Piffaro, an ensemble specializing in the performance of Renaissance and early Baroque music, returns to Wilmington this month with a concert highlighting music performed - and in some cases written - in early colonial Mexico.
As explorers and conquistadores roamed through Mexico in the 16th century, they brought with them missionaries who utilized music to convert natives to Christianity, explains Priscilla Herreid, Piffaro’s artistic director.
“The music was used as a teaching tool,” she says. “The priests, the missionaries who came over with the purpose of conversion knew that the people that they were trying to convert loved musicmaking and dancing, and so they used Christian music as a tool for that. And it does seem that a lot of the natives who were being converted really loved this music too and were happy to participate in it.”
As native Mexicans learned how to play European instruments, they also learned to compose music in the prevailing European styles, she adds. While music written by native Mexicans sounds mostly like something that might have been written in Spain or Portugal, there are some differences, Herreid says.
“They move according to the rules of part-writing, but they're a little bit different,” Herreid says. “They just sound like something was taken and transformed a tiny bit.”
Another difference from European music is the size of ensembles, which dominated church music as native Mexicans embraced the European tradition of musicmaking.
“There would be 50 or 60 people playing in a church service, and building the instruments too, and playing really well,” Herreid says.
Some of the music will be performed by guest singers in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs. To get the pronunciations and interpretation just right, Herreid enlisted the help of Brujo de la Mancha, executive director of Ollin Yoliztli Calmecac and a Nahuatl speaker.
Along with music written by native Mexican composers, the performance also includes music written in Europe but known to have been performed in Mexico at that time.
“Most of the music on this concert is Spanish music from Spain, or a little bit of Flemish music too, because these are the pieces that were brought over to Mexico,” Herreid explains. “We know that they were performed there. They're housed in the cathedrals of Mexico City and Puebla. We know that they were well-thumbed, well-loved manuscripts.”
Piffaro presents "Eagle and Empire" on May 10 at Westminster Presbyterian in Wilmington, with the concert available online from May 22 through June 4.
Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
