<i>Inter-American Music Review</i> (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Inter-American Music Review John G. Lazos Inter-American Music Review. Vol. 17–18 (2007–8). Concordis Modulationis Ordo Ismael Fernández de La Cuesta In Honorem. [Festschrift in honor of Royal Academician Don Ismael Fernández de La Cuesta.] 2 vols. ix, 366 pp.; xii, 526 pp. For some time Ismael Fernández de la Cuesta y González de Prado (b. 1939), the renowned professor of plainchant and musicology at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid, has drawn particular attention to Iberian music. Then in 2005, preeminent musicologist Robert Stevenson, Editor of Inter-American Music Review, invited Hispano-American and Spanish collaborators to participate in this tribute to Fernández de la Cuesta. Friends and colleagues from all over the world, including musicologists, performers, composers, music critics, historians, and linguists responded to the invitation. Those scholars that Stevenson has long since encouraged have proven to be fertile advocates for Hispanic music. This Spanish music, enriched by a Mozarabic influence moved beyond its original borders, passed long ago the Atlantic, to become into the “music from the Americas.” 1 The first volume of this multilingual (English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese) Festschrift comprises 31 articles and 4 book reviews. The second volume comprises 33 articles (2 in English, the rest in Spanish) as well as 2 music compositions and an up-dated biography of the honoree. Altogether, these volumes contain a rich array of subjects, which vary in length from 3 to 56 pages. Set in chronological order, from medieval Hispanic liturgy to contemporary scholarship, emphasis is placed in the periods of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Considering the number of articles assembled, it is necessary to follow the old saying “para muestra solo basta un botón.” For this review, three articles have been chosen from each volume. Lorenzo Candelaria lucidly resolves the obscurity of a liturgical choir book in “The Mystery of the Rosary Cantorales: A Study in Attribution.” The intrigue relates to a manuscript acquired by Yale University in 1989 that had been known only by its call number: Ms 710 from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Candelaria has solved the riddle of its provenance that was thought to be either Flemish or Italian; in fact, it is a Spanish Kyriale. Among its 103 folios is included a four-part polyphonic work titled Et incarnates est, originally attributed to “Jusquin,” it is no other than Josquin Desprez’s Missa sine nominee. What is more, this is “the only Josquin Mass material preserved in an American library” (26). While she confesses to not being a Hispanist, Susan McClary’s “Mediterranean Trade Routes and Music of the Early Seventeenth Century” poses several pointed questions about the “so-called New Musicology” (135). As she notices, the structure of this orderly canon have excluded music from many other traditions, including Spanish. McClary’s reading of Girolamo [End Page 270] Frescobaldi’s score for “Maddalena alla Croce”, which is included, refers to Fernand Braudel’s provocative writings. 2 The Arabic influence, evident in the Hispanic music tradition as in current matters (she reminds 9/11 date), is certainly present in the “blatant eroticism of this little piece [which] scandalizes many present-day listeners” (137). McClary connects this Mediterranean influence, referred to by Braudel, in the Frecobaldi’s score, showing how our conventions have ignored it because of the prevailing dichotomy between the sacred and the sexual. Elisabeth Le Guin acknowledges in “Un ofrecimiento extranjero” that, as someone educated in the Anglo-Saxon system, she did not have much awareness of Hispanic music. She makes the astute point that if there is no awareness, there is no interest. Fortunately, for Le Guin, her awareness of Hispanic music changed while following the history of Luigi Boccherini’s decision to move in 1768 to Spain from Paris. As historians, the author notes, we are molded by the periods we study and, yet, as foreigners, we can bring a fresh perspective to the field. What Boccherini’s opera 9 has to offer, apart from its impressive musical cosmopolitism, is a redefinition of “Italianism no less than Spaniard, as parallel elements” (202). This is what...