Teaching Music Theory in Colonial Chiquitania

Abstract

Abstract During the eighteenth century, Jesuit mission communities among the Chiquitano Indigenous people fostered vibrant music making. Unlike the cathedral counterpoint written for Spanish colonial outposts elsewhere in South America, this music had French, Italian, and German influences. Indigenous leaders assumed the role of maestro de capilla and supervised training regimes for new young musicians. Music theory, in daily solfège lessons, was a vital part of their program. Because this type of training used novel methods to create a broad, civic musical literacy with the tools of solfège and notation, it has important resemblances to what now goes by the name of public music theory. Drawing a recent ebullient discourse into conversation with eighteenth-century colonialism, this paper asks what scholars might learn from an earlier moment when music theory was made public.

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