The Huehuetenango Songbook - Music from 16th century Guatemala
GCD 923542 (Glossa Music, CD)
FIRST RELEASE (11 October 2024)
Tracks: 19
Booklet pages: 24
℗ 2024 Note 1 Music GmbH
© 2024 Note 1 Music GmbH
Main country of recording: Italy
Country of manufacture: Netherlands
Reviewer: Gerald Fenech
Review of The Huehuetenango Songbook - Music from 16th century Guatemala published on 2 December 2024
Jonatan Alvarado, tenor
Ariel Abramovich, vihuela
Book 1, 'In which are set certain parts of masses, a magnificat, and other things to sing the tenor.'
Book 2, 'Which contains motets for four voices, by most excellent authors.'
Book 3, 'Which contains a strambotto and an old romance, both for four voices; villancicos for three and four voices in the Castilian tongue, as well as a song in the French tongue, to be played.'
In three remote mountain villages that were once not even accessible by road, a collection of eighteen small-format choir books has been preserved, which have been treasured by the communities for centuries. Today, these valuable books are kept in American university libraries and bear the name of the department from which they originate - The Huehuetenango Manuscripts. The collection shows how music was integrated into the daily and spiritual life of these indigenous communities and became a symbol of resistance and forced adaptation to Catholicism and other external influences. It contains copies of numerous European pieces, but these European forms passed through the minds, hands and voices of the indigenous people and were transformed into original creations. The tenor Jonatan Alvarado and the vihuelist Ariel Abramovich leaf through the folios of the Huehuetenango singing manual and have selected mass movements, motets, chansons and villancicos from the more than three hundred and fifty works written down between 1582 and 1635. This selection provides an insight into the intercontinental exchange of music between Europe and the missions in Mesoamerica on the eve of the Baroque.
Recorded 30 March-2 April 2024 in the Chiesa ed ex Convento di San Francesco, Orte, Italy.