Suggestion for Benedictus missing in Música Colonial source
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,368
    I am putting together a version of the Missa cum quatuor vocibus attributed to Pierre Colin (fl. 1538–65) from an edition transcribed from the Música Colonial archive (I'm very interested in doing unusual-but-not-too-too hard repertoire including from New Spain or sources found there.)

    The Benedictus is lost. The notes say that at this time the Benedictus was sung in three parts in the Spanish realm. I'm note sure what setting would work from the polyphonic repertoire, and as far as chant goes, the Sanctus's main notes remind me of mode I, whereas the Agnus feels like Agnus IV (so I took the chant and added it to the end for the situations where we might need that).

    (Technically this Mass is, as stands, STTB, but I don't think this changes things too much.)
    colin_missa_cum_4_vocibus_sanctus.pdf
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  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,233
    "Attributed to" Colin. Do you know for a fact that it's not actually by Colin?

    If not...perhaps you can find the proper Benedictus. The title in your source is generic enough that it is probably not the original title. RISM links to book 3 and book 8 of the 4-voices Masses. It would be easy enough to take a peek to see if you have a match. Or at the least, find a Colin Benedictus in the right mode.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,368
    À few notes: It’s attributed in the archive to someone whose Latin name works out to be plausibly understood as Pierre Colin. Whether that is the case is another question; Robert Stevenson was unable to identify the setting in the 1960s. but maybe he didn’t look in the right places (and like so many composers Colin was more prolific than we would know based on what is transcribed and available to use based on the part books linked).

    I’m going to see if I can track down any leads on the availability of the archive (or maybe we’re really out of luck) because it was viewable online for sometime and now is not.

    In any case not even later composers who definitely lived in New Spain are consistently identified. I would hesitate to say that the attribution is correct or incorrect.
    Thanked by 1Jeffrey Quick
  • SteveOttomanyi
    Posts: 45
    I doubt the original voicing was listed as STTB. One will see music from this region in this time right up through the repertoire of the California missions in somewhat ambiguous-looking voicing--whether it is STTB, SATB, ATTB, etc. It is almost certainly music for men in three parts plus boys, and corresponds to treble, (male) alto, tenor, bass. Another common voicing is SSAB (what appears to be S, high alto, high tenor, and bass, often with an octave or more between the "A" and "B" voices.

    All these stem from what has been termed the polychoral tradition in, as far as I know, Mexico and the Spanish missions of Alta California. I don't know about the cathedral in Guatemala city, what its practices might have been, though one might surmise they could have been influenced by those of Mexico City and Puebla de los ángeles. In Mexican polychoral tradition, by the Classical era fairly standard, the two choirs were voiced SSAB or SSAT (solo voices, harp continuo) and SATB (larger choir, mixed voices, organ continuo).

    One feature of this repertoire, which persisted at least into the Romantic era, was the absence of an independent Benedictus and even the entire Agnus Dei (especially in later works, such as the concerted Masses of Ignacio Jerusalem). What did they do for those movements? The Benedictus was a re-texted Sanctus, as was the entire Agnus Dei. One may see written evidence of this in certain Masses preserved at various California missions--e.g., the so-called "polychoral Mass in D" (a bad name because most of them were "polychoral"--i.e., in the voicing for two choirs mentioned above--held at the Archival Center of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles at San Fernando Mission. This practice is not in evidence in earlier work, such as that of Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla.
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