MINISTRILES NOVOHISPANOS: Works from Manuscript 19 of the Puebla Cathedral in Puebla de los Ángeles (Mexico)

First World Recording

Works by Philippe Rogier, Orlando di Lasso, Clément Janequin, Gil de Ávila, Francisco Guerrero, Ginés Martínez de Gálvez, Rodrigo de Ceballos, Pedro Rimonte, Juan Navarro, Pedro Guerrero, Hernando Franco, Thomas Crecquillon, and other Anonymous composers.

The presence of European-origin ministriles in the Viceroyalty of New Spain dates back to the arrival of Hernán Cortés on the mainland. During one of his incursions into the current territory of Honduras in 1524, Cortés was accompanied by a group of 300 soldiers and five ministriles who played chirimías, sackbuts, and dulcians. These first musicians, supported by others who arrived in successive waves from Castile, taught the indigenous people to play all kinds of instruments, thus favoring the incorporation of ministriles groups into ecclesiastical institutions. Evidence of their activity and the repertoire performed by these groups is the MS 19 of the Puebla de los Ángeles Cathedral (Mexico), the only choir book for ministriles use located to date in Cathedrals of the New World.

This CD offers a representative selection of the variety and richness of the manuscript’s content, both in authors, origins, and chronologies as well as in genres, functions, and styles, interpreted directly from a facsimile reproduction of the source. This recording presents some peculiarities, derived from the experimental nature of the performance, placing it halfway between the discographic and the phonographic-ethnomusicological record, being – above all – the sound testimony of an experience that occurred in a specific moment and space, with the aim of achieving a sound that is not authentic, but historically informed.