Silent MusicMedieval Song and the Construction of History in Eighteenth-Century Spain

Abstract

Abstract This book demonstrates the singular importance of medieval music in an eighteenth-century vision of Spanish culture and national identity. From 1750 to 1755, the Jesuit Andrés Marcos Burriel (1719–1762) and the calligrapher Francisco Xavier Santiago y Palomares (1728–1796) worked in Toledo Cathedral for the Royal Commission on the Archives, which was formed to obtain evidence for the royal patronage of church benefices in Spain. With Burriel as director, the Commission transcribed not only archival documents, but also manuscripts of canon law, history, literature, and liturgy, in order to write a new ecclesiastical history of Spain. At the center of this ambitious project of cultural nationalism stood the medieval manuscripts of the Old Hispanic rite, specifically those associated with the Mozarabs of Toledo. Burriel was the first to realize that these manuscripts differed significantly from the early-modern editions of the Mozarabic rite. In collaboration with Burriel, Palomares expertly copied the script and notation of the manuscripts, producing a parchment facsimile that was presented to King Ferdinand VI of Spain, as well as a copy (dedicated to Bárbara de Braganza) of the Toledo codex of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. For both men, this silent music was invaluable as a graphic legacy of Spain’s past. While many historians in the Spanish Enlightenment articulated the idea of the modern nation through the study of the Middle Ages, Burriel and Palomares are exceptional for their treatment of musical notation as an object of historical study and their conception of music as an integral part of history.

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