Concert Ministriles de Marsías. Festival Camino de Santiago
Wednesday 16 August at 21:00 h in the church of San Pedro de Siresa.
One characteristic of the minstrel ensemble in Spain was its long survival. While these instruments disappeared from the European musical avant-garde in the first half of the 17th century, they were preserved in our chapels until well into the 19th century, which means that the minstrels only disappeared from the chapels with their disappearance, thanks to the disentailment of Mendizábal. Thus the minstrels, clerical instruments of the ancien régime (such as the shawm and the bajon) coexisted for a long time alongside their modern equivalents, typical of the bourgeoisie (the oboe and the bassoon, respectively). For this reason, the programme we present here offers several pieces from the 18th century or pieces that could have been composed in the 18th century.
The programme brings together a few authors in a selection that reflects the diverse sources of inspiration of the minstrels. On the one hand, vocal music, from which we have chosen both religious versions (“Regina Caeli”, by the Basque composer Juan García de Salazar, recorded by “Ministriles de Marsias” for the Naxos label together with the Capilla Peñaflorida) and secular versions (“vecchie letrose”), as the use of instrumental versions of secular music for religious purposes is widely documented. On the other hand, instrumental music for keyboard (Cabezón, Correa y Soto who, according to D. Pedro Calahorra, between 1526 and 1528 was a player in the chapel of the archbishop of Zaragoza, Juan II of Aragón) because Hernando de Cabezón himself, the editor of his father’s works, tells us in 1578 that “curious minstrels will also be able to take advantage of the book”. And finally, a selection of dance music. The latter may be the most shocking for the modern spectator, the custom of dancing in church on special occasions, which is documented in musical sources at least since the “Llibre Vermell” of Monserrat (14th century) and has survived to the present day with the “seises” children of Seville, during Corpus Christi.
Organised by: DPH