Guatemala city choirbook

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Robert J. Snow (1926-1998) recently published a very thorough study of Guatemala city choirbook IV. This choirbook contains music for Holy Week, including several Lamentations settings. In order to encourage the use and spread of this music the University of Chicago Press have rescinded their copyright for performance purposes, (see their title page), so choral directors should find this large tome with its hundreds of pages of complete pieces very useful. Here is some information about the music of Guatemala City cathedral which might assist in program planning.

Francisco Marroquín was the first bishop of Guatemala, (1537-1563) who started up the sung services. In around 1558 Guerrero sent a parcel of music from Spain to Guatemala. In Guatemala City Marroquín introduced the job of canicularis, dog-catcher janitor, to keep out the strays sheltering from the mid-day heat. Educated people were in short supply in the New World. The first cantor of Guatemala was sent as Bishop of Honduras shortly after being appointed. Transcontinental travel in the Spanish Empire was not without its tragic consequences. 50 years after mesoamerica's first contact with smallpox brought by the conquistadors, in the 1570s plague, this time, killed half the Indians in Mexico and Central America.

Guatemala is in an earthquake zone. Francisco Marroquín's cathedral finally fell down in 1669 after many years of earthquake damage. A later choirmaster, Bermúdez (Granada, Cuzco, dep Puebla, 1603) was reputed to be lazy and greedy. In 1597 he asked for an increase in salary to paid for by reducing the choristers' pay. Bermúdez died in 1605 at Puebla, Mexico. Gaspar Fernandez was in Guatemala City in 1603 and in 1606 left for Puebla. Hernando Franco was trained in Segovia, Santos de Aliseda in Granada.

[edit] Bibliography

Robert J. Snow, 'A New-World collection of polyphony for Holy Week; Guatemala City Cathedral Archive, Music Ms. 4, Mon. Res. Mus., IX' (University of Chicago Press,1996). This has the best bibliography in existence on this subject, as well as being a thorough academic study of its subject. It contains a complete modern edition.

It is dedicated to Professor Stevenson, author of the following book:

• Robert Stevenson, 'Music in Aztec and Inca Territory', (University of California Press,1968, reprinted 1976). Robert Stevenson, 'Music in Mexico', (New York,1952).