Beautiful pieces of baroque "from colonial America" ​​played at the Prado Museum

▲ The presentation was directed by musicologist and researcher Manfredo Kraemer, who chose songs inspired by the Virgins of Guadalupe in Mexico and Bolivia. Photo: Armando G. Tejeda

Armando G. Tejeda

Correspondent

La Jornada Newspaper, Sunday, June 15, 2025, p. 4

Madrid. Some of the most beautiful pieces of the so-called Baroque style of colonial America were performed in the Prado Museum auditorium in a concert that was part of the parallel activities for the exhibition "So Far, So Close," inspired by the figure of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a pretext for recovering the artistic value of viceregal art.

The concert was performed by one of Europe's most prestigious Baroque music ensembles, The Rare Fruits Council, directed by musicologist and researcher Manfredo Kraemer, who chose pieces inspired by the Virgins of Guadalupe of Mexico and Bolivia, with works by composers such as Antonio de Salazar (1650-1715), Manuel de Sumaya (1690-1755) and Ignacio Jerusalem (1707-1769).

The person responsible for the historical research for the selection of the pieces was the musicologist and composer Bernado Illari, specialist in Latin American music and professor at the University of North Texas, who explained that it is a research made concert, a work of great rigor of sources, practices and contexts used as a basis to imagine the best possible music .

He explained that the story is simple but fascinating. On one side of the world, the Virgin of Guadalupe of Mexico, who appeared to an indigenous man in 1531 and became the emblem of the soul of a continent. On the other, a Guadalupe painted by the friar Diego de Ocaña, sent to Bolivia to collect alms, ultimately generating a local fervor that today fills streets and cathedrals with dance processions and popular songs. The devotion was twofold, but the emotion was shared. And music, that common language that explains everything without saying almost anything, was essential. In Mexico and Chuquisaca (present-day Sucre), the great Marian celebrations were woven with a repertoire that combined liturgical solemnity with the vitality of the baroque Christmas carol. A festive and theatrical language .

The concert was a previously unpublished and carefully documented selection of pieces composed in the 17th and 18th centuries around the two Guadalupes. On the one hand, the Chuquisaca tradition, led by the peninsular master Juan de Araujo and his Creole successors Roque Jacinto de Chavarría, Blas Tardío de Guzmán, and Manuel Mesa, who developed a local style of great expressive richness. On the other, the Mexican repertoire with works by Antonio de Salazar, Manuel de Sumaya, and Ignacio Jerusalem, whose compositions echo European Baroque, but with their own accent. In both cases, music served to explain the sacred through the everyday: arias that caress, motets that move, and carols that bring a smile. Through these, an attempt was made to explain how love for Guadalupe was also a way of making music, of creating identity, and of singing the world with its own accent.

The Rare Fruits Council, one of the most highly regarded ensembles on the European Baroque scene, is made up of musicians who regularly collaborate with groups such as Musica Antiqua Köln, Les Arts Florissants, Concerto Köln, and Jordi Savall. The group combines historical rigor with a scenic expressiveness that transcends the academic. Its members' shared interest in exploring the triosonata, the quintessential Baroque chamber music genre, led to the formation of the group. Their notable recordings include Harmonia Artificioso-Ariosa (1996) by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, which won the Diapason d'Or and the Grand Prix de la Académie du Disque and was unanimously acclaimed by international critics as the benchmark recording of this work, and Rariora & Marginalia (2003), a selection of rarely seen musical works by Georg Muffat, Philipp Friedrich Böddecker and Antonio Bertali, among others. The group's name, an allusion to the florid naturalistic titles of countless Baroque-period musical releases, is also a declaration of an aesthetic purpose: as in a riddle, to discover the familiar hidden beneath an exotic costume, or as in art, to renew wonder and illuminate a familiar object from an unusual perspective , as they explain. The performers are Elionor Martínez, soprano; Judit Subirana, soprano; Daniel Folqué, alto; Víctor Cruz, tenor; Manfredo Kraemer and Guadalupe del Moral, violins; Balázs Máté, cello; Sara Águeda, harp, and Alfonso Sebastián, harpsichord.

▲ Haydeé Boetto, Ana Lara and Consuelo Carredano in the Manuel M. Ponce Hall of the Palace of Fine Arts, during the presentation of the new era of Mexican Music Editions, founded by Rodolfo Halffter and other composers in 1947. Photo by María Luisa Severiano

Angel Vargas

La Jornada Newspaper, Sunday, June 15, 2025, p. 4

"It was completely abandoned ," says composer Ana Lara regarding Ediciones Mexicanas de Música (EMM), one of the most significant cultural projects to emerge during the last century in the sound field of our country.

Now, the publishing house founded in 1947 by fellow Spanish composer Rodolfo Halffter (1900-1987) with the aim of promoting the publication of Mexican music scores, is beginning a new era after remaining adrift for a long time.

The initiative is the work of composers Federico Ibarra, Luis Jaime Cortez, and Ana Lara herself, members of its editorial board. For the past two years, they have been working to revive this cultural enterprise with the mission of contributing to the recovery and dissemination of the national repertoire.

After the death of Mario Lavista (1943-2021) and Víctor Rasgado (1959-2023), former members of the board, in addition to maestro Ibarra, we decided to make the effort to rescue the publishing house , Ana Lara explains to La Jornada.

"It's been an immense task because everything had to be put in order: the administrative and legal aspects... It's been very difficult, but at the same time a pleasure, because we see so much potential in this project. It's enough to know that its collection, consisting of more than 400 scores from 1947 to the present, contains the history of Mexican music."

The relaunch of EMM seeks to preserve its collection, republish it, and make it accessible, according to the creator. Now begins a new era of repositioning; we want to give it a new profile through the use of digital technologies to showcase a catalog that remains largely unexplored .

He explains that, initially, they will revive emblematic works whose scores are out of print, such as Huapango by José Pablo Moncayo; Sones de mariachi by Blas Galindo; the quartets of Silvestre Revueltas; and several pieces by Federico Ibarra, among others.

Catalog of more than 400 works

It's a catalog with just over 400 works, including classics, but also authors who are completely unknown even to us. So together we'll discover several treasures.

Another focus, he adds, is publishing new scores by contemporary composers. There are plans for some by Hebert Vázquez, Jorge Torres Sáenz, and Georgina Derbez. There is also work on unpublished Mexican music from other eras; this is the case, for example, with the quartets of Julián Carrillo. There is interest in doing the same with historical archives, such as that of the Colegio de las Vizcaínas, which, incidentally, currently houses the publishing house's collection.

EMM materials are now available to the public thanks to the alliance with Sonus Litterarum, a multifaceted Internet project dedicated to music, through a virtual store ( https://sonuslitterarum.mx/ ).