Mysticism as a Key Concept of Spanish Early Music Historiography

Pilar Ramos Lopez
University de la Rioja, Spain
Mysticism as a Key Concept
of Spanish Early Music Historiography
Introduction
“Spain is constituted by a people who, throughout their history, have been characterised as
people of saints, artists, and warriors: essential characteristics that have remained through
its History and that could not have been reformed, in spite of the Encyclopaedia’s doctrines”
(Extract from Franco’s speech in the Pavilion of Craftsmanship at Valence, 11 May 1947).
“…like the mystical writers and painters of Spanish humanism, he [Tomás Luis de Victo­
ria] was able to harmonize artistic severity with loving emotion. The secret of this aesthetic
achievement lies in the dramatic mysticism with which he infused his works” (Angles in The
New Oxford History of Music, IV 1968: 400).
These words have a long history behind them. In fact, “mystic” has been a category
usually employed to describe Spanish music from the 16th and 17th centuries as diffe­
rent from the one written by contemporary Netherland, French or Italian composers.
This paper aims to outline the history of the concept of musical mysticism in the Spa­
nish Golden Age. Firstly, I will generally examine the expressions of mysticism in 16th
and 17th century Spain and consider their connections with the musical practice of the
time. Then, I will study the ideological context of historians who have insisted on the
idea of a Spanish musical mysticism. And finally, the repercussions of this key concept
for the construction of the National musical canon will be examined.
Francisco Franco Bahamonte, Textos de doctrina política. Palabras y escritos de 1945 a 1950. Madrid,
Publicaciones espańolas, 1951, p. 439. Quoted by Llorente (1995: 57).
Round Table I — Historical Theory and the Role of Cultural Memory
I. Expressions of Mysticism in 16th and 17th Century Spain
“Mysticism” comes from the Greek word μυω, meaning “to conceal. ” From its origi­
nal meaning, linked to “secret” religious rituals, the term came to signify knowledge
in medieval times. Thus, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) in his short definition of mysti­
cism as cognitio Dei experimentalis (knowledge of God through experience), drew on the
Book of Psalms (34: 8) “Taste and see that the Lord is good”. Spiritual as they are, these
are the desires of the truth mystic: tasting and seeing (Scholem 2000: 24).
In a more extensive definition of mysticism, The Stanford Enciclopedia of Philosophy
says “a constellation of distinctive practices, discourses, texts, institutions, traditions,
and experiences aimed at human transformation, variously defined in different tradi­
tions”. Just before, in the same first paragraph of the long entry on “Mysticism”, we
find Teresa of Avila as the only non-academic source quoted. Nobody would suspect
a hidden Spanish nationalist and Catholic agenda in The Stanford Enciclopedia. Neither
do I. On the contrary, I would like to stress that Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross (Juan
de la Cruz) and Ignatius of Loyola are central authors of mystical literature; their style
and forms of communicating the ineffable had been studied for centuries.
One of the main points of my paper is that none of the Spanish Renaissance mys­
tics emphasized the role of music in their experience. For instance, among the many vi­
sions of Teresa of Avila, only one refers to a musical context: the saint was listening to
the Salve when she saw the Virgin Mary come out from a painting. Far removed from
Teresa and other mystics who took images or readings as starting points for mystical
experiences, John of the Cross stated:
“In this life, everything that can be imagined by imagination and grasped and understood by
understanding is not and can not be a close medium for the union of God. ”
From these words we can conclude that he did not consider music as a way to
mysticism. In contrast, Ignatius of Loyola did speak specifically about music. He con­
fessed that he would not want people to think of the Jesuits as “ociosos” (idle men),
so he scolded some Jesuits because they “seemed to sing like monks”. The claims of
spiritual and internalized religion plus the necessity to work as teachers and priests
“La víspera de san Sebastián, el primer ańo que vine a ser priora en la Encarnación, comenzando
la salve, vi en silla prioral, adonde está puesta nuestra Seńora, bajar con gran multitud de ángeles la
Madre de Dios y ponerse allí. A mi parecer, no vi la imagen entonces, sino esta Seńora que digo. Pareció­
me se parecía algo a la imagen que me dio la Condesa, aunque fue de presto al poderla determinar, por
suspenderme luego mucho. Parecíanme, encima de las camas, de las sillas y sobre los antepechos, án­
geles, aunque no con forma corporal, que era visión intelectual. Estuvo ansí toda la salve, díjome: “Bien
acertaste en ponerme aquí; yo estaré presente a las alabanzas que hicieren a mi Hijo y se las presentaré”
(Teresa de Ávila 1940 [1569]: XXV, 218)
“[…] todo lo que la imaginación puede imaginar y el entendimiento recibir y entender en esta
vida no es ni puede ser medio próximo para la unión de Dios” [San Juan de la Cruz, Subida del Monte
Carmelo, 8, 4] (quoted by Stoichita 1995: 5)
Pilar Ramos Lopez — Mysticism as a Key Concept of Spanish Early Music Historiography continually prompted the Jesuits to reject the singing of the divine office in choir, and
excluded choirs and organs from the houses of the new order in their first founda­tional
document. Every study of Jesuit musical activity acknowledges as a paradox this sur­
prising beginning of an institution with such an important musical impact in the 17th
and 18th centuries, in Europe as well as in America. However, the specific context of the
statements about music in the first project of St. Ignatius de Loyola is usually ignored.
In 16th century Spain, particularly among moral and converse (i.e. Christians from
Jewish origin) social circles, there was a strong rejection of music as a practical activity
because of its association with otiositas (idleness) (Ramos forthcoming).
As far as I know, there is only one mystic, the nun Sor Maria de Santo Domingo
(Surtz 1992), who did give a central role to music in at least one of her visions. Perhaps
it is worthwhile noting that in Renaissance Spain most ecstatic raptures were expe­
rienced by women, particularly by nuns (Certeau 1982, Haliczer 2002). But Spanish
books on moral and behaviour addressed to women refused or even banished practi­
cal music (Ramos 2005).
Representing mystical experiences were a challenge not only for writers but also
for painters. Saints’ visions and experiences—that were not always visual—are repre­
sented in many paintings, creating a new code and style. Victor Stoichita (1995) has
studied the rhetoric of the unrepresentable, the conflict between representations of
visions and realities, and the problems resulting from the clash between perspective
rules and visionary landscapes. Music appears in some painted visions, most times
there are angels singing or playing instruments, as in the ones of Saint Francis of As­
sisi, or in some representations of the Virgin Mary.
Were mystic experiences a challenge for music? In all truth, I do not see why repre­
senting mystic experiences in music should be more difficult than musically represent­
ing a boy or a book. Anyway, this is a semiotic problem that is beyond the objectives
of this paper. To my knowledge, there is not a study of the musical ways of expressing
mystical experiences in 16th-century polyphonic music like the ones by Victor Stoi­
chita (1995) or Michel de Certeau (1982) dealing with Spanish paintings and mystical
literature, respectively. Maybe the closest musicological study is Edward Lowinsky’s
Secret Chromatic Art (1946). However, Lowinsky was more interested in expressions
of heterodox or heretical beliefs than in mystical experiences. Although it is true that
heterodoxy and mysticism were neighbours terms from the Inquisitorial point of view.
Unfortunately, Lowinsky’s seminal work did not consider Spanish music.
When in 1539 the Jesuits presented their draft to the Pope in order for it to be approved as a new
Congregation, a cardinal requested the suppression of certain passages. The reason was that these pas­
sages were considered to favor the Lutheran thesis against monasticism. The first passage excluded
organ and the “musical ritual sung either in the mass or in the other offices”. See Ramos (forthcoming)
In the many biographies from 16th and 17th centuries of Spanish women writers, music is only
mentioned by a few of them (Ramos 2005: 114–115)
Round Table I — Historical Theory and the Role of Cultural Memory
For this paper the question is: were musicians in 16th and 17th century Spain in­
terested in representing mysticism? My answer is no. Firstly, Spanish musicians were
not interested in composing music to mystical texts, apart from liturgical texts like the
Canticum Canticorum. Sometimes sacred songs in Spanish were secular songs that after
certain words were changed were transformed into sacred songs, following the medieval
tradition of contrafacta, like some well-known examples in the Canciones y villanescas espirituales by Francisco Guerrero (Venice, 1589). Contrafacta or not, these sacred songs often
have a popular mood in lyrics and music that does not seem to fit mystical expressions.
Secondly, only few personal data allow us to relate Spanish musicians of the time
with mysticism:
1. The closest musician to mysticism was Fernando de Las Infantas (1534–1610),
whose theological book Tractatus de praedestinatione (Paris 1601) was placed on the In­
quisition’s Index in 1603, that is to say, it was forbidden. However, all his composi­
tions were written and published in Venice 20 years before, even before his ordination
(1584): three books entitled Sacrae varii styli cantiones (1578–1579), and Plura modulationum genera (1579). Significantly, Infantas, the Spanish composer who was most con­
cerned about theology, has been considered not mystic enough and consequently not
Spanish enough by Henri Collet (1913), the leading scholar in the theory of Spanish
musical mysticism. According to Collet, mysticism was a racial essence opposite to
Netherlander’s “science subtil mais sèche” (sophisticated but dry science) (1913: 3).
With such an extremely intricate counterpoint, Infantas could not be considered either
genuinely Spanish or a mystic.
2. In contrast, according to many historians mysticism and Hispanism were unit­
ed and embodied in Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548–1611). However, as is known, the
Spanishness of Victoria is a recent phenomenon. In his time he was considered with
Palestrina and Anerio as belonging to the Roman School. The main reasons for his
mysticism have been attributed to the following:
a) Musical reasons: his music sounds “mystic” and he never wrote secular
music.
b) Biographical reasons: his place of birth, his relationship with Filipo Neri
and his writings.
a) We have no document of his lifetime that speaks of a special mystic, deep or spir­
itual particular quality of his music. Significantly, the music of Morales, Victoria and
Palestrina was not performed at the Escorial until 17th century, when King Philip II
was dead (Noone 1998: 188). Thus, polyphony was forbidden in the most important
Spanish Monastery and the most favoured by Royal promotion in Victoria’s time, so
that only Gregorian chant and very simple polyphony was performed there and lis­
Anerio was also a composer resident at The Oratory. However, as he was Italian, he was not sus­
pected of mysticism by Spanish historians.
Pilar Ramos Lopez — Mysticism as a Key Concept of Spanish Early Music Historiography tened to by the Royal family in their frequent visits to its Church. This fact cannot be
overlooked, given the central role of the Escorial as the main political and orthodox
Catholic symbol of Spain.
An often-quoted sign of “mysticism” is that no secular music by Victoria is extant.
However, I do not believe this is evidence of mysticism. Despite being an organist,
we have no music for organ by Victoria, although nobody has deduced from that he
despised organ.
b) The fact that Victoria was born in Avila, the same town as Saint Teresa, is re­
membered in every recording of his music. Even the beginning of the first paragraph
on Victoria in Renaissance Music by Allan W. Atlas refers to the same commonplace:
“Born in St. Teresa’s hometown of Avila in 1548, Victoria…. ” (1998: 613). However,
I do not have anything more to add on this point. The place of birth matters only if you
think, as Franco and many National-Catholic historians did, that the Hispanic race is
essentially mystical, and that race is a metonymic contagion transmitted through place
of birth. Curiously enough, scholars who hold this theory today mention nothing about
the fact that both mystic saints born in Avila—Teresa and John of the Cross—were of
Jewish origin. However, should we therefore deduce that Victoria, and every Spanish
polyphonic master, was also a mystic for this reason?
Victoria lived for seven years in Rome in the Congregation of the Oratory, founded
by Filipo Neri, who was living there at the time. Filipo Neri (1515–1595) had several
mystical experiences, but there is no evidence that Victoria had such an experience. In
any case, Victoria left the Oratorians of his own free will. The only known reason for
his leaving is the one expressed in the dedicatee of his Missarum libri duo (1583) to King
Philip II of Spain: his yearning for a quieter life in Spain. Two years later Victoria joined
the Monastery de las Descalzas de Santa Clara in Madrid as chaplain to the Dowager
Empress María,—sister of King Philip II, daughter of Charles V, wife of Maximilian II
and mother of two other emperors.
Just Latin prefaces and dedicatees in his books on sacred music are the main writ­
ings we have by Victoria. Both prefaces and dedicatees have been read as signs of
a special religious attitude or even sanctity of Victoria. However, these are writings
that follow the common places and typical rhetoric of these types of texts, shaped to
the Catholic Orthodoxy and Musical theory of his time.
John of the Cross, who denied the possibility of reaching God by sensual means, as we have seen,
was born only a few kilometres from the town of Avila.
Some bureaucratic documents are also extant but of course they make no mention of mysti­
cism.
For example—I am quoting Robert Stevenson’s translation into English (1961: 372–373) of David
Pujol’s list of phrases by Victoria (1940):
— Music is an art to which he was “instinctively” drawn (ad quae naturali quodam feror instictu [1])
— Mastery resulted from long years of hard work (multos iam annos… versor, et elaboro [1])
Round Table I — Historical Theory and the Role of Cultural Memory
3. Another text that has been read as a sign of mysticism is the book Journey to Jerusalem (Viage de Jerusalem, Valencia: Juan Navarro, 1590) written by Francisco Guerrero
after his travels. Even Paul Henry Lang in his Music in Western Civilization (1941 [1979:
209]) quoted the well-known phrases by the master of Seville Cathedral that expressed
his strong desire to visit the Holy Land. However, as Robert Stevenson pointed out,
once in Venice on his way to Jerusalem, Guerrero confessed:
“My first business… was to arrange for the printing of two music books [Canciones y villanescas espirituales and Mottecta …. Liber secundus] While the printer told me that he would need
more than five months I asked a friend: can I make a trip to Jerusalem in that length of time?”
(quoted by Stevenson 1976: 175).
A record from his time is the biographical summary written by another wellknown artist living in Seville, Francisco Pacheco. In his book we can read:
“He [Guerrero] was the most outstanding musician of the time. [….]. His music has an ex­
cellent sound and an agreeably construction. He composed many Masses, Magnificats, and
Psalms –among the last ones an In exitu Israel de Aegypto which those who are expert state that
when composing it he was in contemplative rapture. ” (Pacheco 1985 [1599]: 339).10
I would like to emphasize that these words speak of rapture in the Plato tradition,
in other words, as a way of referring to a particular mastery of poetry bestowed by
the gods, a talent that would later be referred to as “genius”. In fact the book by Pa­
checo—the painter, theorist of painting and father-in-law of Velázquez—is written in
the context of claims by painters for a higher status for painting in Spain. It cannot be
regarded as evidence of mysticism.
To summarize, there is no evidence of a particular interest of Spanish mystics
in music, nor of Spanish musicians in mysticism. Furthermore, we cannot find any
— Recognizing his talent as divinely bestowed, he felt the greater obligation to develop
it, to bear fruit, and to return interest of his talent (Id vero munus ac beneficium cum diuinum agnoscerem, dedi operam, ne penitus in eum, a quo bona cuncta proficiscuntur, ingrates essem, si inerti ac
turpi otio languescerem, et creditum mi hi talentum humi defodiens, iuxto expectatoque fructu dominum
defraudarem [1])
— Music, because instinct with rhythm and harmony, describes the very being of God (Cui
enim rei potius seuire Musicam decet, quam sacris aludibus immortalis Dei a quo numerus et mensura
manauit? [4])
— Creation itself testifies to the divine harmony (cuius opera universa ita sunt admirabiliter
suauiterque disposita ut in credibilem quondam harmoniam, concentumque preseferant et ostendant? [4])
— Music is not man’s invention, but his heritage from the blessed spirits (ante quam homines essent, in beatis illis mentibus esse inceperit [2]
— Music of the right stamp serves not only to enhance the splendour of the cult but also
to excite the faithful (fidelisque Populi deuotionem Hymnis et canticis Spiritualibus dulcius exitandam
[3])
1. Hymni totius anni (Rome, 1581) 2. Cantica B. Virginis vulgo Magnificat quatuor vocibus…conciuntur (Rome, 1581) 3. Motecta (Rome, 1583) 4. Missarum Libri Duo (Rome 1583).
10 “Fue el más único de su tiempo en el arte de la música [..] Su música es de excelente sonido
i agradable travazón. Compuso muchas missas, magnificas i psalmos; i entre ellos, In exitu Israel de
Aegypto, de quien los que mejor sienten juzgan que estava entonces arrebatado en alta contemplación”
(Pacheco 1985 [1599]: 339).
Pilar Ramos Lopez — Mysticism as a Key Concept of Spanish Early Music Historiography documents from 16th and 17th centuries that mention a mystical listening of music by
Morales, Guerrero or Victoria. Consequently, the musical mysticism of the Spanish
Golden Age can be rightly considered as a historiographical myth; historiographical
myths in the sense of hardly falsifiable ideas (in the Karl Popper sense) that had been
taken as explanations of seminal questions of our history. In a paper that appeared in
the previous edition of this Conference Early Music and Ideas I, I tried to show that the
Golden Age itself was a historiographical myth designed to respond to different ideo­
logical and musical claims.
II. Musical mysticism as a historiographical myth
The few Spanish writers who wrote about music by Morales, Guerrero or Victoria in
late 17th, 18th or early 19th centuries were not concerned about mysticism. They only
referred to the correctness of counterpoint.11 Indeed, no references to mysticism or
the profound nature of polyphonic Renaissance music can be found in the rough po­
lemics of 18th century on the use of Italian operatic style in sacred music. Even Louis
Viardot,—first husband of Pauline Viardot and thus brother-in-law of Maria Malibran
–, perhaps the first foreigner to admire Spanish Renaissance polyphony and certainly
the first to write about it, highlighted its “simple” quality, but made not mention of
mysticism or religious deepness (Vairdot 1841: 271). Ten years later, in his report on the
state of music in Spain (1852), Gevaert spoke of “a stronger expression of words” (une
expression plus forte des paroles) and a simpler style (in contrast to the one by Netherland
and Italian composers).12 Unlike Viardot, Gevaert was able to examine certain musical
manuscripts, noting mediocrity in musical compositions (Mitajana 1993 [1920]: 468).
The two earliest references to mysticism in Spanish Renaissance music come from
Catholic scholars. August Wilhelm Ambros (1816–1876) mentioned it in a paragraph
in which he states that there was no such thing as a Spanish school different to the
Netherlander school:
“In dem benachbarten Spanien, für dessen Königliche Capelle immerfort die besten Meister
aus der Niederlanden herbeigeholt wurden und das immerfort mit dem beherrschten niedër­
ländischen Provinzen in Verbindung stand, waltete, wie unter solchen Umständen selbstver­
ständlich ist, der richtigste Niederländerstyl; doch mag man wohl, den Spaniern zu Liebe,
etwas Stolzes, Feuriges, selbst auch Herbes, Vornehmes und hinwiederum etwas Mystisches
Musical examples by Victoria, Alonso Lobo or references to the perfection of their music can
be found in the musical treatises by Andrés Lorente (El por qué de la música …Alcalá de Henares, 1672,
p. 560), Antonio de la Cruz Brocarte (Médula de la música teórica…. Salamanca, 1707, p. 190) and in the
poem by Tomás de Iriarte (La Música, Madrid, 1805, pp. 216–217) (quoted in León Tello 1974). Spanish
names are often mixed with Palestrina, Philippe Rogier, Orlandus di Lassus and other foreign masters.
In Castellanos de Losada’s Discurso, Victoria is presented as an Iberian who wrote Italian music (1854–2:
788).
12 Quoted by Mitjana (1916: 70).
11 Round Table I — Historical Theory and the Role of Cultural Memory
herausfühlen—aber eine eigene “spanische Schule” deswegen zu statuiren geht doch wohl
nicht an. ” Geschichte der Musik (Wroclau [Breslau] 1862–68, III: 345).
In contrast to Ambros, Karl Proske (1794–1861) had highlighted only Victoria’s
mysticism,
“…an earnest, sublime mysticism marks his chants, springing from his pure, innate piety,
breathing reverent devotion, untainted by worldliness, and making hm incapable of compos­
ing any but sacred music” (quoted by Weinmann 1910: 121).
One of the few Spanish readers of both, Ambros and Proske, was Felipe Pedrell
(1841–1922),13 the first editor of Tomas Luis de Victoria, and one of the Spanish com­
posers whose influence has been determinant for Spanish musical historiography and
the nationalist musical school. Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla and
Henri Collet were among his disciples. Although Pedrell mentioned the mysticism of
Spanish polyphonists in 1888, there is a great difference between Pedrell’s vague para­
graphs and Henri Collet’s doctoral dissertation. In Spain, Collet did not only study
with Pedrell but also with Federico de Olmeda, a prominent folklorist and priest, and
with Menéndez Pelayo, the most influent Spanish historian of the time and one of the
champions of National-catholic (ultramontan) ideology.
The major postulates of National-Catholicism are that Spanish identity emerged
from the consubstantiality of Catholic and national elements, and a peculiar vision of
the History of Spain, the State and society. The highest point of National history was
the imperial phase (the Golden Age), later history is the history of decadence (Botti
1992: 18). Although the origin of this thought is controversial, its strongest phase is
usually charted at between 1875 and 1975 (the year of Franco’s death).
Significantly, Menéndez Pelayo’s speech when he was inducted into the Real
Academia Espańola was Mystical Poetry in Spain (1880 [1956]). Since the late 19th century,
Spanish intellectuals had been highlighting mysticism as one of the main traits of na­
tional or racial identity. Liberal writers like Francisco Giner de los Ríos or Gregorio
Marańón, or even Miguel de Unamuno, as well as National-Catholic writers at the op­
posite right end of the political spectrum like Angel Ganivet, Azorín, and Menéndez
Pelayo, agreed on the statement of an essential Spanish mysticism.14 In this context,
the acceptance of Henri Collet thesis Le mysticisme musical espagnol, (1913) could not
be better. Collet (1885–1951) translated this pictorial and literary mysticism, with so
many national heroes—such as Zurbarán, Murillo, Teresa de Ávila, John of the Cross,
Ignatius de Loyola etc.—into a musical mysticism. The new musical heroes would be
Morales, Guerrero and Victoria. For Collet, mysticism was a matter of race, and not an
individual trait of particular composers—a position supported by Charles Lalo who
Pedrell quoted Proske (Pedrell 1899: 149–150) and Ambros (Pedrell 1894-I: X).
On Francisco Giner de los Ríos, Azorín, Unamuno y Angel Ganivet, see Fox (1997: 49, 120, 125,
and 135).
13 14 Pilar Ramos Lopez — Mysticism as a Key Concept of Spanish Early Music Historiography had opposed Victoria’s mysticism to Roland de Lassus’s sensualism (Lalo 1908: 315,
quoted by Collet 1913: 2). According to Collet, Catalans and Valencians were not Span­
ish enough so that they were not mystic enough to achieve the musical perfection of
Morales, Guerrero, Victoria and other musicians born in the Kingdom of Castille. Like
many European people, Collet was in love with Spanish authenticity and primitivism.
His orientalist and exotic vision of Spain ravished Spanish historians of music who
could now have their own musical heroes. Furthermore, according to Collet and al­
most every Spanish historian of music after him, Spanish polyphonists surpassed the
Nederlanders and Italians in spiritualism and expressiveness.
One of the few musical passages referred to by Collet was the final cadence of the
motet Emendemus in melius by Cristóbal de Morales. According to Collet:
“Listening to these sweet chords made even more expressive by the suspension of the third,
the definition given by John of the Cross of the ecstatic union—“the soft shelter where the
soul feels God’s breath”—unavoidably comes. ” (Collet 1913: 266)15
However, as we can see, this is a very common cadence16
“Et l’on songe invinciblement, en écoutant ces suaves accords rendus plus expressifs encore par
le retard de la tierce, à la définition que Jean de la Croix donne de l’union extatique: ‘le doux abri où
l’âme sent la respiration de Dieu’”
16 The edition is the one by H. Anglès, (1971) reprinted in Palisca (1988–1: 149–150)
15 10 Round Table I — Historical Theory and the Role of Cultural Memory
III Mysticism and National musical canon
In a previous essay, I studied the way such a myth of the Golden Age was supported
by radical right-wing ideologies, notably National-Catholicism and Francoism, which
were dominant among Spanish musicologists between 1940 and 1980 (Ramos, forth­
coming). Now, I would like to explain how the myth of musical mysticism became
fundamental in the construction of the national musical canon. Consequently, the idea
of musical mysticism affected not only our image of Spanish Golden Age, but also the
History of Spanish Music through and through.
The first historians of Spanish music were composers of zarzuelas, a national genre
of musical theatre very popular in the second half of 19th century. When writing about
the music of the past, they were searching the noble ancestry of their own music; as
a result, Soriano Fuertes (1817–1880), Francisco Barbieri (1823–1894), and Felip Pedrell
were interested in the history of Spanish musical theatre, without overlooking the his­
tory of sacred music. After Henri Collet, who transformed the vague idea of mysti­
cism as deep religious expression or dramatism into the historiographical myth whose
repercussions we are considering, the gap between the liberal historians and the na­
tional-Catholic ones would be evident. Both liberal and National-Catholic historians
adopted Collet’s thesis. However, liberal historians like Rafael Mitjana (1869–1921) and
José Subirá (1882–1980) were interested in both secular and sacred musical history. In
contrast, National-Catholics overlooked secular music, focusing only on sacred music
and identifying mystical values as national ones. For many intellectuals in the late
19th and early 20th centuries, mysticism was an irrational force opposite to capitalism,
so that extreme right and left wings could share their hate of materialism. However,
after the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), mysticism and Neoplatonism became the of­
ficial aesthetics of the new fascist regime, imposing the rejection of vanguard artis­
tic trends, which were regarded as corrupt and foreign (Llorente 1995: 35 and ff.).
Pilar Ramos Lopez — Mysticism as a Key Concept of Spanish Early Music Historiography 11
A concept cherished by church scholars (the only ones to have major posts in Spanish
musicology between 1940 and 1980) was that of art as a divine revelation and, conse­
quently, as a means for moral regeneration. This Neo-Scholastic tradition had been
already enthusiastically defended before the Spanish Civil War, and it was actually the
driving idea behind the Motu Propio by Pius X (1903).17 While liberal or leftist musical
historians were exiled, dead or silenced,18 the official historians led by Higini Anglés
(1888- 1969)—a scholar of international prestige—constructed the predominant musi­
cal canon that prevailed until the 1980s. Throughout Franco’s dictatorship (1939–75),
musicological research was controlled by the Instituto Espańol de Musicología. The Insti­
tute belonged to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, a centre established
and controlled directly by Franco’s regime in 1943. The musical editions published
by the Instituto Espańol de Musicologia focused on Spanish sacred and secular music
from the 16th and early 17th centuries. Thus, none of the 31 volumes of the Monumenta
(Monumentos de la Música espańola) published between 1941 and 1969 (the year of the
death of its first director, Higini Anglès) was dedicated to the music of the 18th, 19th or
20th centuries. Only one of the volumes was dedicated to 17th-century secular music.
If 16th-century sacred music by Morales and Victoria became the masterpieces of
the national canon as mystical, original, deep, male, pure and simple music, its nec­
essary counterpart was 18th-century Spanish music: Italianizing, operatic, superficial,
mundane, effeminate music. From the national-catholic perspective it is not surprising
to find that the most common expression referring to musical Italianism in Spanish
historiography is even today “the Italian Invasion”. In 1921 John Trend was astonished
because “The patriotic and nationalist instincts of some Catalan writers have been of­
fended by the domination of Italian music and Italian opera (during the 18th century)”
(Trend 1921: 125). Paradoxically, while European writers and musicians usually saw
Spain as belonging to the Orient or East, Spanish historians considered Italian Music
as Oriental from Edward Said’s perspective.
Twenty years later, Anglès wrote an essay whose title and content exhibited his
enthusiasm for the new Francoist regime, The Glorious Contribution of Spain to the History of Universal Music (1948). The final paragraphs on music dealt with 16th-century
treatises. No mention is made of music since the late 16th century, although two pages
were reserved to praise Franco and the institutions of the new Regime.
The obsession with mysticism not only resulted in an overlooking of music from
the 18th century, a century hardly fond of mysticism even in Spain. Another reper­
On the historiographical repercussions of the condemnation of modernism as heresy by Pope
Pius X see Cantor (1991: 191 and ff.).
18 Antonio José, composer and folklorist, was executed by Franco’s army. Exiled musicologist and
composers: Jesús Bal y Gay, Robert Gerhard, Eduardo Martínez Torner, Adolfo Salazar, Jaume Pahissa,
Rodolfo Halffter. Fernando Remacha, José Subirá and Eduard López Chavarri, who remained in Spain,
were put aside from any relevant musicological post.
17 12 Round Table I — Historical Theory and the Role of Cultural Memory
cussion was the reluctance to study the economic, social or ideological aspects of the
history of music. For example, in his 1916 study on Fernando de las Infantas, Rafael
Mitjana considered the economic, political and social tensions present in discussions
about Gregorian editions in the Council of Trent. When considering the same subject
70 years later, Samuel Rubio only took into account aesthetic and moral factors in his
book on Spanish Renaissance Music (Rubio 1983: 172).
In fact the concept of musical mysticism became a key concept because it had been sup­
ported by Anglès, the most prestigious Spanish musicologist and the person chosen
by Francoism to direct the institutionalisation of Musicology in Spain. As a Catholic,
Nationalist and Golden Age myth, the concept of musical mysticism was embraced
by the Francoist Regime, which considered itself to be a Rebirth of the Spanish Impe­
rial Age. Today, musical mysticism is a persistent commonplace, even if it has been
questioned by learned scholars like Robert Stevenson (1976) and Eugen Cramer (2002:
162) or recent recordings, such as the one by Juan Carlos Mena and Juan Carlos Ribera
(who sing sacred pieces by Victoria in tabulations from the time for voice and vihuela
or lute). Of course, the traditional image of the Golden Age as a Mystical Age has also
been questioned by historians of the Inquisition like Francisco Márquez or by histori­
ans more interested in gender such as Stephen Haliczer.19 However, in recent CDs or
papers published so far such as in Venezuela, many commonplaces on mysticism can
be found, sometimes packaged as New Age products.20 Evidently, it cannot be denied
that music—by Victoria, Madonna, Elton John or whoever—can offer a base or start­
ing point for mysticism. However, as historians we cannot hold that such a thing as
Spanish musical mysticism existed, and we cannot ignore that this concept is not an
innocent or naive one. On the contrary, Spanish musical mysticism is a construction
with a sad history behind it.
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