Cancionero Mariano de Charcas

Abstract

This volume presents the study and annotated edition of 230 poems in Spanish about the Virgin Mary, taken from musical polyphonic works in manuscripts at the Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia (ABNB) in Sucre (formerly La Plata, capital of the Audiencia of Charcas). These poems have been selected by the editor from some 13 hundred music folders or items (dating from 1680 to 1820) that came to the ABNB from La Plata Cathedral and from the Biblioteca of the Oratorio de San Felipe Neri (Julia Elena Fortún collection). Eichmann announces a future edition of poems about other topics.This important book originated in the doctoral dissertation by Eichmann, who also has other relevant publications about poetry and music in colonial Bolivia. In the present volume he systematically studies texts sung in villancicos and similar genres and describes the process (that he calls “retroescritura”) used to reconstruct the poems from their fragmentary presentation in different particellas (single, independent sheets of music with the text underlaid for each voice of a polyphonic composition). For the reconstruction of each poem, the author has followed three stages: (1) configuration of an initial text (“base textual”), selecting the fragments of a poem from different particellas of the same piece and giving the appropriate order to the fragments, a particularly difficult task if there is not a previous musical edition of the work, as is the case with most of the poems selected by Eichmann; (2) fixing the text, which requires numerous editorial decisions regarding suppression of unnecessary repetitions of words (usually generated by the musical arrangement), reconstruction of the poem’s verses (notwithstanding irregularities and polymetries), punctuation, accentuation, errata, and inconsistencies; and (3) to reach (as far as possible) to the version of a poem previous to its use in a musical score. Musicologists who have edited Spanish texts of religious music from before 1850 have faced the same process of reconstruction described by Eichmann, but their solutions have not always been systematic. The methodology and examples presented by Eichmann provide very useful guidelines for future editors of Spanish and Latin American villancicos and related genres.In a preliminary study, Eichmann places the poems in the Latin American cultural and musical context, in particular that of the Audiencia of Charcas. Using Gaelle Bruneau’s unpublished doctoral dissertation (2006) and other works about musicians at La Plata Cathedral, he brings together the biographical information about the composers who set these texts to music. Eichmann makes an effort to establish literary concordances with Spanish and Latin American sources, although the bibliographic selection he makes concerning the musical villancico is quite limited. From the literary point of view, the poems are analyzed in great detail, focusing on the different themes within this Marian repertoire (in which the works devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe, venerated at La Plata Cathedral, take a place of honor); the important presence of classical mythology; and the poetic forms represented in the collection. The 230 edited poems are numbered and classified according to themes (conception, nativity, presentation, ascension, etc.); an appendix presents another 23 incomplete poems. The title given to each poem is that of its first line. The edition of the texts has been done with great care and the poems are profusely annotated. There is an alphabetical index of first verses, as well as an index of main annotated terms.Eichmann’s thorough editorial work is of interest not only for philologists and musicologists, but also for practical musicians, as can be shown with an example. The villancico ¡Ah de la obscura, funesta prisión! (poem no. 58, pp. 310 – 14) by the Spanish composer Juan de Araujo (1646/48 – 1712) includes in the last two verses of the refrain (estribillo) a contrast between the darkness of “Averno” (Hell) and the planets of “Empíreo” (Heaven). However, in the wonderful recording of this work by the Ensemble Elyma and La Maîtrise Boréale, conducted by Gabriel Garrido (collection Les Chemins du Baroque, K617124, 2001), the word “Empíreo” is wrongly sung as “Imperio” (Empire). To sing “Imperio” instead of “Empíreo” (in every repetition of the refrain) is a small, almost unnoticed mistake, but it changes substantially the literary and theological meaning of the text. Good editions of poetic repertoires, such as the one published by Eichmann, can be very helpful in order to contextualize the symbolic meaning of texts to be sung.In all, Eichmann’s volume is a relevant contribution to our knowledge of the poetry in the musical repertoire of La Plata (Bolivia) during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and a stimulating call for interdisciplinary dialogue between philologists, musicologists, and performers.