos, y como tal aprobado y mandado observar por el ritual romano” [“It is an ancient and holy custom of the Catholic Church that the bodies of the faithful are taken away to be publicly buried with the cross; a parish priest, and ecclesiastic accompaniment precede the coffin with the singing of psalms, honours and prayers, the sound of bells and other church ceremonies, being so mysterious, this act benefits the souls of the departed and constitutes an admonition and an example for the living ones, etc.” (trans. by the author)]. The Spanish text is quoted in Martínez Gil 1993, p. 421: The whole chapter entitled “El ceremonial de la muerte barroca” in Martínez’s book is particularly relevant in order to understand the funeral ceremonies in seventeenth-century Spain. See also the fundamental essay Varela 1990.

7 A state of the art on the studies of educational moral literature for royalty (espejos de príncipes) at the present time can be found in the recent study Fernández García 2019.

8 Jarque 1666.

9 Beautifully confirmed in a Federico García Lorca’s well known – and maybe apocryphal – quotation: “En España, todas las primaveras viene la muerte y levanta las cortinas”, i.e. “In Spain, every spring Death comes and raises the curtains”. This quotation is used as introduction of an impressive experimental film by José Luis Val del Omar entitled Fuego en Castilla. Tactilvisión del páramo del espanto (1958-1960), based on sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Spanish imagery for the Holy Week processions. See Val del Omar 2010.

10 About Holy Week processions and ceremonies in Spain and particularly in Aragon in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see García de Paso – Rincón García 1981 and Rincón García 2009.

11 See Reula 2019.

12 There are some funeral compositions of the seventeenth century related to the Royal Chapel, now preserved in the Archivo General de Palacio (at the Royal Palace in Madrid). The extant copies are eighteenth-century ones, and were written after the fire of 1734, as part of the project of reconstruction of the repertoire of the Royal Chapel of which musicians like José de Torres, José de Nebra and others were in charge. Among them there are two responses: an eight-part Libera me by Carlos Patiño (1600-1675) – Archivo General de Palacio, Leg. 1566, Cat. 970 – and a four-part Ne recorderis by Cristóbal Galán (c 1620-1684) – Archivo General de Palacio, Leg. 1509, Cat. 600 –, which brings the note: Para los entierros de Personas R.s (“For the burials of royal persons”). Since this note is contemporary with the copy, we are sure that the work was really conceived by Galán with that concrete purpose.

13 The mobility of Spanish musicians during the seventeenth century, in search of more profitable or prestigious jobs, is well known. See, for example, Ezquerro Esteban – González Marín – González Valle 2008.

14 See, among others, Bottineau 1972; Varey 1973; Varey 1974; Lisón Tolosona 1992; De La Torre García 2000; Noel 2004.

15 Some later documents, such as Rodríguez de Monforte 1666, still attest to the traditional custom of reserving canto de órgano (or música de capilla) for certain pieces of the first nocturn of Matins: Invitatorium and two lectiones.

16 See Knighton 1999.

17 See Russell 1979 and Llorens Cisteró 1999.

18 See González Marín 2000.

19 Its last published edition, containing the Officium and the four-part mass (there is another five-part mass, published in the Missarum Liber Secundus [Rome, 1544]) is that by Llorens Cisteró 2010.

20 See Robledo 1994 and Wagstaff 2004.

21 See Suárez-Pajares – Del Sol 2013, particularly the paper by Rees 2013.

22 Nevertheless, there is irrefutable evidence of earlier polychoral practices in Spain with an effective spatial distance between choirs. A good example is provided by Pascual Mandura, a canon in Saragossa Cathedral who describes in these terms the performance of a psalm in La Seo in 1598: “puestos cuatro cantores en el órgano y los otros abajo con el bajón. Pareció a todos tan bien que los que no lo habían oído decían que era música del cielo” [“four singers were situated in the organ gallery, and the other four below with the dulcian. Everybody enjoyed it so much that was described as music from the heaven”]. Quoted in Calahorra Martínez 1978, p. 74, and in González Marín 2015.

23 Mateo Romero, Misa de Requien a 8 del Pelegrino, Music Archive of Saragossa Cathedrals (E-Zac), B-26/428(1).

24 An edition of some funeral compositions by Ruiz Samaniego, Manuel Correa and others can be found in González Marín 2004.

25 An edition of the funeral works by García de Salazar can be found in Iglesias 1989.

26 See González Marín 2001a and González Marín 2001b. The source is preserved in the Music Archive of Saragossa Cathedrals (E-Zac), B-9/161.

27 Music Archive of Saragossa Cathedrals (E-Zac), B-9/161. See a critical edition and a brief study of this work in González Marín 2004, p. 18-20 and 119-180.

28 There is an interesting document about the funeral of Philip IV in Madrid (Rodríguez de Monforte 1666) in which the obsequies celebrated at La Encarnación are described; unfortunately, the musical references do not allow us to ascertain more than that the music of the first day of the funeral was directed by Carlos Patiño, master of the royal chapel. Three masses were sung in succession, and the one by Roldán was probably one of them. See Del Sol 2020.

29 Critical edition of this work in González Marín 2003.

30 The plainchant citations in Roldán’s work follow the model of Requiem mass in canto llano offered by the best-known and disseminated plainchant treatise of that time, the Arte de canto llano by Francisco de Montanos, which was reprinted several times during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Salamanca 1610, Saragossa c.1640, Madrid 1648, Saragossa 1665 and 1670, Madrid 1693, Madrid 1712, 1728 y 1734, and again Saragossa 1756).

31 The traditional prohibition of using organs as accompaniment instruments in funeral, Holy Week services and some other liturgical moments, does not mean that this instrument was systematically rejected for those functions. In fact, there are many sources of music for the Holy Week or funerals that contain continuo parts specifically assigned to the organ; it is not the case of the Requiem mass by Pérez Roldán, preserved in separate parts, in which only an instrumental part, named acomp.to continuo, has survived. Furthermore, the insistent prohibition, such that of the use of the organ in some liturgical occasions, is but a ratification of the obstinate use of what is supposed to be eliminated.

32 See González Marín 2000, where a historical summary of the composition of lamentations in Spain is offered. There is, however, a notable conceptual difference between liturgical funeral compositions and lamentations: in the latter, along with polyphonic and polychoral compositions, a typology of soloist composition was developed that exploited the singers’ virtuosity, with long and complex ornate passages, a style that is unparalleled in funeral music.

33 About the instrumental ensembles frequent in sources of Spanish religious music of the seventeenth century, see González Marín 1997.

34 Copies are kept in the National Library of Madrid, the El Escorial Archive and the Monastery of Montserrat, with variations of instrumentation (bajoncillos in the Madrid sources, violins in the Montserrat source, which comes from La Encarnación monastery). See Siemens Hernández 1986, vol. I.

35 As Arnaldo Morelli has pointed out, the a cappella practice without instruments in the papal chapel conveyed a sense of the immobility and immutability of the Catholic Church (see Morelli 2017). Perhaps the use of some compositional resources, seen as part of a long tradition, in Hispanic funeral music also tended to offer a timeless image of eternity.

36 Durón expressed his support for the Habsburg bloc – the losing side – against the Bourbons in the Spanish Succession War and was thus exiled to France from 1706.

37 Apart from an interesting partial transcription of the invitatorium published by Hilarión Eslava in 1860 (Lira Sacro-Hispana X/2, p. 237-242), an example of both the incipient musicology in Spain and the survival of traditions in the nineteenth century Spanish Royal Chapel (of which Eslava was then chapel master), there are two modern available editions of this work, based on different sources and with some different content. The earliest is Rodríguez 2003, which contains the vigilia and the mass from the source preserved in the Archivo del Monte de Piedad. The later is Angulo Díaz 2015, which contains only the mass preserved in Montserrat.

38 That is the case of the Miserere a 12 with violins and flutes preserved at El Escorial and some lamentations with identical instrumentation. A list of works that Durón had left in Madrid before going into exile suggests that he probably composed the parts for flute before the dynastic change. See Lolo 1992.

39 See a summary and some sources in Rodríguez López 2010.

40 The use of pífanos (fifes) is documented, for example, in the procession of the Holy Burial of Saragossa as early as 1621. See González Marínez 2020, p. 91.

41 About the participation of these instruments in Autos de fe, see the famous painting by Francisco Rizi, Auto de fe en la Plaza Mayor de Madrid (1683). Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, cat. P01126. Pífanos and caxas (drums) were characteristic of the infantry, while clarines (trumpets) and atabales (timpani) were typical of cavalry troops. See also Fernández de Latorre 1999.

42 It is extremely risky to look for links between the use of flutes or recorders in, for example, French Requiem masses (Charpentier, Gilles, etc.), in Bach’s Passions and funeral cantatas, or in funeral scenes from Handel’s operas and oratorios (the B section in the famous aria for Sextus in Giulio Cesare, “Svegliatevi nel core / L’ombra del genitor”, with recorders, or the funeral march for Saul and Samson), but some coincidences in the use of instruments are striking and may correspond to a common topos of metaphorical use of instruments.

43 Some later Spanish composers such as José de Nebra used both instruments. Nebra was sometimes particularly careful to designate the instruments he wanted, distinguishing flautas dulces (= recorders) and flautas trabesieras (= flutes): this occurs, for example, in some autograph scores from the 1740s; later, however, in 1758, when he composed the Oficio de Difuntos for the queen María Bárbara, he probably did not find it necessary to specify which sort of flutes he wanted, presumably flutes and not recorders. Other composers or copyists were not usually so precise.

44 It is known that, for her wedding to King Charles II, Marie-Louise d’Orléans came to Madrid accompanied by an ensemble of French musicians who played instruments from their country, some of whom remained at court afterwards. Likewise, the second wife of Charles II, Marianne of Neuburg, promoted the incorporation of foreign musicians with modern instruments (oboes, for example) into the royal chamber and chapel. Some musical sources (such as the comedy Destinos vencen finezas with music by Juan de Navas, printed in 1699) include elements of those new practices. Possible influences of French practices on royal funeral music should be analyzed with caution. See, among others, Benoit 1955; Álvarez Solar-Quintes 1956; Duron 2000 and some of the essays in Thompson 2010; Cabañero Sánchez 2016.

45 This happens in works by José de Torres, Francesco Corselli, José de Nebra and others.

46 We know some sources of villancicos of Urbán de Vargas composed in the 1650s, and some documents about a mass con clarín by Juan del Vado (d. 1691), composed for the Real Capilla, which caused controversy. See González Marín 1989-1990 and Robledo Estaire – Arriaga 1987.

47 About the use of sordinas in Holy Week Spanish processions, see again González Marínez 2020, p. 80 and 94-97.

48 The use of D major, with two sharps in the key signature, is unusual in Spanish religious music even at the end of the 17th century, as the conventional notation of canto de órgano tones was usually preferred (apart from the fact that these tonos or modos could later be transported mentally in practice). In any case, this D major could be considered by the Spanish music theory of the time as a transposition of the sexto tono traditional in early funeral music, probably influenced by the use of the trumpets – normally in D in Spanish sources – or even the transverse flutes – also in D.

49 We know four sources of this tono humano for solo soprano and continuo, preserved in the National Library in Madrid (E-Mn) ms. 13622/169, fol. 201 (attributed to Juan Hidalgo). The volume containing this piece is the well-known Gayangos-Barbieri manuscript, that was described by Caballero Fernández-Rufete 1989: Segovia Cathedral (E-SE), Música 52/22 (attributed to Juan del Vado), Valladolid Cathedral (E-VA), Leg. 68/31 (anonymous); and Mallorca Cathedral (E-PAc), FA 1964, fols. 94v-96v (anonymous), with an added violón – bass violin – part, different from the continuo). A fifth source in the National Library in Madrid (E-Mn), ms. 13622/40, fols. 47-48, contains an arrangement for three voices – CCT – and continuo, attributed to Luis de Garay sobre el solo de Juan del Vado. All these sources offer a more or less complete text on the subject of the death of Philip IV. There is also a “sequel”, a later four-part (CCAT) composition that parodies the solo and trio versions, now devoted to the death of Charles II; the source is unknown to us, but an edition of it was published by Hilarión Eslava, in his collection Lyra Sacro Hispana (Eslava 1858). It will be discussed below.

50 A brief review of the sources, a bibliography and a study and edition of the source preserved in Mallorca can be found in Menzel 2012, I, p. 347-362 (study) and II, p. 302-307 (edition). Parodies of the text that begins En pesso [Empeço] la noche toda / sin cesar clamorearon […] appear also in humorous texts and theatre plays, such as the Mojiganga de los amantes de Teruel by Vicente Suárez de Deza, Los planetas by Quiñones de Benavente or the Baile entremesado del Mellado and the Baile para el auto de la Nave. See Borrego Gutiérrez 2000, p. 473.

51 Eslava 1858, V, p. 35-40. As an editor, Eslava often introduced unnoticed changes in his transcriptions of works by early authors, and in fact he recomposed, adding new “romantic” elements, some passages according to his own criteria, without any explanation or justification (this occurs, for example, in his edition of the motet Circumdederunt me dolores mortis belonging to the Requiem mass by José de Nebra, that he published in Lira sacro-hispana, VI). The source of this piece, dedicated to Charles II, has not been found, but we have no reason to believe that the piece can be a complete “fake”, since Eslava insinuates that others have seen the source.

52 The word painting features include imitation of the sound of bells (as in the preceding composition) but also the sighs (suspiros) of the saddened and shocked people who witnessed or knew of the death of the king; we may call particular attention to the chromaticism that appears with the word afecto. The text identifies the king with the Sun (la luz eclipsada / en tumbas el sol: “the sun in the grave”).

53 An example is the tono a la pasión de Cristo entitled Cuando muere el Sol, attributed to Sebastián Durón and preserved at Segovia cathedral.

54 At this point we should recall the ingenious satirical phrase, perhaps apocryphal, attributed to Francisco de Quevedo: “Diríase que nuestro rey Felipe el Grande lo es a la manera de los hoyos, que son más cuanta más tierra le quitan” (the greatness of the king was like that of holes, increasingly large as more and more soil – or land – was removed).

55 Juan Antonio Jarque includes in his sermon book a quite detailed narration, not exempt from some poetic license, of the funeral ceremonies for Philip IV in Saragossa. See Jarque 1666. Here is one of the multiple allusions to the aforementioned epithets or surnames: “Como Sol corrió a morir / El Quarto Planeta Rey” (p. 390).

56 In Spanish cities, market squares were usually the main public spaces of the town, where diverse street spectacles were also held. They could feature altars and ephemeral structures for processions, the celebration of autos de fe, and even executions.

57 Jarque explains the bad weather in quite poetical terms: se texieron, y cortaron lutos de espesas nubes; y lloraron éstas (“mourning clothes were weaved with the dense clouds, and they wept”). Jarque 1666, p. 211.

58 See Steiner 2009. On the particularities of the use of this text in the Spanish funeral liturgy, see Blázquez Izquierdo 2018.

59 See Rico Manrique 2002.

60 Martín de la Madre de Dios 1655, XXX: “Póngole este título de Arpa, para descubrir por medio de sus propiedades y excelencias, las que tiene la Santa Cruz con Christo crucificado en ella, porque un Arpa puede ser excelente, y de grande estima, por la materia de que está fabricada, por lo precioso de sus cuerdas, por estar tan bien templadas que hazen la consonancia que cada uno desea, por ser general para todo género de personas, por la grandeza de los que han tocado en ellas, porque no solo hazen todas juntas buena consonancia, sino que cada cuerda la haze maravillosa por sí sola, porque no solo alegra con su sonido sino también con acordarse de ella, porque recrea con solo mirarla, por tener en sí algunas letras misteriosas, y de grande fondo […]”.

61 It can be seen, for instance, in a villancico by Joseph Ruiz Samaniego (fl. 1653-1670) composed in Saragossa in 1670, entitled Suenen los instrumentos de pasión, in which musical instruments are identified with the revealingly Arma Christi objects (the cross, the nails, the ladder, etc.). The text of this villancico was written by Vicente Sánchez and posthumously published in Lyra poética de Vicente Sánchez, Saragossa, Manuel Román, 1688. The musical source of La fe con siete virtudes / Atención, suenen los instrumentos de Pasión is preserved in Music Archive of Saragossa Cathedrals (E-Zac), B-46/688. About Joseph Ruiz Samaniego, see some of my editions of his works, for example González Marín 2001c. Some villancicos by Ruiz Samaniego can be heard on the CD Joseph Ruiz Samaniego: La vida es sueño (Alpha, Outhere Music, 153, 2008), performed by Los Músicos de Su Alteza.

62 See Ezquerro Esteban 2000.

63 Versa est in luto. a 7 / Marques, Music Archive of Saragossa Cathedrals (E-Zac), B-6/85. A modern edition was published in González Marín 2004, p. 203-225.

64 Motet texts composed of excerpts from various origins are common at the French court at that time. See for example, Pierre Perrin, Cantica pro Capella Regis, Paris, Robert Ballard, 1665. This is also the case of the Luctus de morte augutissimae Mariae Theresiae reginae Galliae by the neo-latin poet Pierre Portes, set to music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier [H.331] for the death of Queen Marie-Thérèse, daughter of Philip IV.

65 Fenlon 1980, p. 73.

66 See Menzel 2010.

67 Biblia Sacra Vulgatae Editionis Sixti V Pont. Max. Iussu, with comments, additions, and amendments by Juan de Mariana, Emanuelis Sa and other Jesuit theologians. Among the numerous editions and reprints, I have used the one from Amberes, Ex Officina Plantiniana, 1624.

68 About Sebastián Alfonso, see Ezquerro Esteban 2006.

69 Among the recent studies on the incorporation of elements of French fashion at the court of Charles II, see De la Puerta Escribano 2008; Giorgi 2008; Giorgi 2016.

70 About funeral music at eighteenth century Spanish Bourbon court, see González Marín 2003.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Fig. 1 – Catafalque for the funeral of Philip IV in Saragossa, 1665 [from Juan Antonio Jarque, Augusto llanto, finezas de tierno, y reverente Amor de la Imperial Ciudad de Zaragoza. En la muerte de su Rey, Filipe el Grande, Quarto de Castilla, Tercero de Aragón, Zaragoza, Diego Dormer, 1666; historical collection of the María Moliner Library, University of Saragossa]
URL http://journals.openedition.org/mefrim/docannexe/image/11275/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 445k
Titre Fig. 2 – Detail of the Catafalque or ephemeral structure for the burial of Christ, traditionally staged in the Holy Week celebrations in Saragossa, church of San Cayetano (photo 2012, by the author). The statue representing dead Christ is an anonymous sculpture from the seventeenth century. The Virgin and the staging components come from the nineteenth and early twentieth century, replacing older elements.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/mefrim/docannexe/image/11275/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 93k
Titre Fig. 3 – Beginning of the introitus of the Requiem mass by Sebastián Durón, edited by Hilarión Eslava (Lira sacro-hispana, 1860).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/mefrim/docannexe/image/11275/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 332k
Titre Fig. 4 – Two excerpts from the tono entitled Las campanas, transcribed from the Valladolid source (E-VA Leg. 68/31) [ed. by the author].
URL http://journals.openedition.org/mefrim/docannexe/image/11275/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 47k
URL http://journals.openedition.org/mefrim/docannexe/image/11275/img-5.jpg
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Titre Fig. 5 – Excerpt from the three-part version of Las campanas by Luis de Garay [ed. by the author].
URL http://journals.openedition.org/mefrim/docannexe/image/11275/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 63k
Titre Fig. 6 – Excerpt from the four-part anonymous version of Las campanas edited by H. Eslava (Lira sacro-hispana, 1858).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/mefrim/docannexe/image/11275/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 136k
Titre Fig. 7 – Plan of the market square in Saragossa, with ephemeral buildings, during the obsequies for Philip IV [from Juan Antonio Jarque, Augusto llanto, finezas de tierno, y reverente Amor de la Imperial Ciudad de Zaragoza. En la muerte de su Rey, Filipe el Grande, Quarto de Castilla, Tercero de Aragón, Zaragoza, Diego Dormer, 1666; historical collection of the María Moliner Library, University of Saragossa].
URL http://journals.openedition.org/mefrim/docannexe/image/11275/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 3,2M
Titre Fig. 8 – Excerpt the motet Versa est in luctum by Miguel Juan Marqués [ed. by the author]
URL http://journals.openedition.org/mefrim/docannexe/image/11275/img-9.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 152k
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Luis Antonio González-Marín, « Music for a Dead King »Mélanges de l’École française de Rome - Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines [En ligne], 133-2 | 2021, mis en ligne le 15 mars 2022, consulté le 01 octobre 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/mefrim/11275 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/mefrim.11275

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Luis Antonio González-Marín

DCH-Musicología, IMF-CSIC - gzmarin@imf.csic.es

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