Jesuits and Music

Centering on the Jesuit’s reducciones of Paraguay, this study examines the relationship between European musical practices and the idea of “city”, and explores the selective appropriations some native groups effected, investing musical celebrations with new political meanings. In the Spanish crown’s endeavor to civilize the American Indians, music was an important means towards the achievement of urban status. Taking cues from José de Acosta’s differentiations between “levels of civilization”, music is shown to constitute a central tool in furthering “advances” in all of his main categories: order in time, space, and law, respect for authority, social stratification, material well-being, reading and writing. A second section centers on the celebration of Corpus Christi in the Chiquito reducciones and its preserved musical repertoire, interpreted as a symbolic interchange between the city and the surrounding forest: the villagers “traded” the offering of their uncivilized goods and gods for the priest’s gift to them, the Eucharist and European civilization. One aria, “El cordero de los cielos”, represents the priests’ construction of the holy contract between them and their flock. When the Jesuits abandoned the Indians, the tradition (unlike other feasts) was also gradually neglected, because the transaction between Indian rural values and European urban contributions was no longer equitable.
From Geoffrey Baker y Tess Knighton, eds. The Resounding City: Music and Urban Society in Colonial Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 208-229

Bologna, Benacci, 1585 , con gentile permesso della Biblioteca arciana, Venice. uesta stampa dovrebbe essere il ritratto di uno dei giovani chiamati indiani da Benacci che indossa un abito giapponese. Sappiamo che in uropa portavano camicie di seta bianca sotto il imono, come in questo ritratto.

The French Jesuit mission in Shanghai in the mid-nineteenth century created a unique musical workshop with the construction of a pipe organ with bamboo pipes in 1856-57. Destroyed in the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the 'Bamboo Organ of Tungkadoo' nonetheless had a kind of legendary status and remained an artifact of cultural memory into the 1990s. This article, relying on unpublished documents found in archives in France, reveals the full story of the instrument, and the many other bamboo organs constructed during the era of the Taiping Rebellion and the Second Opium War, and identifies the one surviving example, now in Paris. It also explores the symbolic importance of these cross-cultural instruments and offers a new perspective on aesthetic and musical exchanges in an age of imperialism.

Este es uno de los primeros trabajos realizados en el proceso de ordenamiento, catalogacion y estudio del Archivo Musical de Chiquitos, donde se preserva música de las misiones jesuíticas en el actual territorio boliviano. Algunas de sus afirmaciones pueden estar ya superadas por las investigaciones posteriores; además fue rescatado de una versión prehistórica de MSWord para DOS, con lo cual seguramente contiene incongruencias y defectos de "transcripción". Lo subo porque me lo han solicitado, y tiene datos que no se repiten en otras trabajos.

Sur la base de sources d’archives hétérogènes, cet article propose une première synthèse sur la culture musicale des sodalités mariales établies dans les deux anciennes provinces « belges » des jésuites entre le 16e et le 18e siècle. Il s’articule autour de deux axes principaux. Premièrement, il examine et analyse les ressources financières, humaines et matérielles nécessaires au développement et au maintien d’une activité musicale au sein des sodalités jésuites, et révèle par ailleurs les liens étroits de ces congrégations mariales avec les différents acteurs du fait musical à l’échelon local. Deuxièmement, cet article met en évidence deux occasions pour lesquelles il a été fait un usage particulièrement important de musique : les fêtes mariales de l’année liturgique et les assemblées de méditation du carême. Il révèle en outre l’existence de corpus musicaux spécifiques destinés à ces deux types de célébration – pour les fêtes mariales, une production européenne de recueils similaires de litanies en musique, et pour les assemblées quadragésimales, un corpus de pièces musicales sur des textes de la Passion du Christ –, et confronte ces répertoires aux données récoltées dans les documents administratifs, comptables et prescriptifs liés aux sodalités.

The book presents a meticulously organized compilation of 163 regulations governing musical practices within Jesuit colleges of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. These regulations encompass various aspects such as singing lessons in Jesuit (junior) high schools, musical engagements within both church and school settings, as well as activities in non-Jesuit environments. Each regulation is presented in its original language, predominantly Latin, alongside a Polish translation for accessibility. Preceding the regulations is an introductory section, and following them is a comprehensive subject index for ease of reference. This publication stands as an indispensable resource for comprehending the intricacies of Jesuit musical culture formation in historic Poland.

Jest to chronologicznie ułożony zbiór 163 regulacji dotyczących uprawiania muzyki w jezuickich kolegiach Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów. Przepisy odnoszą się do nauki śpiewu w jezuickich gimnazjach, twórczości  muzycznej w kościele i w szkole oraz w środowiskach niejezuickich. Teksty dokumentów podano w języku oryginalnym, najczęściej łacińskim, oraz w autorskim tłumaczeniu na język polski. Przepisy poprzedzono wstępem oraz uzupełniono indeksem rzeczowym. Publikacja stanowi fundamentalne źródło do poznania i zrozumienia uwarunkowań tworzenia się jezuickiej kultury muzycznej w dawnej Polsce.

Judging from the official documents that set the guidelines for Jesuit education in the early modern era (notably the famous Ratio studiorum of 1599), music might seem at best an ancillary element. However, as recent studies have demonstrated, a wider look at the manifold educational practices promoted by the Society of Jesus reveals a different picture. In many colleges and schools, music was an important extracurricular activity, as well as an indispensable tool for performing the liturgy, nourishing the students’ spirituality, providing proper entertainment, and favouring social interaction. In certain areas, the Society even ran full-fledged music schools training professional singers and instrumentalists. Singing and musicking were also ubiquitous in the basic education Jesuits provided to children and “unlettered people” in their European and extra-European missions. In this presentation I will discuss some examples and frame the Jesuit approach within the larger trends of music education in the early modern period.

This article focuses on the theatrical productions in the Jesuit’s “Seminario de nobles” of Valencia during the 18th Century, until the expulsion of the order from the Spanish dominions. Earlier “dramas” and newer “tragedias” are compared, in order to highlight their different rhetorical and dramatic strategies. Music, dance and stage machinery are also addressed, as powerful media for creating a mirroring identification between the young actors and their public.
The whole volume that contains this paper is available follwing this link:
https://www.conservatoriocilea.it/index.php/produzione-e-ricerca-h/3060-pubblicazioni-on-line-3

In spite of a certain rigorist attitude at the beginnings, the members of the Society of Jesus made abundant use of music in their ministries as catechists, pastors, missionaries, and educators throughout the early modern era. Vernacular songs, liturgical and paraliturgical chants, refined compositions for voices and instruments, and even dance were part of their multimedia outreach strategies, both in Europe and in the foreign missions. In this talk I will present some known and less known examples, from a seventeenth-century song inspired by Bl. Stanislas Kostka, to Diego Luis de Sanvítores’s rap-like chant in the Mariana Islands, to a grand motet penned by Paris-based composer M.A. Charpentier for St. Francis Xavier. By doing this, and by discussing some of the most promising research endeavors currently under way, I will show how the investigation of Jesuits and music may contribute to our knowledge of early modern soundscapes and how it places itself in the burgeoning arena of Jesuit Studies.

Early modern itinerant preachers made large use of music and sound in their pastoral work. During the so-called popular missions in Europe (circa 1550-1750), music was indispensable for its emotional power (for instance during nocturnal processions), its effectiveness as a didactic tool, and as a technique for disciplining the crowds. Moreover, sounds and music could be used to offer a vivid depiction of the torments of Hell, as well as a foretaste of the joys of Heaven, thus giving sensorial concreteness to these often invoked eschatological archetypes. In this presentation I will explore the main sonic features of popular missions and show how they fit into the rich and complex soundscape of early modern Catholicism.

Cet article étudie un corpus de soixante-trois pièces de musique conservé dans le fonds des jésuites flamands aux Archives de l’État à Anvers. Ces pièces composées sur des textes flamands (50 pièces) et latins (13 pièces) et destinées à de petits effectifs vocaux et instrumentaux, constituent un témoin inédit et rare de la musique qui était interprétée lors des célébrations paraliturgiques organisées durant le temps du carême et consacrées à la méditation sur les Mystères de la Passion. S’ils n’ont pas été les seuls instigateurs de ces pratiques dévotionnelles, les jésuites leur ont accordé un soin particulier et ont réservé une place importante à la musique dans le déroulement de ces assemblées le plus souvent composées d’un sermon, de prières et de temps de méditation. Tout en définissant le contexte – jusqu’ici très peu documenté – de création et de diffusion de ces pièces grâce à un examen de sources archivistiques variées émanant de différents fonds jésuites, cet article se consacre à l’étude systématique des pièces et, sur la base de leur profil (stylistique et formel) et du texte, s’intéresse particulièrement à la mise en œuvre de procédés musico-littéraires, à leurs effets et leurs enjeux dans l’exercice méditatif proposé aux fidèles.

In a research project entitled “The Soundscape of Early Modern Catholicism” (started in 2012 at the Jesuit Institute of Boston College), I am exploring the grammar of the bidirectional interaction between the Catholic Weltanschauung and the sound world of the early modern era. Balancing everyday life experiences and less easily accessible experiences of sound and music, I aim to provide an interpretation of real and virtual Catholic sonic cultures. In this presentation I will delineate some of the results obtained so far, in regard to topics such as the sonic experience of the Mass, the teaching of the catechism through song, and the role of communal singing and multimedia events in early modern Catholic life.