The Musicians of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico (1751-1791): Transgression or SubmissionBy Raúl Heliodoro Torres Medina, UACM, 2015

Abstract

 

Here’s the translation:

In Mexico, it is common to hear some musicologists complain about the lack of sheet music in certain ecclesiastical archives, which makes these collections much less appealing to them. This is not the case with the archive of Mexico City's Metropolitan Cathedral, one of the best-catalogued and preserved manuscript repositories in the Americas. It holds a considerable repertoire of written music that has been disseminated through modern publications and recordings.

However, despite the knowledge we have of the sheet music, the chapter books of the Metropolitan Cathedral are often overlooked. Only sporadically are brief data points presented as mere anecdotes in articles and books, without attempting or achieving a broader context. By contrast, the book by Raúl Heliodoro Torres Medina, a historian at the Autonomous University of Mexico City, is based on the cathedral chapter's records, focusing on the transgressions of rules and norms by the musicians serving the most important Novohispanic church in New Spain. The issue of transgression is innovative, as it departs from the identity paradigm that has dominated musicology and ethnomusicology studies for at least the past two decades.