Presentation

Santiago de Murcia, a Baroque Master of the Guitar in Two Hemispheres

With each passing day, the world seems to be more and more interconnected, as the cultural threads on our small planet are laced together in ever tighter and tighter tapestries. In today’s modern world, “classical” composers might spend as much time in New Delhi or Bali as they spend in New York or Berlin; and pop music’s world beat—that effortlessly intertwines strands from four or five continents simultaneously in the same recording session—is gradually replacing the more rather “traditional” and insular rock and roll. But this interweaving of continents and influences was foreshadowed nearly three centuries ago in the works of one of the Baroque Period’s most international musicians, the composer and guitarist, Santiago de Murcia. He reached the pinnacle of his art as a composer, guitarist, theorist, accompanist, and arranger; and evidence strongly suggests that after growing up in Spain he journeyed across much of Europe, eventually finding his way to the New World. Few artists can claim to have set the artistic standard in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, but Murcia’s contributions clearly span the Atlantic.
The shreds of evidence concerning his life are frustratingly incomplete, and one must make several leaps of faith to reconstruct his biography. Nevertheless, thanks to the investigative research of several scholars (most notably Monica Hall, Elena Machado Lowenfeld, Gerardo Arriaga, Robert Stevenson, Michael Lorimer, Louis Jambou, and Cristina Bordas Ibáñez) we can glue together a very plausible—even probable—biography for the talented but enigmatic Santiago de Murcia.
Born around 1682 to a family that had been steeped in professional music-making for at least five generations, Santiago grew up in one of the most vibrant cultural centers of Europe—Madrid, Spain. His putative family tree is chockfull of skilled guitar makers or performers, such as his great uncle Juan Hidalgo, a virtuoso harpist and arguably the most important composer from Baroque Spain. Hidalgo collaborated on several stage productions with Calderón de la Barca, such as their triumphant semi-opera  La statua de Prometeo (The Statue of Prometheus) and their operatic masterpiece, La púrpura de la rosa (The Blood of the Rose), that was the first opera set in the Spanish language. Other family ties link Santiago to the guitar- and harp-making business. His parents, Gabriel de Murcia and Juliana de León, both rose to prominence as acclaimed violeros (instrument-makers who specialized in plucked strings and low-register bowed instruments), serving as personal luthiers for the Queen. Santiago de Murcia’s maternal grandfather, Francisco de León, served as the personal Luthier to the Queen, passing his artisan craft down to his daughter Juliana who, surprisingly, was allowed to fill her father’s vacated post on an interim basis after Francisco’s death. Juliana married Gabriel de Murcia, and the couple bore at least two other musicians: Antonio de Murcia (who continued in the family business as Luthier to the Queen), and Santiago de Murcia (who was appointed Guitar-Teacher to the Queen). Thus, both brothers’ careers overlapped and intertwined. Santiago gave Queen Maria Luisa Gabriela of Savoy private guitar lessons, while Antonio handcrafted the instruments upon which she played.  
Santiago’s family connections assured his profound and detailed music education as a youngster and later placed him in the locus of professional activities at the Royal Court and Royal Chapel in Madrid in the early 1700s. Several documents imply that as a teen, Santiago learned his musical craft from the astounding guitarist, contralto, and composer Francisco de Gueráu who was appointed Music Master of the Royal College of Choirboys in 1694. Gueráu’s Poema harmónico (1694) is the pinnacle of virtuoso guitar music from the seventeenth century, and it is no accident that his probable pupil—Santiago—scaled the same heights in the eighteenth century. The layout of Gueráu’s Poema harmónico and Murcia’s enormous anthology known as the “Pasacalles y obras (1732)” share enough features in common that in places they appear to be cut from the same cloth. Also, Murcia lauds Gueráu in the preface to his own accompanying treatise, the Resumen de acompañar la parte con la guitarra (1714).  
Gueráu had grown up in the island paradise of Mallorca before obtaining his post at the Royal Chapel in Madrid. Yet another mallorquino was the principal cellist for the Royal Chapel and theater composer, Antonio Literes; in authoring the approbation for Murcia’s Resumen de acompañar, Literes singles out the “harmoniousness and variety of its pieces” as well as its merits as a meticulous and well informed basso continuo method. A minuet that Murcia inserts on page 94 of his Resumen de acompañar bears no ascription but is actually an arrangement of the concluding movement to Literes’s A del rústico pastor. Literes was certainly capable of judging accurately the merits of Murcia’s Resumen since he was a guitarist as well as cellist. Although he owned a Stradivarius violoncello, we might wonder if some of his instruments were handcrafted specifically for him by the Murcia family. Since Murcia served as the Queen’s personal guitarist, we can safely assume that Murcia and Literes sat side-by-side at many performances in the Royal Chapel.  
Murcia was well traveled; he absorbed every national fad and readily incorporated the panorama of ideas in his own personal style in much the same way that Mozart did just a few decades later. He left three enormous anthologies of guitar works, each with a different emphasis area and repertoire: 1) the Resumen de acompañar la parte (engraved in Antwerp in1714, and released in 1717) with French danses à bal, danses à deux, contredanses, and minuets plus three exquisite dance suites; 2) the “Passacalles y obras” with ambitious pasacalles in each key, a few Italianate sonatas, and a plethora of extended dances suites; and 3) the “Códice Saldívar No. 4” that anthologizes the Spanish bailes and danzas of the previous centuries, some new-fangled “middle class” creations such as the fandango, jota, and seguidillas, a handful of Afro-American works imported from the Caribbean such as the zarambeques and cumbées, a few theater tunes (perhaps the fruit of collaborations with Francisco de Castro in Madrid), and some amazing Italianate sonatas, one of which is caste in full-blown sonata form. The “Passacalles y obras” and “Códice Saldívar No. 4” are both manuscripts written in Murcia’s hand, jotted down on the same paper type, and bound with identical embossed leather bindings. Visually they appear to be twins, but when one opens them up it is readily apparent that they are completely different repertoires; together, they are intended as two complementary volumes that comprise a single gargantuan compendium of all the styles existing at the time.
Many of the pieces in Murcia’s three books are original, but he also jots down his guitar arrangements of the greatest hits by the most beloved stars of the age: in effect, the books serve much the same purpose that modern “fake books” do for jazz artists who are expected to realize nearly any well-known song that an audience member requests. Artists that appear in Murcia’s books include such composers as Lully, Campra, Pécour, Philidor, Collasse, Marais, de Visée, François Campion, Grenerin, Carré, Le Cocq, Corelli, Corbetta, Martín y Coll, Literes, and Cavalieri.
Corelli’s compositions pop up repeatedly, sometimes with ascription and sometimes without. In all likelihood, Murcia met Corelli in 1702 when the Spanish monarchs, Philip V and María Luisa Gabriela, made a trip to Naples that was under their dominion. Surely, the royal couple traveled with their retinue of attendants, including the Queen’s personal guitar teacher, Santiago. Charles Burney recounts in juicy detail a performance in Naples of Alessandro’s Tiberio where Arcangelo Corelli served as the orchestra’s concertmaster. The unnamed “king” who attended must have been King Philip V. This occasion would have placed Scarlatti, Corelli, and Murcia in the same artistic environment for a brief period, and we can surmise that Murcia was one of the main conduits for the transporting of Corelli’s music not only to Madrid (with the king’s return to the capitol), but also to Mexico. Corelli was adored in the New World. There are stacks of Corelli’s works in Mexican and South American sources—and no artist was more effective in disseminating the Italian’s masterpieces to the Western Hemisphere than Murcia.  
Two of the neglected masters found in Murcia’s anthologies, François Campion and François Le Cocq, were guitarists of the first order; it is somewhat mystifying why modern guitarists do not rush out to record and perform their resplendent works. Fortunately, Cristina Azuma’s disc has a thrilling performance of Murcia’s Suite in A-minor; its Courante and Gavotte are extracted from Le Cocq’s “Recueil de pièces de guitarre.” How Murcia became acquainted with Le Cocq’s compositions is uncertain, since the Belgian guitarist’s marvelous works were not widely circulated. One is tempted to place Murcia in Belgium and the surrounding regions during the time that his Resumen was being engraved in Antwerp. The plates for his Resumen exhibit the same precise orthographic lettering and idiosyncrasies of his handwritten manuscripts—apparently, he engraved the plates himself. If that is the case, it would have been a short jaunt down the street or to the neighboring village to meet his esteemed colleague, Le Cocq. Interestingly, Murcia’s Allemande from this same Suite in A-minor is drawn—not from Le Cocq—but instead from the Livre de guitarre (1682) by French superstar Robert de Visée.
Murcia experienced a three-year delay between the engraving of the Resumen de acompañar in 1714 and its release in to the public in 1717. After that date, he mysteriously disappears from all court and concert records in the Spanish capital. We might ask, “why?” Many clues strongly hint that he had moved from Spain to take up residence in Puebla, Mexico, in order to accompany his patron, Joseph Álvarez de Saavedra, a prominent Knight in the Order of Santiago and a member of the King’s Council. A move from Spain to Mexico seems perfectly logical, given the unfortunate death of Murcia’s patroness the Queen in 1714. When Philip V remarried, his new spouse Isabel Farnese did a thorough “housecleaning” of the royal employees. The previous queen’s inner circle of employees found themselves unemployed, so as doors were closing in Madrid, Murcia sought to explore new opportunities in the New World. His two enormous manuscript anthologies contain the repertoire he had gathered in his younger days in Europe plus the spunky numbers he had assimilated from his Mexican colleagues. The cumbé and zarambeque were the rage in the African-American communities of Veracruz and Puebla, and two fabulous settings appear in Murcia’s “Códice Saldívar No. 4.” The Inquisition tried incessantly—and unsuccessfully—to stamp out the cumbé due to its lascivious dancing and scandalous lyrics. Records show that this genre had African roots; it flourished in the Caribbean and then made its way to the port city of Veracruz where it then spread across the Americas and even Spain. The irrepressible rhythms are contagious.
When one skims through the rich literature of Murcia’s tablature books one finds a full spectrum of every imaginable mood, spice, and flavor. Moreover, we are blessed that Cristina Azuma, one of the world’s most virtuosic and refined guitarists, has decided to record such a vibrantly thrilling and artistically subtle CD of this varied repertoire.  Murcia provides the ingredients, and Azuma has “cooked them up” into a gloriously satisfying musical feast. ¡Viva Santiago de Murcia! ¡Viva Cristina Azuma!
 

Copyright ©Craig H. Russell

The repertoire

Santiago de Murcia “intabulated” every composition that he played with the most meticulous care; so his legacy is exceptionally rich. One can find everything there, ranging from original compositions to arrangements, as well as pieces betraying a wide variety of influences (Spanish, French, Italian, even South American). Such is the precision of his fingerings that I have adopted them all in the recordings on this CD.
Obviously the heart of Santiago’s repertoire lies in the Spanish music, with those successful popular tunes that formed the basis for innumerable sets of variations (diferencias): the procedure was so native to the Spanish musical scene that it spawned many musical forms in that period. Hence, therefore, we find the passacalles, with their guitar character and simple chord sequence, crossing boundaries to assume the form of thorough bass; or the marionas passing from the enormous popularity in their own country to the “disguises” that were equally successful abroad, in ciaccone or passacaglii; or the jotas and villanos, with their even more folk-like character, accompanied by texts about country life; or even the canarios, whose characteristic nine-beat rhythm gave rise to a number of various explanations and versions. Here we can hear two, in D and in G: the first appears in a further (mathematically impeccable) rhythmic version, one well suited to the score; for the second I have used a simplified structure in the “rasgueado” passages. Finally, there are the marizapalos, which are among the pieces most popular with enthusiasts of diferencias, given by Santiago in the key of G minor, an unusual key for the guitar.
Murcia’s work, however, is not just restricted to the Spanish repertoire. For Spain, at the start of the 18th century, was also subject to the influence of the Bourbons of France, a trend that reached its peak in the reign of Louis XIV. In musical terms this coincided with the establishment of the Spanish court of Philip V, at a time when both chansons and French dance music overwhelmed the courts of all Europe. Santiago also arranged a large number of these works for the guitar: one example appears in this programme (the Menuet de clarin from Lully’s Rolland).
In Santiago we also find evidence of what we could call an international contemporary guitar repertoire. Here we find the work of the famous Italian virtuoso Francesco Corbetta, who performed in the main European centres and sparked a fashion at the courts of both the Sun King and the Stuarts in England, thus contributing to the spread of a shared repertoire. So it is no surprise to come across the same pieces both intabulated by Santiago in Spain as well as in the books published by De Visèe in France, by Corbetta in France and England and by Le Cocq in Belgium.
The Obras in various keys offered by Santiago are in fact suites assembled with pieces by different composers, including himself. The one played here has clear concordances with works by De Visèe and Le Cocq.
To complete this survey of a very intense career we need only mention that in all likelihood Santiago also visited Mexico, a Spanish colony in Latin America where the guitar had been introduced by the (Spanish and Portuguese) conquistadores. Santiago seems to have been the first to give complete intabulations of pieces that show traces of the typical themes and rhythms of Latin America. Examples are the Cumbés and Zarambeques, of evident African influence, and the Imposibles, which, in spite of their Romanesca harmony, present a rhythm that can be likened to the Zamba Argentina, which is still alive today.
Santiago’s work, therefore, is not only a synthesis of Spanish music. The programme on this disc opens up vistas on the musical universe of an entire age: a very wide horizon that I wish to share with my listeners.

copyright©Cristina Azuma