Experiencing Music in the Early Spanish Americas

Musical sounds, performance spaces, and sonic traces played important roles in the Spanish Americas (1521–1821) by enhancing devotion, signaling identity, and expressing agency. Art historians and musicologists will explore how musicians, artists, architects, and audiences grappled with colonialism through music in innovative and culturally specific ways at the “Music in the Early Spanish Americas, Performance Spaces, and Archives” conference, held at The Huntington on March 21–22. Experts will discuss the intersectional issues of music performance, sound and voice studies, art history, gender and race relations, and institutional hierarchies.

The conference is convened by Savannah Esquivel, an assistant professor of art history at the University of California, Riverside, and Cesar Favila, an associate professor of musicology at UCLA, who discuss the music-filled spaces of the Spanish Americas and the exceptional resources in The Huntington’s collections that help reconstruct the soundscapes of the past.

Music and Architecture in Colonial Churches

Favila: This is a restored choir loft in the convent church of the former Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, a Franciscan missionary founded in 1708 in Zacatecas, Mexico. The loft, located above the church’s front entrance and facing the high altar, houses a facistol—a four-sided book stand that held large music books used by friars to sing the music for liturgies.

Esquivel: Music resonated from this small, elevated space to the congregation below. The architecture shaped how people experienced music and understood their identities and relationships with one another under colonial rule.

The choir lofts in many colonial churches are poorly preserved because musical performances moved to the altar area after the colonial period. The restored loft at Zacatecas provides a rare glimpse into the kinds of spaces where musicians performed—whether they were elite women nuns playing organs in urban convents, elite Indigenous men and boys chanting and playing the vihuela and sackbut alongside friars in rural missions, or elite Spanish boys training for the priesthood and singing hymns in the urban parish and seminary churches, such as the Colegio church in Zacatecas.

Music Books’ Role in Colonial-Era Worship

Esquivel: This Missale romanum ordinarium of 1561 is the only known surviving copy of a service book used by 16th-century Franciscan missionaries in the Spanish Americas. Books like this help us reimagine the lived, sensory experiences of the missionaries and Native peoples who labored and worshipped in colonial churches.

Favila: The notated missal, likely from a rural Franciscan mission, would have been used for the liturgy of the Mass on Sundays and feast days. The indication of cantus solemnis at the top center in red text indicates that these are elaborate intonations ideal for important feasts. There are two columns of music. The red text indicates the name of the feast, while the black text corresponds to the words of the chant. So, for example, in the middle of the left column, we have the Latin In festivitatibus beate Marie virginis, which translates to “For feasts of the blessed Virgin Mary,” followed by chants for the priest.

Esquivel: The instructions in the liturgical book linked up with the music in other books, like antiphonals, which the Indigenous choir of roughly 20 men would have sung from in the choir loft over the church’s main entrance. This missal was one important part of a much larger story that takes many books to reconstruct.

Indigenous-Language Liturgical Music

Esquivel: The Psalmodia christiana, published in Mexico City in 1583, was the first book of vernacular (non-Latin) songs printed in the Americas. But it wasn’t in Spanish. The 333 psalms were written in Nahuatl, the language spoken by most Indigenous people in Central Mexico.

While attributed to the Franciscan priest Bernardino de Sahagún, it was created by a team of Nahua authors. They translated excerpts of hymns, antiphons, and biblical passages into sacred Nahuatl poetry. These songs were sung, danced to, and drummed in churchyards before Latin Mass, representing a uniquely Indigenous expression of Catholicism. The Huntington’s Psalmodia is an exemplar of this influential book.

Five Centuries of Devotional Music in New Spain

Esquivel: The Franciscans were the first to send a mission to the Americas, arriving in Mexico—then called New Spain—in 1524. From the beginning, music played a key role in their strategy to convert Indigenous peoples to Catholicism. Missionaries established schools where Native boys trained to sing, and professional Indigenous choirs performed alongside Spanish friars in choir lofts.

These Native choir singers were highly educated elites and often served as cultural intermediaries, helping to translate Catholic liturgy for their communities. The music books in The Huntington’s collection reflects this often fraught and complex history. Importantly, the Indigenous communities patronized church music: They paid the performers, bought the music books and instruments, and built and decorated the performance spaces. This background helps us retell the story of music and Catholic worship from a more Indigenous perspective.

Rethinking the Histories of the Americas

Esquivel: We chose The Huntington for the conference because its archival strengths in the Spanish Americas make it an ideal venue for researchers in art history and musicology.

Favila: Music, visual art, and literary arts were never separate; they worked together to create wonder and awe. We wanted to bring together scholars from related fields to spark fresh insights and conversations.

Esquivel: The Huntington’s holdings, especially the Missale romanum and Psalmodia christiana, are invaluable for understanding music in the Spanish Americas. In the Psalmodia, heaven is described as a sacred garden brimming with fragrant flowers and shimmering birds called forth by song—a fitting metaphor for The Huntington itself.

Beyond its collections, The Huntington provides a space to rethink the histories of the Americas. Often, narratives focus on missionaries imposing Catholicism and colonial rule. But when Indigenous people sang of Catholic saints in churchyards, they reshaped music, religion, and colonial space on their own terms. The Huntington’s library and the sensory-rich environment of its gardens offer a distinctive setting to explore this cross-pollination among music, space, and people.

Conference Information
Read more about the March 21–22 conference and register to attend.

Funding for this conference has been provided by the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and an anonymous donor.

Savannah Esquivel is an assistant professor of art history at UC Riverside and a 2023-2024 Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellow in The Huntington-UC Program for the Advancement of the Humanities. She is completing her book on the sights, sounds, and inhabitants of Mexico’s colonial convents.

Cesar Favila is an associate professor of musicology at UCLA. His research and teaching focus on Mexican music from colonial New Spain to the contemporary Chicano experience. His first book,