Keyboard Instrument, a bridge between Europe and Latin America

Musical instruments provide material evidence to study the diversity and technical innovation of music in space and time. We employed a cultural evolutionary perspective to analyse organological data and their relation to language groups and population history in South America, a unique and complex geographic area for human evolution. The ethnological and archaeological native musical instrument record, documented in three newly assembled continental databases, reveals exceptionally high diversity of wind instruments. We explored similarities in the collection of instruments for each population, considering geographic patterns and focusing on groupings associated with language families. A network analysis of panpipe organological features illustrates four regional/cultural clusters: two in the Tropical Forest and two in the Andes. Twenty-five percent of the instruments in the standard organological classification are present in the archaeological, but not in the ethnographic record, suggesting extinction events. Most recent extinctions can be traced back to European contact, causing a reduction in indigenous cultural diversity.

Gives an overview of seventeenth-century French organ and harpsichord music.

Published in: Revista de Musicología, 39/1 (2016), pp. 77-115. ||ABSTRACT|| Bermudo's Declaración, published in 1555, is one of the most important testimonies to teaching methods for keyboard players in mid-sixteenth-century Spain. Besides learning from the best teachers and players, Bermudo considered that becoming acquainted with vocal polyphony was a sine qua non for instrumentalists. The rigour demanded of him ensured that students would get to know large quantities of both national and imported polyphonic repertories by playing them on the keyboard. His explanation of a system of scoring-up and intabulating this music («poner obras») provides considerable insight into this didactic process. Emphasis throughout is on learning to play and understand the music of the great Franco-Flemish masters such as Josquin, Gombert and others, besides that of Morales and other Spanish composers. It is clear that Bermudo had access to a large number of collections of masses and motets that included the early prints of Antico, Petrucci, later Italian collections, and the mass books of Morales, a number of which are revealed in his work. His knowledge of mensural music (canto de órgano) was also obtained from the profound study of copious treatises, including the works of Gaffurius and Glarean. In addition, he gives the names of famous keyboard players of the time whom he saw as «excellent» masters. This study concludes with a survey of repertories in the two main surviving keyboard collections—Venegas de Henestrosa’s Libro de cifra nueva (1557) and Cabezón’s Obras de música (1578), both of which provide ample evidence of how vocal polyphony was intabulated and rearranged for keyboard performance.

Early Music. Vol. xlii, no. 1, 2014

2015

Organological basis for the development of keyboard technique from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries Historical keyboard instruments have for many years been a valuable source of information regarding historical building techniques and performance practices. However, almost no attention has been paid to the evidence of wear present on these instruments. This physical trace documents the form in which an instrument has been used throughout time. Of particular interest is the evidence of wear found on the surface of the keys. An analysis of this physical trace might provide insight into a number of aspects which have defined the manner in which performers have approached their instruments. A survey of historical keyboard playing practices will help to visualise in a broader form the mechanical reasons behind the impact of the fingers on the surface of the key. However, it is important to consider that while the process behind the appearance of a trace of wear is primarily of a mechanical nature, the fact that both instrument and the performer's body are cultural objects calls for an examination of a number of issues which seem to influence the form in which the mechanical action is applied.

Universum rei harmonicae concentum absolvunt”. The Harpsichord in the Sixteenth Century, 2024

The invention and widespread dissemination of music in tablature was one of the great novelties and a key factor in the proliferation of solo instrumental music during the 16th century. This paper argues that tablature should be regarded as "music in a table" rather than the use of letters or numbers to encode music. It also reveals how, in Spain, Luis Venegas de Henestrosa coined the phrase of music for ‘tecla, harpa y vihuela’ in respect of his 1557 publication, then borrowed by other authors, but that this does not imply the existence of a repertoire that could be interchanged between keyboards, harp and vihuela.

Catalan Historical Review, 2021

By the last quarter of the 19th century, the piano had become a prime cultural, social and commercial phenomenon and was deeply rooted in Catalan society. Proof of this is the increase in piano manufacturing and the consumption of piano music, the Catalan public's ready access to the repertoire, the consolidation of piano instruction and the massive presence of this instrument in concert halls, universal expositions, cafés, athenaeums, casinos, theatres and private salons. This article provides new information outlining the process by which the piano took root and spread from its arrival in Catalonia in the last quarter of the 18th century until the late 19th century, when it had become the most popular, iconic instrument, as evidenced by the emergence of internationally renowned pianists like Tintorer, Granados and Albéniz. This study encompasses references to piano builders and vendors such as F. Bernareggi and M. Guarro, shops that sold scores like F. España, performers and instructors like J. B. Pujol, instructional materials and centres that taught music, as well as the public and private spaces committed to welcoming the instrument's sound. This information confirms and reveals the profound development of piano activity and culture in 19th-century Catalonia.

Journal of New Music Research

Music technologies reflect the most advanced human technologies in most historical periods. Examples range from 40 thousand years old bone flutes found in caves in the Swabian Jura, through ancient Greek water organs or medieval Arabic musical automata, to today's electronic and digital instruments with deep learning. Music technologies incorporate the musical ideas of a time and place and they disseminate those ideas when adopted by other musical cultures. This article explores how contemporary music technologies are culturally conditioned and applies the concept of ethno-organology to describe the nature of migration of instruments between musical cultures.

Iberian Early Music Studies 2, 2016

Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society, 2015