Artes de canto (1492-1626) y mujeres en la cultura musical del mundo ibérico renacentista

Abstract

This dissertation explores the musical culture of the Renaissance Iberian world through both the study of small-format treatises in the vernacular containing the rudiments of music –known as artes de canto– printed between 1492 and 1626, and the nexuses between them and women. The dissertation consists of seven chapters, structured into two parts (Volume I), and twenty appendixes (Volume II). Part I (Chapters I to IV) shows that the arte de canto, until now generally overlooked or undervalued in music historiography, was produced in print runs of thou-sands of copies and sold for a low price; it had a broad circulation in the Iberian Peninsula and the New World, contributing to the spread of musical literacy in distinct didactic contexts (churches, universities, private settings) and among social groups until then excluded from learning the rudiments of music. The little known Juan Martínez’s Arte de canto llano (Seville, 1530) emerges as the most circulated music book in the Hispanic world during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The aim of Part II (Chapters V to VII) is to approach the musical life of the sixteenth-century Iberian world through the exploration of women’s contributions, thus broadening the field of historical research. The study of some connections between music books and women shows that the points of overlap between the private and the public spheres, on the one hand, and the written and the oral music transmission, on the other hand, not only make women’s musical practices visible, but also offer new vistas on the popular culture of the age. Through a variety of source materials (artes de canto, conduct manuals, Inquisition records, literature, letters and inventories of goods, among others) it has been possible to document the musical activities of women such as Catalina de Zúñiga, VI Countess of Lemos, Isabel de Plazaola, and Isabel de Aragón, IV Duchess of the Infantado. Combining methodologies from traditional musicology with those borrowed from book history and popular culture, this dissertation analyzes music in the culture of the Renaissance Iberian world through the prism of double Otherness involved in studying the ‘other’ music books –that is the undervalued artes de canto– and their connections to women of that period.