LAMúsiCa
Volume 2, Number 2 (February, 1997)
Carmen Téllez, Editor in Chief
Gerardo Dirié, Editor
Erick Carballo, Managing Editor
Mario Ortiz, Contributor

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695)

The Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana commemorated the three hundredth anniversary of Sor Juana's death with an International Congress in Mexico City on November 13-17, 1995. Scholars and students from Mexico, the United States, Canada, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Colombia, Venezuela, and Argentina gathered to participate in the celebration that included masterclasses, lectures, concerts, art exhibits, theater, dance, social events, and the presentation of the book Sor Juana y su Mundo, a collection of essays pertaining to different aspects of Sor Juana's world.

The work of Sor Juana has always attracted the attention of colonial Latin American music scholars and performers; Sor Juana was regularly involved in musical activities: teaching music in the Covento de San Jerónimo (where she lived most of her life); writing villancicos and musical plays that were set to music by the leading composers in colonial Mexico; perhaps also(although no evidence exists to confirm this) composing some music; and most importantly, extensively using musical imagery in her poetry and writing specifically about music. There are also references by Sor Juana herself and some biographers that indicate that she wrote a musical treatise entitled El Caracol.

The congress did not fail to honor the musical world of Sor Juana. Two concerts of Latin American colonial music were offered, the first program consisting of Sor Juana's villancicos set to music, with the ensemble La Capilla Virreinal de la Nueva España led by Aurelio Tello. The second concert featured colonial baroque polyphony, presented by the Coro de la Catedral de la Ciudad de México.

In addition to these concerts there was a special lecture session entitled "La pasión musical en el mundo de Sor Juana" ("The musical passion in Sor Juana's world"). The participants of this session were José Antonio Robles Cahero (Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical Carlos Chávez, CENIDIM, Mexico City), Aurelio Tello (CENIDIM), and Mario A. Ortiz (Doctoral student of Musicology and Spanish Literature, Indiana University). Following are translations from the original Spanish abstracts of these lectures:

Sor Juana y Euterpe: la pasión musical entre una monja y una musa ("Sor Juana and Euterpe: the musical passion between a nun and a muse") by José A. Robles.

The interest in music was common in the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; Cervantes, Góngora, Quevedo, Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca not only made musical allusions but also wrote texts to be sung. The same happened among writers of the New World, particularly Juan Ruiz de Alarcón and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. In this sense, Sor Juana joins an old Western tradition of linking words and music. Her interest in the musical theory of her period is a well-known fact; her personal library included some of the most famous musical treatises of the time.

Sor Juana y los maestros de capilla catedralicios ("Sor Juana and the cathedral chapel masters") by Aurelio Tello.

Among the commissioned poetic works of Sor Juana, the villancicos and sacred works are of singular importance. However, both genres have always been studied from a literary perspective, without considering that these works were written specifically to be sung. The study of the musical aspects permits us to approach the relationship between Sor Juana and her contemporary composers, the traditional use of the villancico in religious celebrations and the projection of the written verses in cathedrals outside of New Spain. (See bibliography below)

El discurso especulativo musical de Sor Juana ("The speculative musical discourse of Sor Juana") by Mario A. Ortiz.

The European musical tradition underwent significant changes during the seventeenth century: the adoption of tonality, the challenge to older temperament systems, the shift of the position of music from the Quadrivium to the Trivium, and the definition of a new circular harmonic concept as opposed to the more traditional spiral conception, to name but a few. This paper analyzes Sor Juana's musical thought in regard to these transformations. Sor Juana's speculative musical discourse challenges and criticizes the new musical order and defends traditional concepts regarding the nature and the constitutive elements of music. Her main concerns are to defend: first, the music-mathematics relationship, strongly influenced by Pythagorean principles; second, the spiral harmonic concept; and finally, the Platonic aesthetic ideal of Beauty as a reflection of Harmony.

Publication of these papers as part of the acts of the congress is in progress. For information please contact:

Jose Luis Barrios Lara

Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana

San Jerónimo No. 47, Centro Histórico

México, D.F., 06080

México

Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz and Music:

Some Bibliographical Sources

Lavista, Mario. "Sor Juana musicus." Pauta. Cuadernos de teoría y crítica musical. 6 (1983): 94-97.

Long, Pamela H. "El caracol: Music in the Works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz." Ph.D. Dissertation, Tulane University, 1990.

Miranda, Ricardo. "Sor Juana y la música: una lectura más." Pauta. Cuadernos de teoría y crítica musical. 15 ( 1995): 5-23.

Paz, Octavio. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982.

Stevenson, Robert. "Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's Musical Rapports: A Tercentenary Remembrance." Inter-American Music Review 15 (1996): 1-21.

________. "Sor Juana's Mexico City Musical Coadjutors: José de Loaysa y Agurto and Antonio de Salazar." Inter-American Music Review 15 (1996): 23-37.

Tello, Aurelio. "Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz y los maestros de capilla catedralicios o de los ecos concertados y las acordes músicas con que sus villancicos fueron puestos en métrica armonía." Pauta. Cuadernos de teoría y crítica musical. 16 (1996): 5-26.

Please email questions or consultations to Latin American Music Center: lamc@indiana.edu