Music and Christianization on the Northern Frontier of New Spain

John Koegel

INTRODUCTION

From the sixteenth century onwards, European sacred and secular music was a significant force in the Christianization, and, to a lesser extent, the conversion of native peoples throughout Spanish America, New Spain (colonial Mexico), the portions of the United States claimed and selectively settled by Spain -- some of which later became part of independent Mexico -- and in French and Portuguese America. This was also the case in British North America, though in different ways, since no comprehensive attempt was made at conversion during the colonial period. Music aided Roman Catholic missionaries and other church and secular officials in their attempt to attract and convert indigenous peoples to both Christian belief and ritual, and European cultural practices. The use of European music as an outward expression of Christian devotion was relatively successful. However, the measure of its actual success for inner conversion is much harder to gauge. It was also used, albeit to varying degrees of intensity, to divert Native American peoples away from their own indigenous modes of ritual and musical expressions, toward European musical repertories, performance styles, and dance traditions.

Numerous surviving musical and historical documents attest to the dissemination of European sacred and secular music in colonial America. For example, civil and ecclesiastical archives throughout the Spanish-speaking Americas, United States, and Spain preserve and document the musical repertories practiced throughout colonial Catholic America in mission and parish churches, convents, colleges, universities, academies, theatres, private establishments, and cathedrals for and by indios (Indians), mestizos (mixed-race individuals), negros (persons of African descent), criollos (Creoles; those of Spanish heritage born in the Americas), and españoles (peninsular Spaniards). These sources also verify the emphasis Spanish and Creole church and governmental officials placed on music and the visual and literary arts, both as tools for the religious and cultural conversion of indigenous peoples and as mechanisms for control of local populations. European music and art helped bring native peoples more closely into the orbit of the Spanish imperial system.

In French and Portuguese America, European sacred and secular music also was used for purposes of Christianization, and musical institutions were created that emulated musical establishments in France and Portugal, though they were adapted to fit local circumstances. And archives in Canada,¹ Brazil,² and Europe also preserve important musical documentation from French and Portuguese America that has begun to be examined in a critical way.

Missionary activity was widespread throughout Spanish America, and was especially strong and long-lived in frontier regions located at a distance from major urban centers -- in northern and southern New Spain, Bolivia, and Paraguay, for example. The number of mission churches and missionaries assigned to them, as well as the number of Native American musicians and the funds spent on the musical adornment of the liturgy are truly amazing. The Spanish Crown, local governments, secular clergy, and the religious orders committed a substantial investment to the conversion effort among native peoples in the Americas over the course of four centuries.

Many of the members of the religious orders who labored in mission territory in Spanish America (Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans, Augustinians, Mercedarians, and Carmelites) left written reports about mission music. It is especially significant that many mission music manuscripts and liturgical books of music with Spanish and Latin texts survive from the colonial period, especially from the northern Franciscan missions in Alta California,³ and the southern Jesuit missions in Bolivia, and Paraguay.⁴ Close examination of these sources provides us with an understanding of musical repertories and their use in mission territories. This survival rate also has made it possible for a number of modern musical editions of mission music to be published. Many fine performances of this early mission repertory, as well as polyphonic music performed in colonial-era cathedrals, have been given in Latin America, the United States, and Europe; and many professional-caliber recordings have been issued.⁵

While we know how European and Creole missionaries viewed and used music, Native American views of European or indigenous music were infrequently recorded -- though many of the original cultural artifacts they created or used do survive.⁶ When the Native American viewpoint was somehow recorded, it was almost always filtered through a missionary or European perspective. Therefore, we can only hope for a partial understanding of this topic due to the rather one-sided nature of the documentary evidence.

However, the visual arts often provide important clues to indigenous responses to the conversion effort, and a wide range of iconographical and physical objects attest to the role and importance of European music in vice-regal New Spain in urban and rural areas, some of which were created by indigenous artists, especially in Native American parishes and missions: church murals, retablos (altarpieces), statues, ecclesiastical architectural elements, embroidered vestments with angel musicians, manuscripts (especially liturgical chant books with illuminated capitals), musical instruments (organs), and other items for the adornment and elaboration of the liturgy.⁷

While many visual images relating to music and dance survive from the colonial period in central and southern Mexico, relatively few exist in the areas that formed the northern frontier of New Spain (northern Mexico and the southwestern United States). Therefore, in order to understand something of the indigenous response to Spanish evangelization in northern New Spain one must look beyond the usual sources. One form of visual representation that can provide a glimmer of understanding is Native American rock and cave art, many examples of which exist in the arid Southwest and northern Mexico, especially in Arizona, Texas, and Baja California. An important example of an indigenous response to the conversion effort -- both acceptance and rejection -- is found in rock art by Texas Native American artists, probably created during the colonial period. Church and Dancers, Forrest Kirkland’s 1935 watercolor reproduction of rock art found in the Big Bend region of Texas, which depicts Native American dancers (dancing and singing?) outside a mission church, illustrates the syncretism of indigenous dance and musical practices within the context of a Christian worship space, and shows the coexistence (or clash?) of these two world views.⁸ Death of a Missionary, Kirkland’s watercolor reproduction of rock art from the Lower Pecos region of Texas, portrays the rejection of Christian proselytizing by the killing of the missionary and the opposition of these two world views.

If we look carefully at visual images such as these, in addition to other historical and contemporary sources (archival and ethnographic), we find many examples of the survival of European musical, dance, and ritual practices in indigenous communities throughout Latin America and the United States to the present day. Some examples include the use of the violin in Native American communities such as the Tarahumara (Rarámuri)⁹ in northern Mexico and in the Chiquitos region in Bolivia, the current performance of earlier European dance music types by Native American musicians in Southern Arizona (the Tohono O’odham),¹⁰ the wide-spread use of the chirimía (double-reed shawm, or oboe-like instrument) -- first introduced by missionaries in the sixteenth century and now used throughout Latin America -- and the dance dramas with music such as Los matachines and Moros y cristianos (in Mexico and New Mexico), among others.¹¹ Many enduring examples of the adaptation of European hymn repertories to Native American texts and singing styles can be found today and should be viewed as a long-standing and vital practice.¹²

The purpose of this study is twofold: first to interpret the historical narrative about music and liturgy in the colonial era in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, and second, to document and analyze the strong impact of European music on the everyday lives of Native American peoples. Though I allude to missionary activities in central Mexico, the area of initial Spanish evangelization beginning in the 1520s,¹³ the main coverage of this article is devoted to four areas along the northern frontier of New Spain: New Mexico, Sonora, Baja California, and Texas.¹⁴ They can serve as models to some degree for the use of European music in other mission territories in Spanish America.

Established several generations or centuries after the initial missionary thrust in central Mexico, these northern mission territories underwent similar yet different conversion experiences, depending upon their location, terrain, changes in governmental and ecclesiastical policies, and the differing indigenous reactions to European encroachment. However, despite the many negative aspects of European colonization endured by indigenous peoples throughout North America -- disease, warfare, decimation, and cultural and economic subjugation -- music usually served as a powerful and positive force, one that was often willingly embraced by local peoples.¹⁵

NEW MEXICO

The Spanish first began to explore the northern frontier of New Spain with The Francisco Vázquez de Coronado expedition of 1540-1542.¹⁶ Among the men who accompanied Coronado on his entrada (expedition) into the area was the Franciscan missionary Juan de Padilla, who reportedly taught European music to Native Americans (Padilla died a martyr’s death in 1542).¹⁷ However, immediate settlement did not follow upon Coronado’s discoveries. The Spanish presence was only firmly established in what is now the United States’ Southwest 50 years later, beginning in New Mexico in 1598, with the Juan de Oñate expedition. And at about this same time, the Franciscans established a program of evangelization that would endure until secularization at the end of the colonial period, though their authority was challenged by the Discalced Carmelites, who attempted unsuccessfully to establish missions in New Mexico.¹⁸ Though Santa Fe, the provincial capital, was not founded until circa 1610, Franciscan missions were established almost immediately in New Mexico beginning in the late 1590s.¹⁹ However, the real introduction of European music to indigenous peoples occurred during the Oñate expedition and its aftermath, when the Pueblos (the Keresan and Tanoan-speaking Puebloan peoples living in long-established villages in northern New Mexico) began to hear Spanish military music and perform Catholic plainsong and polyphony (part-singing) on a regular basis. These were effective tools in the military subjugation and Christianizing processes. At the very least, the Pueblos accepted or tolerated European traditions through necessity. At the same time, however, some of the Pueblos embraced Christianity and European music.

In the early seventeenth century, New Mexico experienced a flurry of missionary activity. Spanish Franciscans established a system of about 30 missions there, most of which were founded on the sites of pre-existing native pueblos. Franciscan missionary Cristóbal de Quiñones (d. 1609), perhaps the first trained teacher of European music residing in what is now the U.S. Southwest, reportedly directed the building of the church at San Felipe Pueblo, and taught the Native Americans to sing in church services.²⁰ He also may have installed an organ in the church at San Felipe. Fray Agustín de Vetancourt, chronicler of the Franciscan Provincia del Santo Evangelio (Province of the Holy Gospel) to which New Mexico was assigned as mission territory, gave a brief biographical sketch of missionary musician Fray Cristóbal de Quiñones in his Menologio Franciscano.

Fray Cristóbal de Quiñones, a son of our Province of the Holy Gospel, was a diligent worker in the conversion of the gentiles. He went to the New Mexican missions with this strong desire. Learning the language of the Queres, in which he was well versed, he baptized many Native Americans. He was the Custos [vice provincial] of the Order in New Mexico. With his accustomed charity, he sought to cure the sick and alleviate their suffering. He built the church and convent at San Felipe Pueblo, where he also established a pharmacy and infirmary. He installed an organ to enrich the Divine Service and encouraged music-making by the skilled singers [whom he trained].²¹

Another early Franciscan music teacher and church architect in New Mexico was Fray Bernardo de Marta (d. 1635) who was sent to the missionary field with his brother Fray Juan de Marta. Though both reportedly longed for a martyr’s death, it was Juan who ultimately achieved his wish. Martyred in Japan in 1618, he was later beatified. Fray Bernardo de Marta arrived in New Mexico about 1605, and was later remembered as a “great musician and organist of the heavens” who taught Native Americans in many pueblos to sing and play European musical instruments.²²

Fray Roque de Figuredo, missionary to the Zuñi in the 1630s, was praised for having a fine voice, for being an expert in the performance of plainsong and polyphonic music, as a player of the organ, bajón (dulcian, or bassoon-like instrument), and corneta (cornett -- a wind instrument with a cup-shaped mouthpiece).²³ During the time he spent in Mexico City before his missionary career in New Mexico, he attracted attention for his musical talents as well as for his serious and learned nature. As a result, he was highly esteemed by his Franciscan colleagues. Fray Alonso de Benavides, ecclesiastical visitor to the New Mexican missions, mentioned in his report of 1634 that after Fray Roque de Figuredo’s arrival at Zuñi Pueblo he had at once taught “part-singing [canto de órgano] to the boys with the best voices, which enhanced the Mass and the divine service with much solemnity.”²⁴

Spaniard Fray Esteban de Perea (b. ca. 1566), a native of Villanueva del Fresno, Extremadura, arrived in Mexico City in 1605 and was sent to the New Mexican mission field sometime around 1609. He served as superior prelate in the New Mexican missions on three occasions, and also as commissary and custos. The probable founder of Sandia Mission, he was assigned to serve the Tiwa of the middle Río Grande river valley.²⁵ Like other missionaries in early New Mexico, he was involved in teaching European music to the local indigenous populations. Perea exerted a powerful influence in New Mexico, especially in the conflict between the Franciscans and the Spanish civil authorities, and he reported on missionary activities there in his several published relations.²⁶

Partly as a result of Perea’s complaints to the Inquisition in Mexico City, Fray Alonso de Benavides (ca. 1579-ca. 1635) was appointed custos of the Franciscan missions in New Mexico and commissary of the Holy Office for New Mexico in October 1623. Benavides spent much of 1624 arranging for the long and arduous trip, and for the purchase and shipment of the many supplies he would need in New Mexico, for which he was allotted more than 20,000 pesos. Included in the lengthy packing list, along with other supplies such as foodstuffs, bolts of cloth, tools, religious ornaments, and vestments, were a number of musical items, including three large choir-books, and five (perhaps smaller) choir-books, five bells, one set of chirimías and a bajón) five sets of missals of the Franciscan order, and five antiphonaries.²⁷ Benavides left Mexico City in a wagon train with an escort of soldiers, Native American muleteers, and fellow missionaries early in 1625, and he was received by the Spanish governor in Santa Fe on 24 January 1626.²⁸ A High Mass, sung by fellow missionary Fray Ascencio de Zárate, was celebrated in Benavides’ honor on 25 January, the feast day of the Conversion of St. Paul after which the New Mexican mission territory was named (Custodio de la Conversión de San Pablo). In attendance were the governor, Native American alcaldes (leaders), the Santa Fe cabildo (town council), and local residents.

Two official reports of Benavides’ visitation to the New Mexican missions were published -- the first edition (directed to King Philip IV) in 1630,²⁹ and the second (dedicated to Pope Urban VIII) in 1634. These are among the most important documents from early New Mexico. Benavides mentioned in his reports that schools where European music was taught were established at Galisteo, Pecos, San Felipe, Sandia, and Isleta Pueblos, in the Spanish town of Santa Fe, and in the El Paso area (now in Texas but then part of New Mexico). Benavides also noted that bajones and chirimías were used to accompany part-singing in church services (trumpets were also used to enrich the liturgy). He singled out Fray Tomás Carrasco of Taos Pueblo for praise, remarking that “[m]ost outstanding in this pueblo is the marvelous choir of wonderful boy musicians, whose voices the friar [Carrasco] chose from among more than a thousand who attended the schools of Christian teaching.”³⁰

During the seventeenth century, the Spanish crown provided the Franciscan order with funds to purchase food and clothing, building tools and materials, and other necessary supplies, as well as objects for the celebration of the liturgy and religious ritual, including musical instruments, and liturgical books (choir-books, missals, and breviaries). It also provided stipends for the missionaries assigned to the New Mexico missions. Mexico City, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, and other cities in the interior of New Spain served as purchase and shipment points for the New Mexico mission supply service, conducted on a regular basis only from the 1630s, approximately 30 years after the establishment of the Franciscan mission system.³¹ An allotment of supplies was sent to New Mexico according to the number of missionaries already serving there as well as the number of new recruits accompanying the supply convoys. A contract from 1631 indicates that musical items were regularly included in the mission supply trains. The supplies sent to the New Mexican missions were stipulated in this contract, including items for the musical adornment of the liturgy.³² This contract required that each friar new to the New Mexican missions be provided with a missal (with the Office of the Franciscan order), several bells, and “for every five friars sets of chirimías and bajones, trumpets, and three chant books.”³³ Despite these arrangements, the mission supply system was sometimes inefficiently managed, causing periodic hardship in New Mexico.

A report of 1661 stated that in New Mexico, “there is an organist wherever there is an organ.”³⁴ These organs were sent to New Mexico on the regular supply routes from Mexico City and other cities in the interior. A document dated 1664 (but probably referring to the period between 1641 and 1644) notes the presence of excellent choirs and musical libraries containing choir books and musical scores, as well as organs in seventeen of the pueblos, and instrument collections in nineteen out of the twenty-six missions.³⁵ The other seven missions presumably made some provision for music-making as well. Santo Domino, Isleta, and Ácoma pueblos were especially singled out for the excellence of their music. These details certainly indicate a high level of musical accomplishment, and that a significant amount of money was spent on outfitting the missions with instruments and musical supplies.

In response to instructions from authorities in Mexico City, the Franciscan missionaries regularly sent inventories of church possessions to the capital. Reports dated from 1672 noted that the Hopi pueblos of Oraibi and Shongopovi each had a “band of very skilled singers and sufficient [liturgical] books.”³⁶ Ácoma Pueblo had a “most excellent large organ, one of the best in this Holy Custody ... [and] a set of chirimías with its bassoon and trumpets.”³⁷ In Tajique and Chilili both churches had “sets of trumpets, chirimías, and all the musical instruments with which the feasts are celebrated with the greatest harmony of voices and instruments.”³⁸ No musical instruments were mentioned in the report from the Zuñi pueblos of Halona and Hawikuh. Because of the danger from Apache raids, Fray Juan Galdo, minister at Halona, was distracted and may not have made a complete inventory.³⁹ Fray Fernando de Velasco at Socorro reported that the “mission church possessed two new Plantin missals, as well as a set of chirimías with a bajón” (the total worth of which he estimated at twenty pesos).⁴⁰

New Mexico knew many times of trouble in the second half of the seventeenth century. And a number of Native American revolts occurred there between 1645 and 1675; these were promptly put down by the Spanish. After 1660, New Mexico was visited periodically by drought and famine, as well as by ever increasing Apache raids. Though the Spanish civil authorities and Franciscans became aware of the possibility of a major revolt by the Pueblos as early as 1676, attempts to stave it off ultimately failed. A coordinated revolt of the majority of the Pueblos broke out in 1680. Some 400 of the Spanish settlers, including twenty-one Franciscans, were killed by the Pueblos. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 forced all surviving Spanish settlers, soldiers, and Franciscans to retreat southwards to EI Paso, where they stayed for more than a decade. They did not return to northern New Mexico until the 1690s, at which time Spanish musical and ecclesiastical practices were re-established.

Inventories of the New Mexican missions made almost a century later, in 1776, by Fray Francisco Atanasio Domínguez, the ecclesiastical visitor to the New Mexican missions, verify the continued use of musical personnel, instruments, and supplies in New Mexican churches. In his report, Domínguez mentioned the presence of singers at most Pueblos and in some Hispano towns (some probably also served as sacristans). He also inventoried bell wheels (Sanctus bells) and bells (with and without clappers), drums and trumpets (at Santo Domingo and San Jerónimo de Taos), chirimías and a bajón in poor condition (at Cochiti), violins and guitars (at San Jerónimo de Taos, Santo Domingo, and Jémez), and collections of notated plainchant and/or polyphony (at San Ildefonso). He also found old and new breviaries and missals, choir-book stands, and choir lofts in most mission churches.⁴¹ However, he did not record the existence of organs in any of the New Mexican missions. Since he inventoried almost all of the other church possessions, this absence can probably be taken as evidence that organs were not known in late-eighteenth-century New Mexico. Perhaps after the first flush of missionary activity in New Mexico during the early seventeenth century, with its emphasis on elaborate ritual enriched by the use of numerous musical instruments, the impetus to provide for relatively elaborate musical accompaniment by the organ was lost.

Despite the lack of organs, violins and guitars commonly accompanied plainchant and probably part-singing in the eighteenth century. This practice, instituted during the Spanish colonial period in New Mexico, continued into the Mexican (1821-1848) and American periods (after 1848).⁴² The tradition of singing devotional songs in the vernacular accompanied by guitar and violin continues today in similar fashion in New Mexico.⁴³

Several individual pueblos were noted for their musical capilla (musical establishment). For example, Santo Domingo Pueblo, which was known in the seventeenth century for the excellence of its music and the beauty of its church, maintained these traditions into the eighteenth century. Domínguez verified the presence of mission libraries in colonial New Mexico in 1776 and noted that the principal Franciscan library was located at Santo Domingo Pueblo. In his inventory of the mission library, Domínguez listed 256 books relating to theology and philosophy. Though he did not list music books or musical manuscripts, the archive at Santo Domingo Pueblo probably contained some musical items in 1776.⁴⁴ Santo Domingo Pueblo remained a center for music well into the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, its library was lost, probably destroyed by the flooding of the Río Grande in 1886.

Though the musical accomplishments of the Franciscans in New Mexico are indisputable, apparently no actual notated music used in these missions survives, except for the music contained in liturgical books. A missal printed by Plantin in Antwerp in 1725, as well as other liturgical books (some with music) published in Mexico and Europe, also survive from colonial New Mexican missions and villages.⁴⁵ A possible reason for the lack of surviving musical sources was the destruction visited upon the missions by revolts, time, physical decay, and the secularization process. Nevertheless, the surviving inventories of church possessions reveal that notated music was indeed used in New Mexico, though the extent to which indigenous musicians were able to read European music notation is usually not revealed by these inventories, nor by the written comments of the Franciscan missionaries.

The feast days given special prominence in the New Mexican missions were the same as those celebrated in other areas of Spanish America: Christmas, Holy Week and Easter, Corpus Christi, the feasts of the Virgin Mary and San Juan Bautista (St. John the Baptist), the local patronal festivals, and the birthdays, funerals, and saints’ days of the monarch and Spanish governor (or viceroy). Monophonic and harmonized spiritual songs, liturgical hymns, plainchant, and polyphony were probably performed at vespers and mass, and in devotional and ritual events: processions, novenas, velorios (wakes), funerals, memorial services, baptisms, and weddings. Cofradías (confraternities) were established in New Mexico, as they had been earlier in the interior of New Spain. Keeping in step with the rest of Spanish America, New Mexico and other northern frontier areas also celebrated the accession to the throne of Spanish monarchs with festivities, speeches, comedias (plays), bullfights, processions, dances, and music. For example, Santa Fe, New Mexico celebrated the coronation of Fernando VI in January of 1748. However, due to the slowness in communication, it was held more than a year after the actual date of the event.⁴⁶

The Franciscan Third Order was active in colonial New Mexico in the parish churches at Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Santa Cruz de la Cañada, and it counted members from throughout the province. Monthly services, probably with music sung by the parish and/or Pueblo singers, were held for the members of this important lay order in Santa Fe. Its annual feast in honor of San Luis, Rey de Francia (St. Louis, King of France), was celebrated with vespers, a procession, mass, sermon, and other music. For this the members of the Third Order contributed fifty pesos, in the form of chilli, onions, and other goods. Payment was made in kind because the use of coinage was rare in colonial New Mexico.⁴⁷

Though Domínguez’s account is of great value to the understanding of New Mexico’s church history (from the Franciscan viewpoint), he did not give an extensive narrative account of liturgical and musical practices in the province. However, Fray Joaquín de Jesús Ruiz, the missionary at Jémez Pueblo in 1776, left an invaluable and detailed report about the musical and ritual aspects of devotional services, funerals, and the celebration of the mass and offices at his missionary station. He wrote his report in accordance with Fray Francisco Atanasio Domínguez’s order to do so. His is one of the best descriptions of religious musical practices in mission territory. The following are excerpts from his report:

Three of the little choirboys are rehearsed and two assistants are rehearsed, and the chief one intones half-chanting and the accompanists, reply in ordinary fashion. Lest the devotions become burdensome, one day they recite (with a pause) from “Every faithful Christian” to the Articles; the next day from the Commandments to the Confession. On both days they end with the Angelic Salutation, and also on the third day when they recite the declaration of the principal Mysteries as far as the explanation of the Sacrament of the Eucharist. According to the judgment of the father minister, before or after the devotions the interpreter may give a little sermon leading to some understanding of what they have recited or are about to recite. But let it be brief, for if this wearies them, what would a long sermon do?

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On Sundays, after they finish the devotions, the little choirboys ascend to the choir for the Asperges; and while the father is putting on his chasuble they descend to their appointed place, which is the same as for the devotions.

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All the little sacristans are in front of the altar with their arms crossed, and all make the responses and serve at Mass. The musicians play until the elevation of the chalice and sing the hymn in praise of the Most Holy Trinity, and the people make the response.

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There are six choirboys. On their boards they have the sung Masses, the Introits, Offertories, and Communions. The daily Masses follow the missal. Five of them know how to read, and although the sixth cannot, he sings the same as the other five. After breakfast they come to the convent, go over the reading or singing, and depart. The father minister does not let go of their hands until they are men, for if he turns his back, all his labors are lost.

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The Latin language should be emphasized, for this is the principal goal. They read this better than Castilian. They have the burial service for adults written down on boards, and that for children on a card. On the aforesaid they also have the responses for the Day of the Dead and the manner of receiving the prelate. When there is a burial, whether of an adult or a child, the Office for the Dead is performed at the door of the church, and from there to the grave.

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When a [Hispanic] settler is to be buried and his people desire a solemn ceremony, the parties are asked to pay two long pesos for the choirboys, for they are very much in their debt.⁴⁸

The historical evidence shows that the Franciscans in colonial New Mexico (and elsewhere along the northern frontier of New Spain) followed the model for evangelization established earlier in central Mexico. From the beginning of their work in New Mexico in 1598, the Franciscans relied on the power and symbolism of music to attract native peoples to Christianity and to assist in the conversion process. Partly through necessity, the Franciscans and Spanish governmental officials permitted some aspects of native musical, cultural, and religious practices to coexist alongside European ways. This was especially the case in the Pueblos along the Río Grande after the Spanish re-entrance into the province in the 1690s. After the Spanish returned to New Mexico, they were forced to accommodate to a greater degree than before native demands for self government, to tolerate Pueblo cultural practices, to recognize the Pueblo governors as local governmental authorities, and to accept a modification in the tribute system.⁴⁹ These changes in the Native American missions along the Río Grande created a situation in which elements of native and Hispano society, culture, music, and religion were syncretized to a greater degree than before. Nevertheless, the Pueblos (even more than many other Native American groups along the northern frontier) always maintained their own musical and religious systems alongside European ways. The resulting syncretism of Native American and Catholic religious views and practices can still be noted today in the Pueblo communities in New Mexico, which continue to maintain their semi-independent status as separate and self-governing communities in the state of New Mexico.

SONORA, BAJA CALIFORNIA, AND THE PIMERÍA ALTA

Jesuit activity along the far northwestern frontier of New Spain first began in the province of Sonora in the seventeenth century, though missions were established in Sinaloa to the south in the late sixteenth century. It later extended to the Baja California peninsula and the Pimería Alta (present day southern Arizona) in the eighteenth century. The Jesuit presence in this vast area lasted until the expulsion of the order from all of Spanish America in 1767. During their two centuries of missionary activity along the northern frontier of New Spain, the Jesuits strongly promoted music-making by neophytes, significantly, both by girls and boys, as well as women and men. Through their purchasing agents in Mexico City and other large, interior Mexican cities on the road to their mission territories, they obtained musical instruments (harps, strings, winds, and organs) for use in the missions. In their reports and letters to superiors, friends, and relations in Mexico City, Spain, and Europe, they often lauded their spiritual charges, praising their aptitude and ability in instrumental and vocal music, though tending to view them with a paternalistic bias (as did other missionaries). One reason for their success was their willingness to at least partially reconcile Christianity with local circumstances and customs.

Jesuit mission territory in Sonora was bounded on the west by the Gulf of California, on the east by the Tarahumara (Rárimuri) country and Nueva Vizcaya (the modern-day states of Chihuahua and Durango), on the north by the Sonoran desert, and on the south by Sinaloa. An extensive system of missions with accompanying churches, lands and cultivated fields, outbuildings, and an ecclesiastical and military infrastructure was set up in Sonora (and later in Baja California) that served many different linguistic and culture groups. Likewise, extensive libraries with books on theology, philosophy, Native American languages, the lives of saints, and other subjects were established in the Jesuit missions along the northern frontier. Also included were liturgical books, some with music, especially missals.⁵⁰ The Sonoran missions also assisted materially and spiritually in the establishment of the Jesuit missions in Baja California and the Pimería Alta.

Campbell Pennington points out that references to the use of European music among Sonoran Indians date as early as 1623, when Diego Martínez de Hurdaide commented on the teaching of singing to the Névome (Pima Bajo) of Central Sonora in a letter to the Jesuit Visitor to the Northern Missions, Luis Bonifaz (he served in this capacity between 1621 and 1627).⁵¹ Pennington also notes that Juan Ortiz Zapata, Jesuit Visitor in 1678, reported to Tomás Altamirano, the Jesuit Provincial, that Indian singers of European sacred music were to be found in many of the missions in Central Sonora, that the mission at “Ures possessed one of the best chapel singers in all that land,” and that “all the singers knew how to read and write.”⁵²

While many Creole and Spanish Jesuits served in Sonora, a similar number of missionaries were of European origin (especially from Germany, Italy, and central Europe), most notably the Italian-born Father Eusebio Francisco Kino (1644-1711).⁵³ One of the eighteenth-century European Jesuit missionaries, the priest-musician Ignaz Pfefferkorn (b. 1725), was active among the Pima, Opata, and Eudeve Indians of Sonora. He wrote an extensive chronicle of his missionary experiences, which he published in German in 1794, many years after his mission service.⁵⁴ His report about music in Sonora is one of the most detailed of the many similar writings, by the expelled Jesuit missionaries after their forced return to Europe. In it Pfefferkorn remarked about the prodigious musical abilities of the Opata and Eudeve of Sonora to whom he ministered. Below are some excerpts from his report:

Both nations had an extraordinary inclination for music, and many individuals displayed an especial musical ability. If they were shown the first principles of playing a musical instrument, they compensated for the lack of further instruction by an attentive ear and by almost unceasing practice. In most of the villages of these tribes, there were Indians who could play quite well on the vihuela [guitar] or the harp.

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Some of them had been instructed by Spaniards and had afterward taught others of their countrymen. Their art was not sufficient to allow them to play with complete regard for rhythm or exact notes, but they learned many pieces by ear and played them in the proper time and with such finish that they were pleasant to hear.

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I had nine or ten musicians, counting only those in the most important village of my mission area, three of whom I myself had taught to play the violin, the others of whom had learned from Spaniards to play the zither [perhaps psaltery or guitar] and the harp. I had trained them to play on their instruments in unison to accompany the church singing, an accompaniment that they performed competently and in pleasant harmony. Thus were sometimes sung the Mass, the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Salve Regina, and other devotional songs. For such singing, I chose some of the best voices among my Indians and trained them so that they could render from memory the usual songs [plainchant] of the Christian service. Two women among these singers were especially conspicuous for the purity and sweetness of their voices and for their vocal technique.

----

When in the year 1767 the Marquis de Rubí, commander-in-chief of the royal troops in the Kingdom of Mexico, remained with me a couple of days on his journey through Sonora, he was surprised by a Salve Regina, which these two women sang together. Their singing so astonished him that he leaped up in church and told me that he had never heard such glorious voices even in Madrid.

----

In all the missions of the Opatas and Eudeves, as well as in some of those among the Pimas, a solemn High Mass was celebrated on Sundays and on feast days. The choir consisted of Indians who sang so well that many European churches might rightly wish for such voices. I had in my mission of Cucurpe eight choristers, four men and four women. Among the latter, one especially was conspicuous for her incomparable voice.

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In the Opata and Eudeve missions there were also some Indians who performed on musical instruments with agreeable harmony, and who, during the Mass, played [instrumental] music in the pauses between verses. My Indians practiced so assiduously under my direction that they were able to accompany the singers with violins, harps, and zithers [psaltery or guitar]. In my mission, thus accompanied, we not only celebrated the Mass, but also on Saturday, Sunday, and feast day evenings, after completion of the Christian doctrine and the prayer of the rosary, we sang the Litany of Loreto and the Salve Regina. On all other days of the week the same prayers were said, but on those days without singing and music.⁵⁵

Pfefferkorn also described in detail the significant role of European sacred music in processions and on special feast days. He also explained the interaction and cultural interchange between Native Americans and Spaniards (creoles or mestizos) from his perspective.⁵⁶

Other Jesuits active in the northern missions also left testimonies as to the importance of music in ceremonial and religious life. Joseph Och, a native of Würzburg, Bavaria, who was active in Sonora from 1756 to 1765, commented about how strongly his spiritual charges embraced the external aspects of Christian music and spectacle.⁵⁷ The Swiss missionary Philipp (Felipe) Segesser von Brunegg (1689-1762), born into a distinguished family in Lucerne, served for many years among the Pima, at San Xavier del Bac and Guevavi in the Pimería Alta, and at Tecoripa in the Pimería Baja (central Sonora). He wrote several accounts of his missionary work, including descriptions of musical activities. He also sent a series of letters describing his life to his family in Switzerland. These letters have been preserved in his family archive and reveal a wealth of information. Along with his detailed descriptions of daily activities in the Piman missions, Segesser included important information about musical practices, including the regular practice of singing the doctrina (doctrine), Salve Regina, alabado (praise song), and various litanies.⁵⁸ Segesser also noted in 1737 that the Pima at his mission at Tecoripa could sing from chant notation, but that only the choirmaster could read.⁵⁹

After the Jesuit expulsion from New Spain in 1767, the Franciscan order was assigned the administration of the Sonoran missions. Franciscan missionaries from the Apostolic College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro, the missionary college in the city of Querétaro, took over from the Jesuits soon after the latter’s expulsion, continuing with and expanding upon previous Jesuit activities.⁶⁰ Many of the mission churches still standing in the present-day northern Mexican state of Sonora were actually built during the Franciscan rather than the Jesuit period of administration.⁶¹ Like the Jesuits before them, the Franciscans also placed great value on music and frequently trained their missionaries to act as music teachers in mission territory. A notable Franciscan missionary musician active in Sonora was Fray Pedro Font (1738-1781), a Catalan who came to the Apostolic College in Querétaro in 1763, where he probably assumed the duties of choirmaster. It is known with certainty that he copied a number of choir-book volumes of plainchant for use in the missionary college in Querétaro, several of which are now held in the Biblioteca Conventual of the Museo Regional de Querétaro.⁶² He also accompanied the De Anza expedition (1774-1776) to the San Francisco Bay area in Alta California and correctly prophesied that this region could become the site of one of the principal cities of the world, as indeed it did beginning in the 1850s.⁶³ While accompanying the De Anza expedition to Alta California, Font frequently played his psaltery to entertain the Spanish and Mexican soldiers and the native peoples they encountered.

A chain of seventeen missions and over forty visitas (dependent missions) was established in Baja California by the Jesuits, beginning in Loreto in 1697. The cost of establishing and maintaining the extensive chain of Jesuit missions in Baja California was partly underwritten by the Fonda Piadoso (Pious Fund), established by a number of wealthy individuals in Mexico City, with the urging of missionary Juan María Salvatierra. In the Baja California peninsula, more than in Sonora, the Jesuits were successful in limiting Hispanic penetration by controlling the number and assignments of military personnel. They also deliberately limited the contacts between the Native American neophytes and the Spanish/Mexican settlers and soldiers in order to prevent the abuse of indigenous peoples. Despite the great distance between their headquarters in Mexico City and their Baja California missions, the Jesuits were able to establish and cultivate European music-making by indigenous peoples to a high degree of competence in the peninsula.⁶⁴

According to contemporary Jesuit reports, the most talented choir-master in Baja California was the Venetian musician Padre Pedro (Pietro) Nascimbén (b: 1703). Nascimbén served for almost twenty years at Santa Rosalia de Mulegé (1735-1754), where he trained vocal and instrumental ensembles of women and men that invited compliments from visitors and fellow missionaries. Padre Francisco Escalante, Nascimbén’s successor at Mulegé, lauded his predecessor in 1762, especially his talent for composition and music teaching.⁶⁵

The Italian-born Jesuit missionary and Superior Juan María de Salvatierra (né Gianmaria Salvaterra) (1648-1717) also joined in the musical life of the Baja California missions. He was educated at the Jesuit College for Nobles in Parma, where he spent much of his time practicing the lute.⁶⁶ While serving as a missionary in Baja California, he reportedly played the flute and sang simple songs to entrance neophyte children. Believing in the power of music to reinforce Christian doctrine, Salvatierra taught religious texts to children by setting them to music. From time to time, he even joined in dancing at fiestas, as did some other Jesuit missionaries.

Other Jesuit reports included specific information as to the use of ritual and music in the Baja California missions and their place in the lives of the Native American populations. The missionary father at Mission San José de Comondú wrote sometime around 1740 that when dawn broke, Andrés the native sacristan and bell ringer signaled the population to begin the singing of the Ave Maria. After the ringing of the morning bells, the Spanish settlers (creole and mestizo) and soldiers arrived at the church; both the neophytes and the Spanish were then led in prayers and responses. The congregants at Mission San José de Comondú knew the alabado, which was first sung in the morning service by the men alone and then by the women, and then again by both groups. The singing was led by two Native American women, Inés and Chepa, who were designated cantoras (female cantors), and who had been picked specially by the local missionary for their strong voices and musical ability. The alabado was sung again at various times throughout the day.⁶⁷

The principal town of Loreto had a church that was substantially enlarged in the early 1740s, under the direction of Padre Jaime Bravo. Still standing today (though modified), it attracted attention soon after its construction, for its size in addition to the significance of the European music performed there.⁶⁸ The residents of Loreto heard and performed music on a regular basis, and Father Gaspar de Trujillo installed an organ in Loreto’s church in the 1740s, which was played regularly along with other instruments in sacred services. The Hispanic settlers and soldiers in Loreto also sang and played religious music, and they were encouraged by the Jesuits to teach dances and secular music to the Native Americans, probably to keep them from their indigenous ceremonies. Many soldiers were noted for their ability on the harp and guitar. Fiestas were important and regular events in Loreto and throughout the Baja California missions (as elsewhere in New Spain), and they were almost always accompanied by music. Feasts that were given special emphasis in Loreto and Baja California included Holy Week, Corpus Christi, Immaculate Conception, and the patronal feasts of Our Lady of Loreto and San Francisco Xavier. Native peoples as well as Spanish soldiers and settlers took part in these and other religious celebrations.⁶⁹

A 1725 Jesuit memoria (report) reveals that an organ was ordered from an organ maker in Mexico City at a cost of 350 pesos, probably for use in the San Xavier Mission in Baja California. For successful completion of the organ, the builder was rewarded with a gift of thirty pesos beyond the contracted price. The organ was sent disassembled in three boxes, on burro-back, in a pack train, and on a ship across the Gulf of California; and it was assembled at its destination. This was certainly no mean feat! Organs and other instruments were without a doubt sent to the Baja California missions in similar fashion on a regular basis throughout the Jesuit period.⁷⁰

A chain of missions was also established by the Jesuits in the Pimería Alta, in what was the northern region of Sonora (it now encompasses northern Sonora and southern Arizona), founded by the notable missionary leader Eusebio Francisco Kino. Though I have encountered few reports about Jesuit musical activities in the missions in the northern Pimeréa Alta at the main settlements at Guevavi, Tumacácori, and San Xavier del Bac, it is indeed probable that these too followed musical customs established elsewhere along the northern frontier of New Spain. John Kessel has documented religious, ceremonial, and daily life in the Jesuit mission at Los Santos Ángeles de Guevavi. He describes Guevavi’s patronal festival in honor of San Miguel towards the end of the Jesuit period. The local feast was attended by the Pima, the local indigenous group, as well as by the Hispanic residents of the area. Mass (celebrated with music), followed by dancing and singing, the drinking of aguardiente (brandy), the shooting off of firecrackers, and bullfighting made the yearly feast a very special event for all attendees.⁷¹

As in the other parts of the province of Sonora, the Franciscans took over the Pimería Alta and the Mission San Xavier del Bac (near Tucson, Arizona) after the Jesuit expulsion in 1767. Kino had established a church at San Xavier del Bac in 1700 that was never finished; a later church was begun there in 1756. In 1781, the Franciscans began to direct the construction of the present building, which was completed by 1797. San Xavier del Bac, the crown jewel of all the northern missions, today still serves the people that built it more than 200 years ago: the Tohono O'odham (Desert People). To many, it is the most beautiful Spanish colonial ecclesiastical building in the United States.

SPANISH TEXAS

As in other northern frontier areas, Spanish Texas was also a site for Franciscan missionary activity.⁷² However, unlike some of the other northern missions that were spread out over a large geographical area, the approximately forty Franciscan missions in Texas (established between 1682 and 1793) were mostly centered in the area around modern-day San Antonio in south central Texas, along the Río Grande, and in the coastal area along the Gulf of Mexico, though some other shorter-lived missions were established in other areas.⁷³ As in other mission territories, European music took on an important life of its own in Spanish Texas and followed other frontier models.⁷⁴

Fray Juan Agustín Morfí, the main Franciscan chronicler of Spanish Texas, wrote about Native American musicians there. He visited Mission San José in San Antonio (one of five missions in the area) in 1777 and noted that, “These Indians are today well instructed and civilized and know how to work very well at their mechanical trades and are proficient in some of the arts ... . Many play the harp, the violin, and the guitar well.”⁷⁵ In 1795, Fray Manuel Silva of Mission San Juan Capistrano wrote to Spanish Governor Muñoz in San Antonio explaining that since there was a strong need for musicians, Joseph, the native carpenter and violinist who provided the music for votive Lady Masses on Saturdays and for Sunday masses, might prove useful in training the neophytes to play and sing in the choir.⁷⁶ At the mission of Nuestra Señora del Rosario de los Cujanes (near present-day Goliad, Texas, along the Gulf of Mexico), the missionary father wrote that on each Saturday, “he calls them [the neophytes] together and has them recite the Rosary, with the various mysteries, and has them sing the alabado.”⁷⁷ To entice Native Americans away from performing their native songs and dances, including the mitote dance, which the Europeans sometimes viewed as diabolical and sacrilegious, the Franciscans introduced them to Spanish and Mexican dances. One contemporary chronicler noted that:

To withdraw them from their pagan dances and diabolical mitotes the ministers have introduced some Spanish dances. (This has also been done at the Rosario mission.) These dances have been taught with violin and guitar accompaniment, and the Indians have learned them very well. For such performances they wear a special dress, which is of very good material and very gaudy, and use palms, crowns, masks. … As a result, they have partly forgotten their mitotes and pagan dances. I say partly, because when the ministers are not watching them they go off to the woods and there hold their dances.⁷⁸

The Franciscan missionary at Mission San Juan Capistrano (est. 1731), near San Antonio, reported in 1767 about the lives of the Native American population. He praised the musical abilities of his spiritual charges:

With the exception of such Indians who were already old when they came to the mission, and who still remain uneducated and ignorant, all of these Indians speak Spanish and are baptized and know how to pray. Most of them play some musical instrument, the guitar, the violin, or the harp. All have good voices, and on Saturdays, the nineteenth of each month, and on the feasts of Our Lord and of the Blessed Virgin they take out their rosaries, while a choir of four voices, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, with musical accompaniment, sings so beautifully that it is a delight to hear it. ... Both men and women can sing and dance just as the Spaniards, and they do so, perhaps, even more beautifully and more gracefully.⁷⁹

In 1778, at Mission La Purísima Concepción in San Antonio, the resident Franciscan also commented on local indigenous musical and dance practices. Again the mitote was mentioned. The implication is that it was viewed as something bad to be stamped out by the intervention of the missionaries and replaced by Spanish practices.

In a separate room are kept the decorations and dresses with which the Indians bedeck themselves for their dances, introduced by the missionaries, Spanish and Mexican, that they might forget their native mitotes. 

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They speak Spanish perfectly, with the exception of those who are daily brought in from the woods by the zeal of the missionaries. Many play the harp, the violin, and the guitar well, sing well, and dance the same dances as the Spaniards. They go about well dressed, are abundantly fed, and arouse the envy of the less fortunate settlers of San Fernando [the Spanish town of San Antonio].⁸⁰

The mitote continued to be a problem for the Franciscans and Spanish authorities; they must have felt that it directly challenged their spiritual and temporal authority. However, other celebrations were encouraged by the Franciscans. As in Spain and elsewhere in Spanish America, Corpus Christi celebrations were accompanied by music and by the festivities of the gigantes (giants), celebrations during which individuals participated while dressed up wearing giant’s heads (made out of papier-mâché?). The matachines dance tradition was imported into Texas and the Southwest from central Mexico partly as a substitute for the mitote. (Significantly, the matachines dance drama is still regularly performed today in Native American and Mexican-American communities in the Southwest.) The missionary at Mission Concepción near San Antonio wrote about these issues in 1787:

On Christmas Eve, with the permission of the missionary, the Indians dance the Matachines dance at the entrance to the convent. This is where he gives them the customary drink, if the box of bottles holds out. On Christmas day they go to dance at the presidio, at the house of the governor, and at other locations. In some missions, they have their special dress for these fiestas; in the places where they don't have this special dress, they dress up using women’s shawls and blouses. This dance is also given during the Corpus Christi processions to supplement the celebrations of the giants.

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About the decency of the dance that the Indians call mitote: it is certain that it is a bad thing at times) and that they sometimes make excuses to the missionary about it. ... I don't think that the mitote is a bad thing when they do it for mere diversion, since the mitote can be for the Indians what the fandango is for the Spanish. Every day that Mass is said at the mission is also a day for a fiesta ... during Mass the musicians play their instruments in the choir; when the Rosary is recited on Saturday afternoons the violin and guitar are played during the Mysteries.⁸¹

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, organized missionary activities in northern Mexico ended with the secularization process, which occurred at various times in different locations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, even after the Mexican government issued an official order for secularization of the Alta California missions in the 1830s, some missionaries still labored on in their missions. Certainly by the 1850s, however, most church pastoral assignments were filled by secular priests in the surviving colonial-era missions (when they were filled). A new wave of evangelization occurred in northern Mexico and the Southwest during the later nineteenth century, though this was led in part by Protestant missionaries.⁸² (The use of music in this later period of missionary activity has not yet been studied.)

Though many details about the use of music in the Spanish missions in New Spain are known, much remains to be discovered and analyzed before a more complete record of this important musical activity can be established. Despite the many forces that have worked to scatter the historical record -- the vicissitudes and depredations of time, nature, neglect, war, and annexation by foreign powers -- we can still marvel at the fact that some musical sources survive at all and that they, along with the documentary record, point to a sophisticated musical life, which was integrated into daily life in the missions and settlements in Northern New Spain.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY OF COMPACT DISCS OF SACRED MUSIC FROM NEW SPAIN

• Aires del Virreinato Solos, Arias, Tonadas y Cantadas de la Nueva España; Martha Molinar, IRODART CD, produced 1996.

• Baroque Music of Latin America; Camerata Renacentista de Caracas; Dorian CD, Dor-93199; produced 1992.

• California Mission Music; John Biggs Consort; Consort Press CD, CMM1997, produced 1974.

• Les chemins du baroque 3: Mexico, Messe de l’a Assomption de la Vierge; Compañia Musical de las Américas, La Fenice; K.617 CD, K617024, produced 1992.

• Les chemins du baroque 10: Mexique/Dominique Ferran Orgue historique de Tlacochhahuaya; Dominique Ferran, organ; K617 CD, K617049, produced 1994.

• Les chemins du baroque 18: Mexique/Le siecle d’or a la cathédrale du Mexico; La Cappella Cervantina; K617 CD, K617075, produced 1997.

• A Choir of Angels II: Mission Music; Zephyr; Civic Records Group CD; CVC1-0005-2, produced 1997.

• Guadalupe: Virgen de los Indios; San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble; IAGO/Talking Taco Music CD; IAGOCD210, produced 1998.

• Ignacio de Jerusalem: Matins for the Virgin of Guadalupe; Chanticleer, Chanticleer Sinfonia; Teldec CD, 0630-19340-2, produced 1998.

• Masterpieces of Mexican Polyphony; Westminster Cathedral Choir; Hyperion CD, CDA66330, produced 1989.

• Mexican Baroque: Music from New Spain; Chanticleer, Chanticleer Sinfonia; Teldec CD, 4509-96353-2, produced 1994.

• México barroco vol. 1: Ignacio Jerúsalem y Stella/Francisco Delgado; Schola Cantorum, Conjunto de Cámera de la Ciudad de México; Urtext CD, UMA 2001, produced 1995.

• México barroco vol. 2: Navidad/Ignacio Jerúsalem y Stella; Coro y Conjunto de Cámera de la Ciudad de México; Urtext CD, UMA 2002, produced 1991.

• México barroco vol. 2: A la milagrosa escuela/Ignacio Jerúsalem y Stella (1707-1769); Coro y Conjunto de Cámera de la Ciudad de México; Urtext CD, UMA 2012, produced 1998.

• México barroco/Puebla I: Maitines de Natividad, 1653, Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla; Angelorum de Puebla, Schola Cantorum de México; Urtext CD, UMA 2004, produced 1996.

• México barroco/Puebla II: Missa “Ego Flos Campi,” Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla; Angelorum de Puebla, Schola Cantorum de México, Niños Cantores de la UNAM; Urtext CD, UMA 2005, produced 1996.

• México barroco/Puebla III: Missa sobre el “Beatus Vir de Fray Xacinto,” Fabián Ximeno; Angelorum de Puebla, Ruth Escher, Cécile Gendron; Urtext CD, UMA 2006, produced 1996.

• México barroco/Puebla IV: Missa a 8 con violines y clarines/José de San Juan; Coro y Conjunto de Cámera de la Ciudad de México; Urtext CD, UMA 2007, produced 1997.

• México barroco/Puebla V: Missa de la Batalla/Fabián Ximeno Pérez; Angelorum de Puebla; Urtext CD, UMA 2008, produced 1997.

• México barroco/Puebla VI: Misa en Re mayor, a 4 y 8 para grande orquesta “La Grande”/Manuel Arenzana; Coro y Conjunto de Cámera de la Ciudad de México; Urtext CD, UMA 2010, produced 1998.

• México barroco/Puebla VII: Maitines de Navidad 1652/Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla; Angelicum de Puebla; Urtext CD, UMA 2011, produced 1998.

• México barroco/Puebla VIII: Maitines para Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe/Manuel Arenzana; Coro y Conjunto de Cámera de la Ciudad de México; Urtext CD, UMA 2013, produced 2000.

• El milagro de Guadalupe; SAVAE, Iago CD214, produced 1999. 

• Mission Music of California: A 200-Year Anthology; various performers including Cappella Gloriana; Franciscan Friars of California CD, produced 1997.

• Music of the Mexican Baroque: Padilla; Cappella Rutenberg; RCM/Rubendo Canis Musica CD, RCM 19901, produced 1999.

• Música Barroca Mexicana; Capella Cervantina; Quindecim CD, QP008, produced 1996.

• Música virreinal mexicana; ArsNova CD, AND01, produced 1993.

• Native Angels; SAVAE Vocal Ensemble; Iago CD, CD204.

• Nueva España: Close Encounters in the New World, 1590-1690; The Boston Camerata; Erato CD, 2292-45977-2, produced 1993.

• The Organ at La Valenciana, Guanajuato, Mexico; Donald Joyce, organ; Titanic CD, Titantic-188, produced 1991.

• Órgano barróco de Tlacochahuaya, Oaxaca-México; José Suárez, organ; Quindecim CD, QP 014, produced 1998.

• Orgues du Mexique; Vol. I: Orgues de la Cathédrale de Mexico; Guy Bovet, organ; Gallo CD, CD-439, produced 1987.

• Orgues du Mexique; Vol. II; Guy Bovet, organ; Gallo CD, CD-440, produced 1987.

• Orgues du Mexique; Vol. III: Orgues de la Cathédrale de Mexico (Orgue de l’epitre (coté Levante); Guy Bovet, organ; Gallo CD, CD-560, produced 1989.

• Sol y Sombra: Baroque Music of Latin America; Chatham Baroque, Dorian CD, Dor-90263, produced 1999.

• Spain in the New World; Hesperus; Golden Apple CD, GACD 7552; produced 1990.

• Tente en el Ayre; La Fontegara, Spartacus CD, SDL21011.

Endnotes

1. Canadian secular and religious archives preserve significant resources for the study of music in indigenous communities in New France, as do a number of collections in the United States (especially the John Carter Brown and Newberry Libraries). See the following for information about religious life and music in New France and Louisiana, including the activities of the male (Jesuit, Recollect [Franciscan], Sulpician, Seminary Priests of Foreign Missions of the Seminary of Quebec), and female (Congregation of Notre Dame and Ursuline) orders: Willy Amtmann, La musique au Quebec, 1600-1875 (Montreal, 1976); Carole Blackburn, Harvest of Souls: The Jesuit Missions and Colonialism in North America, 1632-1650 (Montreal, 2000); Paul-André Dubois, De l’oreille au coeur: Naissance du chant religieux en langues amérindiennes dans les missions de Nouvelle-France, 1600-1650 (Quebec City, 1992); W. J. Eccles, The French in North America, 1500-1765 (East Lansing, MI, 1998); Elisabeth Gallat-Morin and Jean-Pierre Pinson, La vie musicale en Nouvelle-France (Quebec City, 2003); Elisabeth Gallat-Morin, ed., Le livre d’orgue de Montréal (Montreal, 1981); idem, Jean Girard, musicien en Nouvelle-France: Bourges 1696-Montreal 1765 (Quebec City, 1993); Roger Magnuson, Education in New France (Montreal, 1992); Peter N. Moogk, Le nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada: A Cultural History (East Lansing, MI, 2000); Erich Paul Schwandt, “Le motet classique français en Nou: Cent années d’adaptation (1652-1755),” in Actes du Colloque internationale de musicologie sur Ie grand motet français, 1663-1792, ed. Jean Mongrédien and Yves Ferraton (Paris, 1987), 199-213; idem, “Some Motets in Honour of St. Joseph in the Archives of the Ursulines of Quebec,” Canadian University Music Review/Revue de musique des universités canadiennes 17 (1996): 57-71; idem, “Some 17th-Century French Unica in Canada: Notes for RISM,” Fontes Artis Musicae 27 (1980): 172-74; idem, “The Motet in New France: Some 17th- and 18th-Century Manuscripts in Quebec,” Fontes Artis Musicae 28 (1981): 194-219. For French and Spanish Louisiana, see Alfred E. Lemmon, “Te Deum Laudamus: Music in St. Louis Cathedral from 1725 to 1844,” in Cross, Crozier, and Crucible, ed. Glenn R. Conrad (Lafayette, LA, 1993); idem, “Music and Art in Spanish Colonial Louisiana,” in The Spanish Presence in Louisiana, 1763-1803, ed. Glenn R. Conrad (Lafayette, LA, 1996). For Upper Louisiana (the modern-day states of Missouri and Illinois), see William E. Foley, The Genesis of Missouri: From Wilderness Outpost to Statehood (Columbia, MO, 1989); John Koegel, “Spanish and French Mission Music in Colonial North America,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 126 (2001): 1-53 (at 42-47); idem, “Rural Musical Life in the French Villages of Upper Louisiana,” in On Bunker’s Hill: Essays in Honor of J. Bunker Clark, ed. William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird (Sterling Heights, MI, 2007), 13-25.

2. Brazilian musicologists such as Paulo Castagna have begun to study mission music in colonial Brazil. See Elisabeth Prosser and Paulo Castagna, eds., Anais do I Simpósio Latino-Americano de Musicologia: 10 a 12 de Janeiro de 1997: Memorial de Curitiba (Curitiba, 1998); idem, Anais: II Simpósio Latino-Americano de Musicologia: 21 a 25 de Janeiro de 1998: Memorial de Curitiba (Curitiba, 1999); see the extensive bibliography on Brazilian colonial music in Daniel Mendoza de Arce, Music in Ibero-America to 1850: A Historical Survey (Lanham, MD, 2001), 685-92.

3. Because of the significant number of surviving manuscript musical sources with a California mission provenance, Franciscan musical activities in Alta California have been extensively studied. See Koegel, “Spanish and French Mission Music in Colonial North America;” idem, “Spanish Mission Music from California: Past, Present and Future Research,” American Music Research Center Journal 3 (1993): 78-111; Craig H. Russell, “Newly Discovered Treasures from Colonial California: The Masses at the San Fernando Mission,” Inter-American Music Review 13 (1992): 5-9; idem, “Fray Juan Bautista Sancho: Tracing the Origins of California’s First Composer and the Early Mission Style, Part I,” Boletín: The Journal of the California Mission Studies Association 21 (2004): 68-101; idem, “Fray Juan Bautista Sancho: Tracing the Origins of California’s First Composer and the Early Mission Style, Part II,” Boletín: The Journal of the California Mission Studies Association 21 (2004): 4-35; William John Summers, “California Mission Music,” in The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, ed. Stanley Sadie and H. Wiley Hitchcock (London, 1986), 1:345-47; idem, “The Misa Viscaína: An Eighteenth-Century Musical Odyssey to Alta California,” in Encomium Musicae: Essays in Memory of Robert J. Snow, ed. David Crawford and G. Grayson Wagstaff (Hillsdale, NY, 2002), 127-41; idem, “Music of the California Missions: An Inventory and Discussion of Selected Printed Books Used in Hispanic California,” Soundings, University of California Libraries, Santa Barbara 9 (1977): 13-29; idem, “New and Little Known Sources of Hispanic Music from California,” Inter-American Music Review 11 (1991): 13-24; idem, “Opera Seria in Spanish California: An Introduction to a Newly-Identified Manuscript Source,” in Music in Performance and Society: Essays in Honor of Roland Jackson, ed. Malcolm,Cole and John Koegel (Warren, MI, 1997), 269-90; idem, “Orígenes hispanos de la música misional de California,” Revista Musical Chilena 149-150 (1980): 34-48; idem, “Recently Recovered Manuscript Sources of Liturgical Polyphony from Spanish California,” Ars Musica Denver 7 (1994): 13-30; idem, “Spanish Music in California, 1769-1840: A Reassessment,” in Report of the Twelfth Congress Berkeley 1977, International Musicological Society, ed. Daniel Heartz and Bonnie Wade (Kassel, 1981), 360-80; Grayson Wagstaff, “Franciscan Mission Music in California, c. 1770-1830: Chant, Liturgical, and Polyphonic Traditions,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 126 (2001): 54-82.

4. For studies of Jesuit musical evangelization in Bolivia and Paraguay, see Samuel Claro, La música en las misiones jesuitas de Moxos (Santiago de Chile, 1969); Bernardo Illari, ed., Música Barroca del Chiquitos Jesuítico: Trabajos Leídos en el Encuentro de Musicólogos, Primer Festival Internacional de Música Renacentista y Barroca Americana (Santa Cruz de la Sierra, 1998); T. Frank Kennedy, S.J., “Colonial Music from the Episcopal Archive of Concepcion, Bolivia,” Latin American Music Review 9 (1988): 1-17; Eckart Kühne, ed., Las Misiones Jesuíticas de Bolivia: Martin Schmid, 1694-1772 (Santa Cruz de la Sierra, 1996); Francisco Curt Lange, “El extrañamiento de la Compañia de Jesús del Río de la Plata,” Revista Musical Chilena 165 (1986): 4-14; 176 (1991): 57-98; Piotr Nawrot, Claudia Prudencio, and María Eugenia Soux, eds., Pasión y Muerte de N. S. Jesucristo: Música de los Archivos Coloniales de Bolivia, Siglos XVII y XVIII (La Paz, 1997); Piotr Nawrot, ed., Música de vísperas en las reducciones de Chiquitos de Bolivia (1691-1767): Obras de Domenico Zipoli y maestros jesuitas e indígenas anónimos (Concepción, 1994).

5. See the discography at the end of the article.

6. From the beginning of the conversion effort in the Americas, some missionaries who also were trained musicians took note of Indian music and dance practices in their published and unpublished relations and memoirs, and some made the effort to transcribe and describe accurately Indian song and dance. Among the most important sources for ethnographic descriptions of Indian music and dance from the European perspective is Ruben Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791, 73 vols. (Cleveland, OH, 1896-1901). Historic transcriptions of Indian music from North America have been expertly edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine in her sumptuous and seminal collection Writing American Indian Music: Historic Transcriptions, Notations, and Arrangements (Music of the United States of America, 12) (Middletown, WI, 2002). A notable example of a missionary musician who collected the music and studied the language of his spiritual charges is Fray Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta, Franciscan missionary at Mission San Juan Bautista in Alta California, who transcribed a series of Mutsun songs and wrote a Mutsun-Spanish vocabulary (manuscripts in the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley), as well as a Mutsun confessionary (John Gilmary Shea Papers, Box: 7, Folder 5, Special Collections Division, Lauinger Library, Georgetown University). Arroyo de la Cuesta’s musical transcriptions are included in Levine’s Writing American Indian Music, 17-18. Also see David E. Crawford, “The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Early Sources for an Ethnography of Music among American Indians,” Ethnomusicology 11 (1967): 199-206; Robert Stevenson, “English Sources for Indian Music until 1882,” Ethnomusicology 17 (1973): 399-442; idem, “Written Sources for Indian Music until 1882,” Ethnomusicology 17 (1973): 1-40. The best bibliographic reference guide to North American Indian music is Richard Keeling, North American Indian Music: A Guide to Published Sources and Selected Recordings (New York, 1997).

7. See Salvador Moreno, “La imagen de la música en México,” Artes de México 148 (Mexico City, n.d.); María Teresa Suárez, La caja de órgano en Nueva España durante el barroco (Mexico City, 1991); Gustavo Delgado Parra, Los órganos históricos de la Catedral de México (Mexico City, 2005); Gustavo Delgado Parra and Ofelia Gómez Castellanos, Órganos históricos de Oaxaca: Estudio y catalogación (Mexico City, 2000).

8. See Forrest Kirkland and William W. Newcomb, The Rock Art of Texas Indians (Austin, TX, 1967, rprt. 1996).

9. While the Tarahumara selectively resisted conversion efforts led (primarily) by the Jesuits, chains of missions were established among them, and European music was used in the conversion effort. Recently, scholars have investigated indigenous responses to the conversion effort using historical and anthropological approaches. See William L. Merrill, “Conversion and Colonialism in Northern Mexico: The Tarahumara Response to the Jesuit Mission Program, 1601-1767,” in Conversion to Christianity: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on a Great Transformation, ed. Robert W. Hefner (Berkeley, 1993), 129-63; Susan M. Deeds, “Indigenous Responses to Mission Settlement in Nueva Vizcaya,” in The New Latin American Mission History, ed. Erick Langer and Robert H. Jackson (Lincoln, NE, 1995), 77-108.

10. James S. Griffith examines the endurance and recreation of European dance music among the Tohono O'odham in Southern Arizona Folk Arts (Tucson, AZ, 1988); idem, Beliefs and Holy Places: A Spiritual Geography of the Pimería Alta (Tucson, AZ, 1992).

11. A collection that brings together a wide range of essays on musical interactions between Amerindian, European, and African peoples throughout the Americas is Carol E. Robertson, ed., Musical Repercussions of 1492: Encounters in Text and Performance (Washington, D.C., 1992).

12. For important studies of Christian musical practices (including hymnody) among Indian populations in Canada and the United States, see Nicole Beaudry, “Rêves, chants, et priers Dènès: Un confluence de spiritualités,” Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec 21 (1991): 23-36; Beverley Cavanagh, “The Transmission of Algonkian Indian Hymns: Between Orality and Literacy,” in Musical Canada: Words and Music Honoring Herbert Kallmann, ed. John Beckwith and Frederick Hall (Toronto, 1988), 3-28; Beverley Diamond-Cavanagh, “Christian Hymns in Eastern Woodlands Communities: Performance Contexts,” in Musical Repercussions of 1492, 381-94; David E. Draper, “‘Abba Isht Tuluwa’: The Christian Hymns of the Mississippi Choctaws,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 6 (1982): 43-62; John W. Grant, “Missionaries and Messiahs in the Northwest,” Sciences Religieuses/ Studies in Religion 9 (1980): 125-35; J. Vincent Higginson, Hymnody in the American Indian Missions (Papers of the Hymn Society 18) (New York, 1954); Gertrude Prokosch Kurath, “Catholic Hymns of Michigan Indians,” Anthropological Quarterly 3 (1957): 31-44; idem, “Blackrobe and Shaman: The Christianization of the Michigan Algonquians,” Papers of the Michigan Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters 44 (1959): 209-15; Hugh D. McKellar, Hymn Texts in the Aboriginal Languages of Canada (Fort Worth, TX, 1992); George William Stevenson, “The Hymnody of the Choctaw Indians of Oklahoma” (D.M.A. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1977); Lynn Whidden, “Les Hymnes, une anomalie parmie les chants traditionnels des Cris du nord,” Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec 15 (1985): 29-36.

13. For studies of sacred music in New Spain, see Gabriel Saldívar, Historia de la música en México (épocas precortesiana y colonial) (Mexico City, 1934); Robert M. Stevenson, “Mexico City Cathedral Music, 1600-1750,” Inter-American Music Review 9 (1987): 75-114; idem, “Mexico City Cathedral: The Founding Century,” Inter-American Music Review 1 (1979): 131-78; idem, Music in Aztec and Inca Territory (Berkeley, 1968); idem, Music in Mexico: A Historical Survey (New York, 1952).

14. Mission music in Alta California is not included here since it has been extensively discussed by William Summers, Craig Russell, and Grayson Wagstaff in a series of important articles; see footnote 3.

15. Historians have begun to investigate the negative aspects of conversion efforts and colonialism in Latin America. Publications that are especially relevant for this study include: Robert H. Jackson, Indian Population Decline: The Missions of Northwestern New Spain, 1687-1840 (Albuquerque, NM, 1994); idem, From Savages to Subjects: Missions in the History of the American Southwest (Armonk, NY, 2000); Robert H. Jackson and Edward Castillo, Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization: The Impact of the Mission System on California Indians (Albuquerque, NM, 1995); Langer and Jackson, eds., The New Latin American Mission History (see note 9); Robert H. Jackson, ed., New Views of Borderland History (Albuquerque, NM, 1998).

16. For historical overviews of and resource guides to life in the colonial Southwest, see Thomas C. Barnes, Thomas H. Naylor, and Charles W. Polzer, Northern New Spain: A Research Guide (Tucson, AZ, 1981); Bernard L. Fontana, Entrada: The Legacy of Spain and Mexico in the United States (Tucson, AZ, 1994); Ross Frank, From Settler to Citizen: New Mexican Economic Development and the Creation of Vecino Society, 1750-1820 (Berkeley, CA, 2000); John L. Kessel, Spain in the Southwest: A Narrative History of Colonial New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California (Norman, OK, 2002); David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, CT, 1992). These and other historians studying northern New Spain very rarely discuss music, despite its importance (however, Frank does give a few musical statistics and Kessel in other studies has discussed religious ritual). Kristin Dutcher Mann breaks new ground in her important forthcoming book on the use of music in the missions of Northern New Spain (Academy of American Franciscan History).

17. Lota M. Spell, “Music Teaching in New Mexico in the Seventeenth Century,” New Mexico Historical Review 2 (1927): 27-36 (at 29). For other studies of mission music in colonial New Mexico see Koegel, “Spanish and French Mission Music in Colonial North America;” Lincoln B. Spiess, “Benavides and Church Music in New Mexico in the Early Seventeenth Century,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 17 (1964): 144-56; idem, “Church Music in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico,” New Mexico Historical Review 40 (1965): 5-21; idem, “A Group of Books from Colonial New Mexico,” in Hispanic Arts and Ethnohistory in the Southwest. New Papers Inspired by the Work of E. Boyd, ed. Marta Weigle and Ciaudia Larcombe (Santa Fe, NM, 1983), 359-77.

18. Kelli Ringhofer, then a Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota, working with Carol Urness, curator emeritus of the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota, recently transcribed and studied a series of documents concerning unsuccessful Carmelite attempts in the 1590s to establish a missionary presence in New Mexico and California, which, though supported by Philip II, were opposed by the Franciscans. These documents, which date from 1595 to 1605, are at the James Ford Bell Library. They are bound together and have been identified as the “Records of the Aborted Mission to New Mexico, Discalced Carmelites, 1595-1605” (Bell 1595fDino).

19. See George Kubler, The Religious Architecture of New Mexico in the Colonial Period and Since the American Occupation (Colorado Springs, 1940, rprt. Albuquerque, NM, 1990).

20. France V. Scholes and Lansing B. Bloom, “Friar Personnel and Mission Chronology, 1598-1629,” New Mexico Historical Review 19 (1944): 319- 36; 20 (1945): 38-82.

21. My translation from Agustín de Vetancourt, Menologio franciscano de los varones mas senalados pub. with Teatro mexicano: Descripción breve de los sucesos ejemplares históricos y religiosos del nuevo mundo de las indias (facsimile ed., Mexico City, 1971), part 4, 43. Scholes cast a doubt on Quiñones’ activity in New Mexico and believed that Vetancourt may have confused Quiñones with Fray Cristóbal Quirós, also active in New Mexico. See Scholes and Bloom, “Friar Personnel and Mission Chronology,” 329.

22. Vetancourt, Menologio franciscano, part 4, 103.

23. Frederick Webb Hodge, George P. Hammond, and Agapito Rey, eds., Fray Alonso de Benavides’ Revised Memorial of 1634 (Albuquerque, NM, 1945), 215, 220; Lansing B. Bloom, “Fray Esteban de Perea’s Relación,” New Mexico Historical Review 8 (1933): 211-35.

24. Hodge, Hammond, and Rey, eds., Fray Alonso de Benavides’ Revised Memorial of 1634, 74-75.

25. Bloom, “Fray Esteban de Perea’s Relación.”

26. Esteban de Perea, Verdadera relacion, de la grandiosa conversion qve ha avido en el Nuevo Mexico (Seville, 1632); idem, Segunda relacion, de la grandiosa conversion que ha avido en el Nuevo Mexico (Seville, 1633); published in The Land of Sunshine 15 (1901): 357-62, 465-69.

27. Hodge, Hammond, and Rey, eds., Fray Alonso de Benavides’ Revised Memorial of 1634, 115, 118-19.

28. Peter P. Forrestal, C.S.C. and Cyprian J. Lynch, O.F.M., eds., Benavides’ Memorial of 1630 (Washington, D.C., 1954), xv.

29. Fray Alonso de Benavides, Memorial que Fray Juan de Santander de la Orden de San Francisco, Comissario General de Indias, presenta a la Magestad Catolica del Rey don Felipe Quarto Nuestro Señor (Madrid, 1630). Four translations were published: French (Brussels, 1631), Dutch (Antwerp, 1631), Latin (Salzburg, 1634), and German (Salzburg, ca. 1634).

30. Hodge, Hammond, and Rey, eds., Fray Alonso de Benavides’ Revised Memorial of 1634, 71.

31. France V. Scholes, “The Supply Service of the New Mexican Missions in the Seventeenth Century,” New Mexico Historical Review 5 (1930): 93-115, 186-210, 386-404.

32. Scholes, “The Supply Service,” 100-102.

33. Scholes, “The Supply Service,” 102-103.

34. Spell, “Music Teaching in New Mexico,” 33-34.

35. The presence of organs was noted at the following New Mexican Pueblos: San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Nambé, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, Pecos, Galisteo, Chilili, Tajique, Cuarac (Quarái), Abó, Jémez, Zia, Sandia, Isleta, Alameda, and Ácoma. France Scholes, “Documents for the History of the New Mexican Missions in the Seventeenth Century,” New Mexico Historical Review 4 (1929): 45-59, 105-202 (at 47-50).

36. Fray José de Espeletta, “Memoria y relación de algunas cosas sacadas fiel y legalmente del libro en que están escritas las cosas pertenecientes a la iglesia y sacristiá de Orahui, ultimo poblado del mundo, y de Xongopaui,” 21 August 1672; Archivo Franciscano, Biblioteca Nacional de México, 19/423.1 f. 1-2. France V. Scholes and Eleanor B. Adams, “Inventories of Church Furnishings in Some of the New Mexico Missions, 1672,” in Dargan Historical Essays: Historical Studies Presented to Marion Dargan by His Colleagues and Former Students, ed. William M. Dabney and Josiah C. Russell (Albuquerque, NM, 1952), 27-38; Ignacio del Río, Guía del Archivo Franciscano de la Biblioteca Nacional de México (Mexico City, 1975).

37. Fray Lucas Maldonado, “Memoria y relación de las cosas que pertenecen al culto divino, así del templo como de la sacristía, sacadas fielmente del libro del convento de San Esteban de Acoma,” 25 August 1672; Archivo Franciscano, Biblioteca Nacional de México, 19/422.6, f. 6-7v.

38. Fray Francisco Gómez de la Cadena, “Memoria de las alhajas que tienen en la iglesia y sacristía los conventos de San Miguel de Baxique y da la Natividad de Chilili,” 20 August 1672; Archivo Franciscano, Biblioteca Nacional de México, 19/422.5, f. 5-5v. “Tienen ambas iglesias sus ternos de trompetas, chirimías, y todos ynstrumentos de musica con que se celebran las fiestas con grandissima consonancia de bosses, y instrumentos."

39. Fray Juan Galdo, “Memoria de lo que tiene este convento de Nuestra Señora de la Purificación y Limpia Concepción del pueblo de Alona, provincia de Zuñi ... y memoria de lo que tiene ... del pueblo de Aguico,” 19 September 1672; Archivo Franciscano, Biblioteca Nacional de México, 19/422.12, f. 14-15.

40. Fray Fernando de Velasco, “Memoria de los precios de las alhajas y ornamentos ricos que los religiosos ministros han puesto en esta sacristía e iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Socorro,” 26 August 1672; Archivo Franciscano; Biblioteca Nacional de México, 19/422.9, f. 10-11.

41. Francisco Atanasio Domínguez, The Missions of New Mexico, 1776: A Description by Fray Francisco Atanasio Domínguez with Other Contemporary Documents, ed. Angelico Chávez, O.P.M. and Eleanor B. Adams (Albuquerque, NM, 1956), 107, 131, 178.

42. See John Koegel, “Village Musical Life along the Río Grande: Tomé, New Mexico since 1739,” Latin-American Music Review 18 (1997): 171-248.

43. See Music of New Mexico: Hispanic Traditions, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, compact disc 40409, produced 1992.

44. Domínguez, The Missions of New Mexico, 220-33.

45. E. Boyd, “A Roman Missal from Santa Cruz Mission,” EI Palacio 64 (1957): 233-37.

46. Eleanor B. Adams, “Viva el Rey!” New Mexico Historical Review 35 (1960): 284-92. For similar celebrations in other frontier areas of Spanish America see John L. TePaske, “Funerals and Fiestas in Early Eighteenth-Century St. Augustine,” Florida Historical Quarterly 44 (1965): 97-104; and Alfred Lemmon’s articles on New Orleans, cited in footnote 1.

47. Domínguez, The Missions of New Mexico, 18.

48. Domínguez, The Missions of New Mexico, 309, 311.

49. Jim Norris examines the decline of Franciscan influence in New Mexico after the Pueblo Revolt in After “The Year Eighty”: The Demise of Franciscan Power in Spanish New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM, 2000).

50. Michael Mathes has transcribed and interpreted Baja California inventories from 1773, with references to liturgical books in Jesuit mission libraries. See his “Oasis culturales en la Antigua California: Las bibliotecas de las misiones de Baja California en 1773,” Estudios de historia novohispana 10 (1991): 369-442.

51. Diego Martínez de Hurdaide, “Carta de Diego Martínez de Hurdaide al padre visitador 12 junio,” 12 June 1623, Bolton Collection, Bancroft Library, cited in Campbell W. Pennington, The Material Culture: The Pima Bajo of Central Sonora (Salt Lake City, 1980), 1:71, 390. For the identification of Luis Bonifaz as the Jesuit Visitor to the Northern Missions, see Barnes, Naylor, and Polzer, Northern New Spain: A Research Guide, 119.

52. Juan Hortiz Zapata, “Relación de las misiones que la Compañía tiene en el reyno y provincias de la Nueva Vizcaya en la Nueva España, echa el año de 1678 ... ,” 1678, Bolton Collection, Bancroft Library; cited in Pennington, The Material Culture: the Pima Bajo of Central Sonora, 1:71, 395.

53. See Alfred E. Lemmon, “An die Musik: The Impact of German-Speaking Jesuit Musician-Missionaries in Spanish America,” in Nationalstile und europäisches Denken in der Musik von Fasch und seinen Zeitgenossen: Bericht über die Internationale Wissenschaftliche Konferenz am 21. und 22. April 1995 in Rahmen der IV. Internationalen Fasch-Festtage in Zerbst (Dessau, 1997), 128-37; idem, “Musicología jesuítica en la provincia de Nueva Espana y el rol de la música,” Revista musical de Venezuela 12 (1992): 211-23.

54. Ignaz Pfefferkorn, Beschreibung der Landschaft Sonora samt andern merkwürdigen Nachrichten von den inneren Theilen Neu-Spaniens und Reise aus Amerika bis in Deutschland (Cologne, 1794); translated and edited as Sonora: A Description of the Province, ed. Theodore E. Treutlein (Albuquerque, NM, 1949), 246-47.

55. Pfefferkorn, Sonora, 269.

56. Pfefferkorn, Sonora, 289.

57. Theodore E. Treutlein, ed., Missionary in Sonora: The Travel Reports of Joseph Och, S.J., 1755-1767 (San Francisco, CA, 1965), 134.

58. John L. Kessell, Mission of Sorrows: Jesuit Guevavi and the Pimas, 1691-1767 (Tucson, AZ, 1970), 53-4, 93-5; Theodore E. Treutlein, ed., “The Relation of Philipp Segesser: The Pimas and Other Indians [1737],” Mid-America 27 (1945): 139-87, 257-60.

59. Treutlein, “The Relation of Philipp Segesser,” 144.

60. The Apostolic College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro (patent issued 1682), the mother of all Franciscan missionary colleges in the Americas, was followed in Mexico by Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas (1706), and San Fernando de México (1734).

61. George B. Eckhart and James S. Griffith, Temples in the Wilderness: The Spanish Churches of Northern Sonora (Tucson, AZ, 1975); Buford Pickens, ed., The Missions of Northern Sonora: A 1935 Field Documentation (Tucson, AZ, 1993).

62. Color plates of chant books copied by Fray Pedro Font are reproduced in David Saavedra Vega, Libros corales de la Biblioteca Conventual del Museo Regional de Querétaro (Querétaro, 1996).

63. Maynard Geiger, Franciscan Missionaries in Hispanic California, 1769-1848 (San Marino, CA, 1969), 276-78.

64. See Harry W. Crosby, Antigua California: Mission and Colony on the Peninsular Frontier, 1697-1768 (Albuquerque, NM, 1994); Alfred E. Lemmon, “Los jesuitas y la música de Baja California,” Heterofonía 10 (1977): 14-17, 40-4; idem, “Preliminary Investigation: Music in the Jesuit Missions of Baja California (1698-1767),” Journal of San Diego History 24 (1979): 287-97; Bárbara Meyer de Stinglhamber, Arte sacro en Baja California Sur, Siglos XVII-XIX: Objetos de culto y documentos (Mexico City, 2001). It is both significant and unfortunate that no object with a musical connection is catalogued in Meyer de Stinglhamber’s inventory. Nevertheless, musical material goods were indeed regularly used in the Baja California missions (musical scores and books, and musical instruments).

65. Crosby, Antigua California, 205.

66. Pietro Tacchi Venturi, S.J., “Per la biografia del P. Gianmaria Salvaterra: Tre nuove lettere,” Archivum Historicum S.J. 5 (1936): 76-83 (at 81-82).

67. Crosby, Antigua California, 237-38.

68. Crosby, Antigua California, 272.

69. Crosby, Antigua California, 272.

70. Crosby, Antigua California, 144-45, 480.

71. Kessel, Mission of Sorrows, passim.

72. See Helen Simons and Cathryn A. Hoyt, eds., Hispanic Texas: A Historical Guide (Austin, TX, 1992).

73. María Esther Domínguez, San Antonio, Tejas, en la época colonial (1718- 1821) (Madrid, 1989); Gerald E. Poyo and Gilberto M. Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins in Eighteenth-Century San Antonio (Austin, TX, 1991); Jesús F. de la Teja, San Antonio de Béxar: A Community on New Spain’s Northern Frontier (Albuquerque, NM, 1995); Félix D. Almaráz, Jr., The San Antonio Missions and Their System of Land Tenure (Austin, TX, 1989).

74. Sister Joan of Arc, C.D.P., Catholic Musicians in Texas (San Antonio, TX, 1936).

75. Juan Agustín Morfí, History of Texas, 1673-1779, ed. Carlos Castañeda (Albuquerque, NM, 1935), 97-98.

76. Fray Manuel Silva, 23, 29 June 1795; Bexar Archives, Eugene C. Barker Texas History Collection, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin. See Adán Benavides, The Bexar Archives (1717-1836): A Name Guide (Austin, TX, 1989).

77. Peter P. Forrestal, “The Solís Diary of 1767,” Preliminary Studies of the Texas Catholic Historical Society 1 (1931): 11.

78. Forrestal, “The Solís Diary,” 17.

79. Forrestal, “The Solís Diary,” 21.

80. Juan Agustín Morfí, “Spanish Settlements and Native Tribes,” in History of Texas, ed. Carlos E. Castañeda, 97-98.

81. Howard Benoist and María Eva Flores, C.D.P., eds., Documents Relating to the Old Spanish Missions of Texas, I: Guidelines for a Texas Mission: Instructions for the Missionary at Mission Concepción in San Antonio (San Antonio, TX, 1994), 34, 36.

82. For an important collection that gathers together important source material for the study of Catholic missionary efforts in the United States, see Anne M. Butler, Michael E. Engh, Thomas W. Spalding, eds., The Frontiers and Catholic Identities (Maryknoll, NY, 1999).