When we hear the term “Baroque music,” most of us automatically picture the ornate courts of Europe in the 17th and early 18th centuries, with the music of Vivaldi or Bach being performed for royals and nobles.
Well, it’s a fair image, but not the only one. There was also a musical Baroque on another continent. As a result of colonialism, European music had made its way to Central and South American, even if most of the Baroque composers in those regions don’t show up in the music history books. Picture a Baroque cathedral: white stone, domed towers with open belfries flanking a pillared façade, with a scrolled gable between the towers and a triangular portico. Now add some palm trees on either side and mountains in the background, and you could be in any one of the old colonial cities of Latin America, from Mexico City or Bogotá down to Lima, Santiago de Chile or Córdoba in the south. The architecture of the age when Spanish power and wealth were at their height clearly left its mark on the culture of the continent, and in recent years, we’ve become more aware of the equally important role played by music from the same period, in terms of the amazing legacy left from the colonial period and the influence of the European Baroque style on popular and traditional music.
Beyond the colonial cities, in the jungles and grasslands of Bolivia, Paraguay and northern Argentina yet another fascinating musical development was taking place, and one which brings our story full-circle, taking South American Baroque music back to the present and back to Europe. When the Jesuits arrived in South America, they were given permission to set up autonomous mission stations (known as reductions), until eventually, the Spanish, jealous of the Jesuits’ power and wealth, expelled them in 1767. They returned to Europe with all their knowledge and notes about the music there.
In this concert, Ensemble Suspirium introduces you to a selection of Latin-American repertoire of the baroque. Some of it comes from the Codex Trujillo. Both the Spanish language and various indigenous languages are used, and church music is interspersed with secular repertoire.
Ensemble Suspirium consists of Iris Bouman (vocals), MengHan Wu (baroque violin), Gala Lozynska (baroque cello), Punto Bawono (baroque guitar), Francesco Elgorni (harpsichord) and Ramon Lormans (percussion)