Music in Spain around 1700: theatre music and cantata in context

A one-day immersion seminar by Juan Josè Carreras, Professor of Music, Universidad de Zaragoza

Saturday April 10, 2010

From 10am to 4pm

The Graduate Center

365 Fifth Ave & 34^th St

Room 3491

By 1700 the impact of Italian opera could be felt in musical practices throughout Europe. Responses to Italian opera differed depending on the existing local musical and theatrical traditions. In Spain, opera integrated the distinctive “estilo español” (Baroque zarzuelas and villancicos) with the structure and vocal virtuosity of the Italian aria da capo. The music of Antonio Literes (1673-1747), the main composer of theatrical music at the Spanish court from the late 1690s onwards, will be considered in its cultural context with special emphasis on musical and theatrical production, reception, cultural exchange and its impact in the printed and manuscript circulation of music.

Juan José Carreras (Heildelberg 1957), is a musicologist specializing in Literes and 18^th century Spanish stage music. He has been Director at Large of the International Musicological Society and sat on the editorial board of Revista Musicologia, Early Music, etc. He is currently an honorary Research Associate at the Univerisity of London and Professor of Music at the Universidad de Zaragoza. Among his many acclaimed publication is Music in Spain during the Eighteenth Century.

Selected reading (available on EReserves):

* L.K. Stein and J.M.Leza, “Opera, genre, and context in Spain and its American colonies” in A.R. DelDonna and P. Polzonetti (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Opera, Cambridge 2009, pp. 244-291.

* J. Carreras, “Spanish Cantata  to 1800” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed. 2001), vol. 5, pp. 37-40.

* M. Boyd and J. Carreras (eds.), Music in Spain during the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge 1998.

* L.K. Stein, “The Iberian Peninsula” in G.J Buelow (ed.), The Late Baroque Era, Basingstoke and London, 1993, pp. 411-434.