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The Sweet Penance of Music: Musical Life in Colonial Santiago de Chile by Alejandro Vera

2022; Music Library Association; Volume: 79; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/not.2022.0100

1534-150X

Paul G. Feller-Simmons,

Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America

Reviewed by: The Sweet Penance of Music: Musical Life in Colonial Santiago de Chile by Alejandro Vera Paul G. Feller-Simmons The Sweet Penance of Music: Musical Life in Colonial Santiago de Chile. By Alejandro Vera. Translated by Julianne Graper. (Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. [xii, 435 p. ISBN 9780190940218 (hardcover), $99; also available as e-book, ISBN and price vary.] Music examples, illustrations, source list, bibliography, index. Alejandro Vera’s Sweet Penance of Music constitutes the most up-to-date and thorough examination of music-related activities in colonial Santiago, Chile, between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Vera offers a detailed overview of the role that music played throughout various spheres of the city, ranging from the religious to the secular, and from the private to the public. This monograph represents the synthesis of over twenty years of research into the music of colonial Chile. Indeed, the volume engages with most of Vera’s projects to date, in one form or another. Readers who are well acquainted with the author’s output will therefore be familiar with many of the topics and arguments presented here. Perhaps a marker of the impor -tance of this book is that it was the recipient of the 2018 Premio de Musicología Casa de las Américas (Casa de las Américas Musicology Award). That same institution collaborated with the Universidad Católica de Chile to publish The Sweet Penance in Spanish (El dulce reato de la música: La vida musical en Santiago de Chile durante el período colonial [Santiago, Chile : Ediciones Universidad Cat ólica de Chile, 2020]), parallel to the English edition. At the same time, Julianne Graper’s remarkable translation is part of Oxford University Press’s Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music series, which has featured some of the most impactful recent studies into the music of colonial Latin America. Unlike writings that feature a gallimaufry of records documenting seemingly disconnected islands of musical activity, conceptual guiding posts bolster Vera’s cohesive narrative. The idea of duality is here a structuring factor that ties overarching pictures together with specific events. The notion of a “sweet penance” (dulce reato in Spanish), borrowed from an eighteenth-century harpist nun, effectively embodies a fundamental colonial principle that combines dichotomy into singularity. The sense of balance between the individual and the structure is, thus, a resounding success that only increases this book’s already rich contribution. Vera’s methodology involves detailed music analysis and historical criticism, which he enhances with approaches to cultural history derived from Peter Burke’s “thick narrative” and “micro narration” (p. 20). Vera demonstrates here his scholarly prowess by interweaving both traditional and innovative archival sources. At the same time, the author is careful in keeping documentary evidence separate from informed speculation. The book comprises an introduction and five chapters. A brief conclusion summarizes the ideas developed in the volume. There is also a bibliography dedicated to secondary sources as well as a “Documents” section that presents the book’s primary sources arranged according to the archives that preserve them. A companion website adds ten sections with transcriptions of primary sources studied in the volume. In his introduction, Vera makes explicit the need and timeliness of his volume, his scholarly objectives, difficulties, and limitations, and his chosen methodology and theoretical framework. The chapter highlights the complexity of the present enterprise while [End Page 222] it showcases a scholarly pathway that favors the intersection of analytical approaches to music with socio-cultural perspectives. Vera’s acute consciousness of the historiographical tradition in which he partakes not only positions his work within the present state of the field but also pays homage to the seminal contributions that shaped musicological writing in Chile. The introduction, thus, serves as a microcosmic echo of the problem at hand: a description of the complex and changing colonial reality of Santiago that also keeps its inherent systemic hierarchies in the background. In chapter 1, Vera focuses on the cathedral of Santiago, considering this colonial institution as a nodal, urban center that connected the local religious musical life to the rest of the Spanish Empire. He...