Seventeenth Century Music

George Herbert is widely celebrated for both his musical verse and for his patterned lyrics; but how might we critically engage with these two strands of his lyric technique? This article places George Herbert’s playful lyric poetic in the context of Stuart Masque culture. While these extravagant, secular entertainments are an unusual context against which to set Herbert’s more modest devotional poetic, it argues that Herbert – whose extended family was closely involved in the staging and production of these court events – cannot have been ignorant of this seventeenth-century cultural phenomenon. Building on a contemporary understanding of music as mathematical proportion, this article examines the ways in which the masque ‘staged’ ideas of harmony, in its perspectival sets and in its geometrically choreographed dances. Masque culture offers a rich and particularly vivid contemporary expression of the possibilities of interdisciplinary expression; in turn, it presents a new perspective on Herbert's visually- and aurally-rich lyric performance.

So far, Stradella’s operatic production has been reconstructed on the basis of the operas that the musician composed in Genoa during the last years of his life. This article aims to present recent discoveries that shed light on Stradella’s Roman years and on the network of relationships that he maintained with the leading fi gures of the Roman aristocracy. The new acquisitions on his production would not have been possible without the discovery of the inventory of the music belonging to the singer and friend of the composer Giovan Battista Vulpio. Unpublished archival documents have revealed that this huge collection probably belonged to the Roman prince Flavio Orsini, who was the librettist for two of Stradella’s operas, “La Doriclea” and “Il moro per amore”, that were copied on his behalf in 1672 and 1681 respectively. The inventory of the Vulpio (formerly Orsini) collection reveals the title of a hitherto unknown opera by Stradella, “Amare e fingere” (“Loving and pretending”), whose score – as argued in the article – can be identifi ed with the one, anonymous and without title, which is preserved in the Chigi collection of the Vatican Library. This ‘commedia per musica’, based on simple love plots, with few characters and a small number of instruments, was performed in Siena in 1676 under Chigi patronage. The attribution to Stradella seems to be confi rmed both by some biographical elements of the composer, and by some details of the compositional style.

Though Henry Purcell, as organist of Westminster Abbey, gave considerable attention to sacred music during his all-too-brief life, he also explored earthier topics in his catches. These brief vocal works focus primarily on wine consumption, unrequited love, and convivial music making. Though often textually lowbrow, these seemingly insignificant vocal works nonetheless display on occasion considerable contrapuntal skill and high musical style, an attention to musical detail that is seemingly at odds with the oft-indelicate subject matter.
This paper will explore Purcell’s musical technique in these works; in particular, the use of ground bass in “Fie! Nay! Prithee John,” the musical onomatopoeia in “Of All the Instruments,” and the careful placement of rests in “Tom Making a Manteau,” which permits a double-entendre that only becomes evident in performance. These catches, building upon an English tradition that dates back to Medieval days, are an interesting window into the diversity of Purcell’s musical interests, and exemplify the technical skill he lavished on even the basest of texts.

Richard Brome, as he dedicates A Jovial Crew, or The Merry
Beggars to Thomas Stanley, claims  that his play had what he calls ‘the luck’ to ‘tumble last of all in  the epidemical ruin of the scene’: it was the last play staged  before the theatres closed in 1642 as the English Civil War began. But this dedication, written not when A Jovial Crew was performed at the Cockpit/Phoenix in 1641 or 1642, but when it was printed in 1652, gives the text a ‘certain poignancy which it would not originally have possessed’ (Butler, Theatre, 269). Put on at the conventional terminus of early modern drama, and published in the middle of a national crisis, A Jovial Crew is a work that has much to say about the history of theatre and the history of England.

El objetivo de este trabajo es reconstruir la actividad y el repertorio musicales de la Colegiata de Castellar durante la estancia de Tomás Micieces II como maestro de capilla (1679-85) a través de las fuentes documentales conservadas tanto en la propia institución como fuera de esta. Al hecho significativo de ser Micieces II uno de los músicos más destacados del momento en la Península Ibérica,se une la particularidad de que la capilla de música de la colegiata estaba sujeta al patronazgo privado de los Condes de Santisteban y no al de la Iglesia; esta circunstancia determina el régimen de funcionamiento interno de la capilla.

Altough the organ was involved in the continuo practice in a much larger measure than the harpsichord or other instruments, there is a noticeable scarcity of studies on this subject. This article intends to present a series of documents concerning organ continuo practice which date back mostly to seventeenth-century Italy. These sources consist mostly of avvertimenti to the reader published in the organ part-books of concertata sacred music of the early seventeenth century, mostly unknown up to now. After giving a cursory view of the different kinds of organ which were used in Italy at the time, this article deals with three fundamental aspects of the subject: 1. registration of the organ continuo; 2. number of the different parts harmonizing the basso continuo; 3. range of the accompaniment on the keyboard.

The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music seeks to provide the most up-to-date knowledge on seventeenth-century music, together with a vital questioning of the way in which such a history can be told or put together for our present purposes. Written by a distinguished team of experts in the field, the chapters not only address traditional areas of study such as opera and church music, but also look at the way this extremely diverse and dynamic musical world has been categorised in the past, and how its products are viewed from various cultural points of view. While this history does not depart entirely from the traditional study of musical works and their composers, there is a strong emphasis on the institutions, cultures and politics of the age, together with an interrogation of the ways in which music related to contemporary arts, sciences and beliefs.

Notas musicológicas para el CD Francisco López Capillas (1614-1674). Missa Re Sol. Missa Aufer a nobis. Motetes [CD en conmemoración del IV centenario del nacimiento del compositor]. Capella Prolationum y Ensemble La Danserye. Lindoro, NL-3025, Sevilla, 2014, pp. 6-16 (español)

An original Compendium of baroque and classical voice-leading patterns offers a wealth of historically informed teaching materials for today's pedagogues. Drawing from recent scholarly trends in the German-language music-theoretical community, the historical approach offered here is at odds with many aspects of current Anglo-American music theory pedagogy. Chief among these is the absence of any reference to Roman numerals, chordal roots, or chordal inversion in the Compendium. Instead, a thoroughbass-centered approach is favored, in which the scale degree of the bassline is the primary analytical annotation. This encourages contrapuntal, rather than harmonic, considerations to come to the fore. The voice-leading patterns are divided into three categories: cadences, rules of the octave, and sequences. Each patterns is given in C-major and A-minor in a variety of upper-voice spacings. The student internalizes these patterns by playing, singing, and transposing them at the keyboard. Thus, the Compendium takes a decidedly practical, and less discursive approach than many current textbooks on baroque music.

Este trabajo analiza, desde la perspectiva musicológica, un corpus poético vinculado al palacio virreinal de México e integrado por cuatro textos de la monja jerónima Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz en los que la música adquiere un reseñable protagonismo: un romance (núm. 21) escrito para la condesa de Paredes, que es una suerte de compendio de conceptos teórico-musicales; un soneto (núm. 198) en el que alaba el acierto de un desconocido pero primoroso músico; una redondilla (núm. 87), en la que ensalza, a través de logradas metáforas musicales, la hermosura de Feliciana, equiparada con un instrumento; y, dentro del género músico-teatral, una loa palatina (núm. 384) para festejar el cumpleaños de la condesa de Galve, cuyos personajes son la Música misma y las notas musicales. En estos textos, la música es presentada desde una doble perspectiva: por un lado, en su vertiente teórica y metafísica, como materia especulativa y, por otro, en su dimensión práctica, como trasunto terrenal de la primera, estableciendo entre ambas un complejo sistema de relaciones y correspondencias. El trabajo incorpora como apéndice un glosario con definiciones de los más de 130 términos musicales presentes en esos cuatro textos, que consideramos de utilidad para los sorjuanistas. Aunque realizado desde la musicología, el trabajo se enfoca a investigadores de otros campos, con el propósito de introducirlos en el universo musical de la monja jerónima de una forma amena y comprensible, evitando tecnicismos en la medida posible.

The Passacaglia from Henry Purcell’s King Arthur (1691) features some remarkable similarities with a number of works by Jean-Baptiste Lully, most notably with the Passacaille from Armide (1686) where there are clear parallels in the dramatic context as well as the sung text. John Dryden, the poet of the play text, is known to have been well-read and there is evidence that he was familiar at least with the text of Armide. However, several musical similarities point to the possibility that Purcell knew some of the music. Differences between the two works show distinct approaches to harmony, melodic writing, as well as form, although the latter is clearly guided by generic conventions. Another work that appears to have influenced some of the melodic writing in Purcell‘s Passacaglia is Scocca pur, which was widely disseminated amongst English musicians by the time of King Arthur’s composition.  Although Scocca pur is probably an early work by Lully, several of its features such as the strict ground bass actually owe more to the Italian style than to the French, which fits well with the growing popularity of Italian music in England during the 1680s. Purcell incorporates these diverse elements into his Passacaglia in a way recalling the later idea of a goûts réunis.

Notas al programa para el concierto de La Grande Chapelle (Baeza, Auditorio de San Francisco, 8 diciembre 2013) dentro del libro del XVII Festival de Música Antigua de Úbeda y Baeza, Sones de ida y vuelta. Músicas coloniales (1492-1898) (Jaén: Festival de Música Antigua de Úbeda y Baeza, 2013), pp. 89-102.

"A friend of Frescobaldi: Lelio Guidiccioni, a man of letters, an art and music connoisseur"

This contribution moves from the finding of the dedication to Cardinal Scipione Borghese of Frescobaldi’s «Liber secundus sacrarum modulationum» (Rome, 1627) among the autograph manuscripts of Lelio Guidiccioni (Lucca, 1582 – Rome, 1643), a prelate and a man of letters, who evidently wrote this text on behalf of the composer.
Guidiccioni was very interested both in art and in music. He gathered a small but precious collection of paintings and drawings, which was viewed as noteworthy already in his own time by some art historians. Further, our findings show that Guidiccioni cultivated a friendly relationship with Girolamo Frescobaldi, who lived in Rome for over forty years, just as Guidiccioni did.
The biographies of Guidiccioni and Frescobaldi reveal that they were associated with the same entourages of major papal families: first the Borghese, later the Barberini. The relationship between Frescobaldi and Guidiccioni was not an occasional one, however, since the composer’s name even occurs in the testament of the latter: in it, he mentioned «the spinet named by Frescobaldi the Joy » («l’arpicordo chiamato dal Frescobaldi la Gioia»); further, the inventory of Guidiccioni’s goods lists a portrait of Frescobaldi, placed beside the ones of his ancestors and some cardinals.
Guidiccioni’s interest in music is confirmed by some of his literary and poetic works, particularly his unpublished «Discorso sopra la musica», which was conservative in character. It is likely that Pietro Della Valle’s brief treatise «Della musica dell’età nostra che non è punto inferiore, anzi è migliore di quella dell’età passata», which was dedicated just to Guidiccioni, can be regarded as a response to the latter’s «Discorso».
""

Despite recent scholarly interest in Monteverdi's Selva morale et spirituale (1641), many aspects of this large, complex print remain enigmatic, and the intended context for much of the music in the collection has long been a matter of pure conjecture. Yet two of the most anomalous features of the Selva morale, the solo motets Ab aeterno ordinata sum and Pianto della Madonna, can now be placed into the context of the Habsburg court in Vienna during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III (1637-57). Both of these works play directly into the most important aspects of Habsburg Marian devotion. Ab aeterno is a setting of Proverbs 8:23-31, a text that although very rare for seventeenth-century motets would nonetheless have been widely understood as a celebration of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. The Pianto, a Latin contrafactum of Monteverdi's celebrated Lamento d'Arianna, would have been perfectly suited for the Habsburgs' Fifteen Mysteries Celebration, a Lenten devotion in praise of the Most Holy Rosary. Various types of evidence, including liturgical and other religious writings, Habsburg sermons, and additional musical works, support these interpretations of Monteverdi's motets and reveal their importance to the imperial court. That the composer did indeed include the motets in his print with the Habsburg court in mind is further indicated by similarities between the Selva morale and an earlier publication stemming directly from Ferdinand III's court: Giovanni Felice Sances's Motetti a voce sola of 1638.

Almost all of Giovanni Gabrieli’s keyboard output has been transmitted in German sources, the most important of which are the German organ tablatures now held at the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria of Turin (I-Tn, Fondo Foà Giordano, Giordano 1-8, Foà 1-8). The lack of concordances and the way of transmission have led some scholars to consider many of these compositions as doubtful or even spurious works. In particular, in a group of ten toccatas in Giordano 2 only the first two works carry an attribution to Giovanni Gabrieli, but the second one clearly states that the following works are also to be considered of the same composer (Toccate di Giovan Gabriel. Toccata prima). The lack of attribution for the other works in the series, titled only Toccata, and a comparison of their characteristics with Gabrieli’s printed works in the same genre have brought Vincent Panetta and Richard Charteris to withdraw them from Gabrieli’s canon.
This article examines the characteristics of the Turin organ tablatures and the way of transmission of Gabrieli’s toccatas, in order to propose a reconsideration of their exclusion. While the attributions given in the indices are not reliable because they were added at a much later date in the eighteenth century, on the contrary those given by the original scribe are reliable and have only rarely been contradicted by other evidence. The absence of Gabrieli’s name in the titles of the toccatas following the first two works reflects the copyist’s normal approach in the case of groups of works by the same composer. Moreover, due to the small number of compositions in free style whose attribution to Gabrieli is without question (a toccata published in Diruta’s Il Transilvano and eleven short intonations preserved in the Intonationi d’organo of 1593), a stylistic evaluation of the Turin toccatas only through a comparison with these works seems particularly problematic.
The article proposes an analysis of the toccatas in question through the comparison with other pieces by Gabrieli, both vocal and instrumental, like those published in the Canzoni et sonate (1615), the Sacrae Symphoniae (1597) and the Symphoniae sacrae (1615): indeed, some of the Turin toccatas reveal strong similarities with late works by Gabrieli. Through both a philological and an analytical approach, the article proposes adding the Turin toccatas to the corpus of Gabrieli’s authentic works.

Here's a paper I delivered at the SSCM (Society for Seventeenth Century Music) conference in New York in April 2012 (an amazing conference with generous and positive participants and presenters). The paper argues for a new idea in the dating debate around Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas, seeing it as a centenary celebration of the defeat of the Spanish armada in July and August 1588. After the conference, I sent it to a journal and waited two years for any word. When they did get back to me at all it was to say that it could not be accepted (and with an apology for the delay). Reading the anonymous readers comments and re-reading my own work, I am still confident enough of my arguments. So here it is.

Chronicles and documents dated back to the Roman Baroque period -
between XVII and XVIII centuries – tell us about performances of “comedians” and
“mountebanks”. At the time, mask play was considered a less noble genre if compared
to melodramas and oratorios. There are still many doubts about those plays, but new
statements now shine a light on the activity of those comedians in theatres and palaces
of the Roman aristocracy. In this way, we can appreciate and understand the
importance and consideration of those plays in Rome and in other Italian cities. A
matter still unresolved is represented by music in those plays: my study wants to
investigate the issue by documentary testimonies, iconographical sources, news about
musical instruments.

Fugal invention has proved a successful line of analytical inquiry in recent studies of repertoires from Josquin to J. S. Bach. Alan Howard brings similar insights to the music of Henry Purcell, and proposes the first analytical approach to his music to examine compositional methods alongside historically contemporary theory, focusing particularly on Purcell's 'artificial' approach to imitative counterpoint. Through this methodology Howard challenges previous responses to Purcell's music that portrayed him as fundamentally conservative. This study offers fresh insights into the musical world in which Purcell lived and worked and situates Purcell's compositional concerns in the broader context of notions of artifice in Restoration culture. Howard thereby offers both a fresh analytical approach - to Purcell's early instrumental works and to his later concerted vocal music - and a critique of the reception history surrounding the fantazias and sonatas in particular.

The Parnassus Musicus Ferdinandaeus includes 55 motets attributed to 32 composers and 2 anonymous motets. More than half of the motets are attributed to 18 composers of Lombard origin, including 12 composers active in Milan. Four composers (Arnone, Borgo, Comanedo and Pellegrini) were active at Milan Cathedral, together with the editor of the collection , Giovanni Battista Bonometti, who subsequently moved to the Graz court chapel. The remaining motets in the collection, comprising around half, are attributed to certain musicians in the Graz court chapel, who were, in turn, nearly all Italian by origin. The article examines cultural relations between the Duchy of Milan and the Graz court, the biography of Bonometti and the characteristics of Milanese motets. Nel 1615, allorché il futuro Ferdinando II, imperatore del Sacro Romano Impero a partire dal 1619, festeggiava il suo ventesimo anno come arciduca dell'Austria Interiore, l'officina veneziana di Giacomo Vincenti licenziava il Parnassus musicus Ferdinandaeus, una monumentale raccolta di mottetti a lui dedicata, curata da un cantore di origini bergama-sche attivo presso la cappella di corte di Graz. 1 Per assemblare il volume il curatore della silloge, tal Giovanni Battista Bonometti, doveva essersi messo all'opera almeno un paio d'anni prima, quando era ancora al servizio del Duomo di Milano. All'epoca doveva avere raccolto una trentina di mottetti di compositori di area lombarda, 2 la maggior parte dei 1 La raccolta include 55 mottetti da una a cinque voci e basso continuo attribuiti a 32 compositori e due mottetti a due voci di autore incerto. Edizione moderna: Antonicek, Parnassus musicus Ferdinandaeus. 2 La silloge include 28 mottetti di 18 compositori attivi in area lombarda.

Resumen
Las siestas o sesiones musicales vespertinas en los templos hispánicos son un objeto de estudio relativamente reciente. Su celebración suele asociarse a las festividades eucarísticas, en las cuales cumplía la función de atraer público a la adoración del Santísimo Sacramento, patente en el altar, y a los posteriores oficios de vísperas y completas. Las relaciones de fiestas valencianas del siglo XVII muestran diáfanamente que estos actos ―al igual que otros poéticos, dancísticos o combinación de ellos― tuvieron lugar asimismo en diversos templos de la ciudad durante las jornadas festivas de las grandes celebraciones extraordinarias ante otros objetos de veneración relacionados con el asunto particular como reliquias o imágenes. La minuciosidad de algunas descripciones también ayuda a conocer mejor cómo transcurrían estos eventos.



Abstract
Siestas or vespertine music sessions in Hispanic temples are a relatively recent object of study. This kind of events is usually associated to the eucharistic holidays, in which they fulfilled the function of attracting public to the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, patent on the altar, and to the subsequent Offices of Vespers and Compline. The Valencian relaciones de fiestas (reports of feasts) of the seventeenth century clearly demonstrate that this events ―like other poetic, dance or combination of them― also took place in various temples of the city during the festive days of the great extraordinary feasts before other objects of veneration related to the particular matter, as relics or images. The thoroughness of some descriptions also helps to better understand how these events were.

The State Archive of Spoleto preserves an anonymous libretto entitled La Datira. The plot displays the political and love conflict between the royal houses of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, during a war in the tenth century. The choice of this subject is linked to the fact that this libretto inaugurated the theatre of Siena (1647), and the reference to northern countries was probably intended to celebrate a "heroe toscano" mentioned in the prologue, now identified as Mattias de' Medici, governor of Siena who fought during the Swedish phase of the Thirty Years War. The author of the libretto would be unknow if Giovanni Antonio Bianchi, in his Dei vizi e dei difetti del moderno teatro (1735), had not referred to a “dramma cristiano” by Giulio Rospigliosi entitled La Datira, pointed to by the theorist as a successful joining of theatrical demands and Christian values. The incongruities between Bianchi’s treatise and the actual content of the libretto (which does not stand out as particularly Christian) could be explained as a literary deception carried out by the Arcadians.

Presso l’Archivio di Stato di Spoleto, fondo Campello, è conservato un libretto anonimo intitolato La Datira. L’intreccio, sullo sfondo di una guerra nordica del X secolo, si basa sul conflitto politico e amoroso tra le tre casate reali di Danimarca, Svezia e Norvegia. La scelta di un tema ‘nordico’ omaggiava un «heroe toscano» citato nel prologo, identificato in Mattias de’ Medici, governatore di Siena, che aveva combattuto durante la fase svedese della Guerra dei Trent’anni; il libretto inaugurò infatti il teatro di Siena (1647). L’autore del libretto resterebbe sconosciuto se non fosse che Giovanni Antonio Bianchi, in Dei vizj e dei difetti del moderno teatro (1753), riferisce di un «dramma cristiano» intitolato La Datira, opera di Giulio Rospigliosi e indicato dal teorico come un’efficace sintesi tra le ragioni del teatro e i valori cristiani. Vista l’assenza di altri libretti con lo stesso titolo e sullo stesso soggetto, nonchè le comuni amicizie tra Mattias de’ Medici e Giulio Rospigliosi, si può affermare che il libretto oggi conservato a Spoleto sia effettivamente quello di Rospigliosi; inoltre, alcuni aspetti della trama e il carattere dei personaggi, a confronto con altri libretti del religioso, ne suffragano la paternità. Le incongruenze tra la trattazione di Bianchi e l’effettivo contenuto del libretto (che non presenta una particolare ‘cristianità’) sembrano prendere le forme di una sorta di raggiro letterario perpetrato dall’arcade.

Puzzle canons by the Leipzig Thomascantor Tobias Michael, recently discovered in the albums of Burckhard Grossmann the younger (NL-DHk, Sig. 133 C 14 – B & C), offer concrete musical evidence of his reputed contrapuntal skill. Grossmann’s two albums, inscribed from the 1620s to the 1640s, transmit four puzzle canons: two by Tobias Michael and one each by Christian Michael (c. 1593-1637) and Caspar Trost (1589-1651). Of these, Tobias Michael’s 1625 entry requires a complicated solution involving the alteration of the notated rhythm to create a three-voice canon. Apart from the notated voice sung as written, a second voice performs the line a fourth below, proceeding entirely in minims, while a third voice performs the same entirely in semibreves an octave below. Although some precedents for this canon can be found in English sources and in examples by Samuel Scheidt, none uses the same combination of techniques.

Sacred Music in Vidzeme during the Latter Period of the Swedish Empire (1660-1710). Summary of the Doctoral Dissertation / Geistliche Musik in Vidzeme in der späteren Periode der Schwedischen Grossmacht (1660-1710). Zusammenfassung des Promotionsvorhabens.

The Staatskapelle Berlin celebrates its 450th anniversary in 2020, thus making it one of the oldest orchestras in the world. In advance of this occasion, the Staatsoper is holding a series of annual symposia devoted to the history of the Staatskapelle Berlin and its international significance. The symposia will go beyond considering the Staatskapelle as an institution in itself to looking at its position within the musical life of Berlin and comparing it to that of orchestras from other European cities.

Edited by Peter Erhart and Luigi Collarile.
Vol. 2: Aufenthalt in Italien und Rückreise / Soggiorno in Italia e viaggio di ritorno.

Reviews:
- Zeitschrift für Kultur und Gesellschaft (March 2017), p. 98–99 (Ingrid Bertel).
- St.Galler Tagblatt, 15 April 2017, p. 27 (Beda Hanimann).

a. Les Fâcheux, vol. I, p. 145-192 ; Notice et Notes p. 1266-1288. b. Les Plaisirs de l’île enchantée, p. 519-539, vol. I, p. 519-599, contenant La Princesse d’Élide, p. 540-588 ; Notice et Notes p. 1391-1413.
c. L’Amour médecin, vol. I, p. 601-632 ; Notice et Notes p. 1413-1433.
d. Le Ballet des Muses, vol. I, p. 767-803, contenant La Pastorale comique, p. 773-783 ; Notice et Notes p. 1482-1496.
e. Le Sicilien, ajout au Ballet des Muses, vol. I, p. 805-829 ; « Autour du Sicilien », p. 831- 839 ; Notice et Notes p. 1496-1514.
f. Le Mariage forcé, vol. I, p. 935-959 ; « Autour du Mariage forcé », p. 961-970 ; Notice et Notes p. 1540-1559.
g. George Dandin, inclus dans le Grand Divertissement royal, vol. I, p. 971-1013 ; « Autour de George Dandin » p. 1015-1026 ; Notice et Notes p. 1560-1579.
h. Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, vol. II, p. 201-251 ; « Autour de Monsieur de Pourceaugnac » p. 253-259 ; Notice et Notes p. 1409-1437.
i. Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, vol. II, p. 261-343; « Autour du Bourgeois gentilhomme », p. 345-366 ; Notice et Notes p. 1437-1466.
j. Psyché, vol. II, p. 421-501; « Autour de Psyché », p. 505-531 ; Notice et Notes p. 1483-1512.
k. Le Malade imaginaire, vol. II, p. 629-718 ; « Autour du Malade imaginaire », p. 719-742 ; Notice et Notes p. 1542-1583.
l. Les Amants magnifiques, vol. II, p. 943-995 ; « Autour des Amants magnifiques », p. 997-1013 ; Notice et Notes p. 1677-1697.
m. La Comtesse d’Escarbagnas, vol. II, p. 1015-1038 ; « Autour de La Comtesse d’Escarbagnas », p. 1017-1070 ; Notice et Notes p. 1697-1710.

Our understanding of sacred musical culture in the Iberian Peninsula during the early modern period has taken a significant step forward in recent decades. One of the sources that has revolutionized our knowledge are inventories of music libraries, a documentary typology known about for some time, yet whose crucial implications have still to be explored sufficiently. Despite the inherent limitations of inventories, various studies have shown their enormous potential, especially as regards Spain, where, as fate would have it, whole libraries have disappeared. Inventories provide a snapshot of the repertory available at a given time and place, regardless of whether or not it was performed; they also, together with other types of documentary evidence, shed light on important information regarding both local production and the processes of the book trade, circulation and integration of the foreign repertory. In a broader sense, they reveal other details such as the degree of modernity or the attractiveness of certain institutions.
This essay illustrates these aspects using a details inventory of music books held at Jaén Cathedral and dating from 1657. I will present a transcription, commentary and identification of its contents, and attempt to establish its importance in the context of other contemporary inventories in order to further our knowledge of music libraries during the seventeenth century, which are generally less well known than those of the sixteenth century.