Early Art Music in Spain

A quibble first. NGDM makes a distinction between ‘Art’ music and folk music. I don’t much like this – it suggests to me that one sort of music is of the people and so-called classical music is elitist and of the mind rather than the heart. For many composers there is no such separation. Beethoven wrote arrangements of Irish, Welsh, Scottish songs and Zoltan Kodaly ( whose house I have visited in Budapest) together with his compatriot Bartok, wrote music not only inspired by an Hungarian idiom but often based upon it ( Kodaly’s ’Peacock Variations for example). In the end, there is just music, from whatever source. End of quibble!

For the Iberian Peninsula, our earliest knowledge of a music tradition goes back to the needs of the Church, as is so often the case. Our first known source is Isidore (c559-636), Archbishop of Seville. The 4th. Council of Toledo in 633 ordered that there should be a single order of prayer and singing throughout the Visigoth Kingdom, and the Mozarabic Chant was still used in Toledo in the late eleventh century, when the Council of Burgos imposed the Roman rite on the whole Spanish Church.

The Muslim invasion of 711 brought a host of new instruments to the Spanish cities and many of these were used in Christian worship. Seville became the centre of Moorish instrument making. A miniature in El Escorial includes a Moorish player following the King in procession. There is an irony in the fact that the Moors were making such a contribution when music was completely banned in their mosques! The Valledolid Council of 1322 ended the practice and forecast the growing conflict between the two religions and cultures when for so many years Jews, Moslems and Christians had lived creatively together.

B.R.