The Iberian Peninsula is home to the
convergence of many different traditions. The Strait of Gibraltar guards the
Mediterranean and is the meeting place of Europe and Africa. Ambitious
expeditions to the new world by Columbus spread the culture and traditions of
the Spanish people to the Western Hemisphere, and interactions with the Moslem
invaders served to gather together influences from across the entire globe. The
peoples of the Iberian Peninsula cultivated a rich pagan tradition that developed
through the influence of Christian missionaries into the Mozarabic chants of the
eighth through the eleventh centuries (Angles, Relations of Spanish Folk Song to the Gregorian Chant, 1964) . What transformed
sacred Spanish music from its pagan roots into the predominantly Gregorian
tradition of the seventeenth century? These sacred musical practices did not
develop in an isolated manner, but were altered, enriched and eventually exterminated
by the cultural expectations of their conquerors, especially those of the Latin
Church. The first wave of influence on the native traditions of Spain was
Hellenistic, brought by the Greek, Carthaginian, and Roman colonists (Chase, 1941) .
The second wave took place before and after the fall of Rome by the spread of
Christianity, aided greatly by the rule of the Visigoths from 312 to 711 (The Mozarabic Rite, 1906) . Sacred music
experienced an upheaval during the conquest and rule of the Moors from 711 to
the recapture of Toledo by the northern Christians in 1085, but little or no
evidence of its influence on chant can be conclusively deciphered (Parrish, 1958) . The main Moorish
influence on the Spanish sacred musical tradition is the name “Mozarab,” a term
referring to the Christians who did not flee or convert to Islam (Prado, 1928) .
The last wave of influence on the sacred tradition of Spanish music was the
reconquest of Spain by Christian forces in 1085. This Reconquista was the final and most drastic transformation of sacred
music. No longer concerned with correcting liturgical abuses, this final
invasion by the northern Christians served to usurp the place of organic sacred
traditions with Gregorian chants.
The sacred music of ancient Spain
revolved around rhythms and instruments most suited for dance, which they used
in worship of the moon and other natural deities (Livermore, 1972) . Evidence of pre-Greek musical
instruments are found in the cave paintings of Aigues Vives, which depict
perforated shells used as wind instruments, and of Cuento de la Mina, where
there are paintings of animal horns, perhaps used both as wind and as
percussion instruments (Chase, 1941) .
The influence of dance did not fade from sacred ceremonies until the late sixth
century, when the Council of Toledo forbade dancing and singing ‘unholy songs’
during the liturgy (Angles, Hispanic Musical Culture from the 6th to the 14th century, 1940) . Greek colonists
expanded upon the ancient musical traditions of the time and introduced Greek
musical theory and instruments, and the later Roman conquerors continued the
exposure to classical musical traditions, which spread the influence of Greek
musical theory to further reaches of the Iberian Peninsula (Chase, 1941) .
The Greek colonists erected ports on the southeastern and northern coasts,
especially in the regions of Cantabria and Galicia, where the ruins of temples
to Diana give testament to the presence of sacred Greek music (Livermore, 1972) . A large lyre at
Merida, known as Mercury’s great lyre, was placed in the temple dedicated to
him, and ceramic illustrations depict instrumentalists playing the double aulos
and a horn or tropa. (Livermore,
1972)
Carthaginian influences can be seen in more ceramic illustrations of dance
ceremonies from the 5th century B.C. (Livermore, 1972) . When the Roman conquerors marched into
Hispania, they established a system of mutual enrichment. Spain herself
contributed many poets, philosophers, and even emperors to the Roman kingdom,
while Rome brought their vast technological advances and military practices as
well as their art and architecture (Chase, 1941) .
“In the south of Spain musical history begins with a quotation from Martial and
the dances of the saltatrices of
Cadiz – de Gadibus improbis puellae –
famous in Rome in the second and third centuries.”[1]
His contemporary, Quintillianus, also stressed the use of dance rhythms and
classical instruments such as the pipe and the lyre (Chase, 1941) . The colonies
established by the classical empires brought not only classical theory and
philosophy, but also contributed to the collection of instruments. Sacred music
in Spain continued to draw from these influences, especially rhythmic
foundations, well into the 10th century (Trend, 1924) .
During the fourth century, Spain
experienced their own “twilight of the gods” as Christianity spread its sacred
practices abroad. The influx of Christianity transformed the prior sacred
traditions through their experience with Ambrosian, Gallican and Old Roman
chant. Before the fall of Rome, the Christian influence in Spain was already
widespread. Christian missionaries were on the move to the western reaches of
the Roman Empire by 167, and after the Edict of Milan in 313 an explosion of
conversion took place throughout Europe. One of the first Gnostic missionaries,
Priscillius, kept most of the pagan practices of the native people and set
religious texts to originally pagan melodies (Trend, 1924) .
Priscillianist tunes and dances exerted influences on future devotional hymns
and chants and acquired a more devotional character as they were gradually
freed from pagan and sometimes phallic imagery (Trend, 1924) .
Church officials attempted to purge liturgical music of pagan influences during
the Council of Lugo in 571 (Trend, 1924) ,
though dancing and the use of instruments continued to be present in the early
Spanish liturgy until the sixth century at the third Council of Toledo (Angles, Relations of Spanish Folk Song to the
Gregorian Chant, 1964) . In addition to the pagan roots of this
music, Latin influences on early sacred repertoire exist as early as the fifth
century as evidenced in the martyr poems of Prudentius (Messenger, 1947) .
As the Visigoths spread and
solidified their empire, they gradually assimilated into the culture and the religion
of the Catholic populace. Originally adherents of the Arian heresy, the
Visigoths officially reconciled to the Church at the third Council of Toledo in
589 (Angles, Hispanic Musical Culture from the 6th to the 14th century, 1940) . It was during the
period of Visigothic rule that the three centers of musical culture developed:
Seville, Toledo, and Saragossa (Huglo, 2007) .
The Hispano-Gothic chants, precursors to the Mozarabic chants, developed during
this time through the often direct action of liturgists and members of church
hierarchy. The brothers St. Leander and St. Isidore, musicians and successive
archbishops, were responsible for the initial musical developments in Seville (Angles, Hispanic Musical Culture from the 6th to the
14th century, 1940) . St. Leander and his contemporaries
were especially important because of the influences they brought with them from
sojourns in Constantinople and because of the many compositions credited to
them. St. Isidore summarized the musical theories of Cassiodorus, themselves
the intellectual offspring of Aristoxenos, in the monumental work Etymologiae (Chase, 1941) .
Book III of the Etymologiae consists
primarily of writings on musical practices and its place in philosophy.
Isidore’s De ecclesiasticis officiis
deals exclusively with sacred musical practices, including hymns and psalmody (Huglo, 2007) . In Toledo, St.
Eugene codified the liturgical chants, as St. Gregory did with Roman chant. For
this reason, chants from this time (Hispano-Gothic) are commonly referred to as
Eugenian chants (Livermore, 1972) .
It is easy to surmise the influence of
other western chants on Hispano-Gothic chant when comparing manuscripts from Hispanic,
Gallican and Ambrosian sources. Similarities in chant melodies across
Ambrosian, Gallican and Hispano-Gothic chant may be observed by comparing the
notation of the introit “Sitientes” which appears in the Mozarabic Liber Ordinum of Silos, a manuscript of
St. Gall and the Antiphonarium of
Montpellier (Prado, 1928) . For example, “at the median of the verse
there is only a short rest without melodic formula, exactly as in Ambrosian
psalmody.”[2] The
similarity between the modalities of Old Roman and Hispano-Gothic chants are
not surprising, being built on the same Greek theories of tonality and
developing in the same family of chant (Huglo, 2007) .
Prado, Huglo, and Parrish all contend
that the Hispano-Gothic modes were identical to the modes of Gregorian chant
and a diagram in Musica Isidori
establishes the musical scale of Hispano-Gothic chant, the original source of
which seems to be the Byzantine trochos.
Huglo also suggested that the common Mozarabic practice of centonization has
its roots in Byzantine tradition (Huglo, 2007) .
These Byzantine influences seem to owe at least part of their origin to St.
Leander and his companion Johannes of Gerona, who spent seventeen years in
Byzantium (Angles, Hispanic Musical Culture from the 6th to the 14th century, 1940) . The presence of
four distinct languages (Latin, Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew) in the Illatio (Sanctus) alone indicates
further the vast treasury of influences on the liturgy (Rito
Hispano-Mozarabe Ordinario de la Misa, 2009) and Prado even went
so far as to suggest Jewish influences in the Pater Noster and the various Preces
(Prado, 1928) .
The Visigothic rule, however
favorable for the cultivation of sacred music, was economically and politically
weak and offered little resistance to the pressing wave of Muslim conquest that
swept into Spain from Africa in the eighth century. Though it is a point of
pride for Spanish musicians to claim that they received no musical influence
from their Muslim rulers, the Moorish invasion in 711 brought the musical
traditions of the Middle-east to Spain. Many historians have emphasized how Islam
tolerated much of Christian practice, though St. Eulogius decried the periods
of intense purgation when “persecution filled the prisons with martyrs”[3]
and the chanting of the Divine Liturgy fell silent. It was during this time
period that the term “Mozarab” surfaced as the name given to those Spaniards
who held to their Christian beliefs instead of becoming Muslim. Over time the
name came to refer to the liturgical practices, language and chants of the
Christian Spaniards during this time (Trend, 1924) .
As well as bringing their instruments, the Moors also brought their unique
theoretical practices and their preference for extended melismas and lively
rhythms. The philosopher-musician Al-Farabi in his Kitab al-misiqi al-kabir, the Grand Book on Music, prescribed seven
series of rhythms that were often strongly marked and decorated with ornate,
florid embellishments (Livermore, 28). One of the most prominent examples of
Muslim melodic influence on sacred music, las
Cantigas de Sancta Maria, are not genuinely sacred but secular genres with
sacred text, as it was with most of the musical practices of the time, blending
the realms of sacred and secular (Livermore, 1972) . The Moorish influence on chant was an
influence of negation, i.e., because of their presence the musical center of
Saragossa and Toledo declined as centers of liturgical music. Nevertheless, the
northern, mostly Christian centers such as Cordova survived and even flourished
during this time in their own traditions (Angles, Hispanic Musical Culture from the 6th to the 14th century, 1940) .
The final stage of influence on the
native sacred chants of Spain prior to the Renaissance occurred during the
Reconquista, the purging of Moorish rule by Christian powers. The Reconquista
so altered the sacred musical traditions of Spain that it is nearly impossible
to render the ancient chants with any fidelity (Spain in the Eleventh Century, 1858) . This movement
attempted to drive the physical presence of the Moors out of Spain and also
sought to unite Spain with the rest of Catholic Europe by adopting the Roman
rite and with it Gregorian chant (The Mozarabic Rite, 1906) . The main proponents
of the shift from native to more universal forms of worship were Alphonse IV of
Castile and his queen, Constance, the daughter of Guido of Aquitaine. A
French-born princess, Queen Constance was therefore warmly attached to the Roman
liturgy (Trend, 1924) .
She collaborated with a French monk,
Bernard, whom Alphonse VI had instated as Bishop of Toledo, to replace the
Mozarabic liturgy and chants with those of Latin practice (Spain in the Eleventh Century, 1858) . The main center of resistance to the
liturgical reforms took place in Toledo, where Alphonse VI made the Roman rite
obligatory immediately following his capture of the city in 1086. The people
even held superstitious contests to “prove” which rite was superior, including trial
by both fire and the sword (Trend, 1924) .
Although the results invariably favored the Mozarabs, Alphonse IV, Queen
Constance, and the monks of Cluny were determined that the Roman rite should
have the pride of place (The Performance of Music in
Spain, 1929) .
Their efforts were ultimately successful, though six parishes in Toledo were
granted special permission to continue celebrating the Mozarabic rite. At the
turn of the thirteenth century, however, even there it had become obsolete (Angles, Hispanic Musical Culture from the 6th to the
14th century, 1940) . Only about twenty or so genuine
Mozarabic pieces exist in their entirety to this day, mostly at the Benedictine
Monastery of Domingo de Silos. Other sources of chant and descriptions of
liturgical music of the time that survive to this day are the Gradual of the Vall d’Aran, the Codex II of the Escorial, the Liber
Sacramentorum, Codex Veronensis,
and the Antiphonarium of Leon.
At the end of the 15th
century Cardinal Francesco Jimenez de Cisneros of Toledo attempted to
revitalize the chants and printed a Breviary and a Missal in 1500 (Mozarabic Liber Ordinum, 1928) . Thanks to the two hundred
years of silence, however, the diastematic neumes could no longer be translated
by contemporary musicians. The difficulty of understanding Mozarabic neumes is
compounded by the extreme demographic variety of notation and the ambiguity of
distinctions between relative pitch and rhythmic indicators (Prado, 1928) .
For example, the neume types “scandicus,
punctus, podatus, clivis and torculus
are written in 9, 10, 13, 17, and 28 ways, respectively.”[4] In
an effort to make performance of the chants possible, Cisneros imposed strict
verse rhythms on melodies which were meant to be sung freely (Mozarabic Liber Ordinum, 1928) . As it is today,
modern scholars have tried to render the chants in a more faithful format by
stripping them of whatever seems to be artificial, including the highly metered
rhythms. (Prado, 1928) . According to
Messenger (1947), the two fundamental issues with understanding the Mozarabic
neumes lay in understanding the number of notes indicated by a neume and
deciphering the relative tonal height indicated by the neumes. Comparison of
the Mozarabic chants with other chant traditions offers modern scholars many
clues to their translation; nevertheless, performances of these chants remain
highly speculative. A popular example of restored Mozarabic chant is Gaudete populi from the San Milan Liber Ordinum, a recording of which can
be found on the Schola Cantorum CD, “A Treasury of Early Music.” Unique sources
of Mozarabic hymnody, pilgrim songs sung at the Shrine of St. James of Compostela,
lived on in oral tradition and were finally transcribed in 1897 (Trend, 1924) . The Codex Calixti II also contains quite a
number of these hymns, but in their transcription, the staff has only one line
and the intervallic relationships rely on educated speculation. Because of the
Reconquista the ancient traditional chants of Spain were abandoned for those of
the Gregorian and as result, a great heritage of Spanish culture has been lost.
In conclusion, each wave of new
traditions brought change, sometimes drastic and other times quite subtle, to
the sacred musical practices of the Iberian people. The classical colonists
brought their wealth of musical philosophy, theory and their instruments to the
region. Christianity then brought its riches from all the nations and combined
them with the native, dance-like rhythms, contributing again to the store of
musical instruments and theories. The glory of the Mozarabic chant, however,
was short lived, as the last invasion by the Christian northerners stripped the
regions of their cultural heritage in a disgusting display of ethnocentricism
and political motivation (Spain in the Eleventh Century, 1858) . No single
development in music is completely self-fueled; it must influence and be
influenced by various traditions and complementary movements. Mozarabic chant
was no exception, being influenced by Ancient Classical theory, folk music,
foreign chant traditions, and liturgical mandate. The history of sacred Spanish
music is, however, exceptional in that it was always changing, i.e. there was
never a point at which the chants and their performance were not actively developing.
Vital and organic, Spanish sacred music prior to the Reconquista held a
treasure-trove of unique musical practices, tragically beaten, but not
destroyed completely. The Mozarabic chants are dead to all with the exception
of the occasional celebration of the Mozarabic liturgy or the rare recording of
intrigued musicians. As of today, there exists no habitat for these unique
chants, and until there is, they will continue to lie forgotten by the broader
musical community and the religious community for whom they existed in the
beginning.
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