An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 1 | CATHOLIC MUSIC IN COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA 21

SPANISH COLONIZATION

For all the violence of the Spanish conquest in 1519 of the Aztecs in Mexico, the

invaders did their work with the blessing of the Roman Catholic Church, which

was vitally interested in converting the indigenous peoples to Christianity. Thus,

the fi rst Christian sacred music to take root in North America was that of the

Roman Catholic liturgy, brought by priests attached to Spanish missions in the

New World. Having established their capital in Mexico City, the Spanish cre-

ated New Spain as a network of settlements ruled from the capital, with each

town formed around a central plaza on which stood a church or cathedral. In

these churches the people, who gradually came to include more and more mes-

tizos (people of mixed blood) as well as Spanish and Indians, came to know the

Roman rites of worship.

To make worship services as impressive as possible, the Roman Catholic

Church encouraged public display. Monumental church buildings, bright images

and fl ashing color, priestly garments, incense, large spaces within which speech

and music could reverberate—all were welcomed into the Catholic tradition. As

a part of that heritage, the church also favored musical elaboration, especially

vocal polyphony (singing in two or more independent voice parts) and the use

of an organ or other musical instruments. Moreover, until the Second Vatican

Council of 1962–65, the Roman Catholic liturgy was celebrated throughout the

world in Latin, helping to g ive it an aura of timeless formality, not to mention the

practical advantages of having one liturgy and language for one international

church.

By the early 1500s, the Spanish had installed the Roman rite in Mexico

and were working to Christianize the native populations. As early as 1528, the

Spanish-born Franciscan priest Juan de Padilla was teaching those near Mexico

City to sing plainsong (Gregorian chant) and to participate in sacred choral part-

singing. In 1540 Padilla crossed the Rio Grande into present-day New Mexico and

began a similar project among the Moquir Pueblo and Zuni Indians. Nineteen

years later, the Spanish launched a parallel effort in Florida, where the musician

and missionary Pedro Martín de Feria taught people near the present city of Pen-

sacola how to sing parts of the liturgy in plainsong.

The Roman Catholic Church used sacred music not only to maintain and

bolster the faith of the European settlers but also to familiarize indigenous peo-

ples with white settlers’ ways. In what is now Texas and New Mexico, Jesuit mis-

sions educated American Indians to participate in the missions’ musical life. In

1630 Alonso de Benavides noted the presence of “schools for reading and writ-

ing, singing and playing all instruments,” and by 1680 some twenty-fi ve such

missions existed across the Southwest.

In the latter 1700s the missionary effort spread farther west. In 1769 the Fran-

ciscan Junipero Serra, himself a trained musician, began the colonization of

southern California as a part of New Spain. By the 1820s a network of twenty-

one Franciscan missions existed in California. The Roman Catholic liturgy, with

appropriate music, was celebrated in the settlements until 1833, when the gov-

ernment in Mexico City secularized the missions, sold their lands, and sent the

friars back to Spain. By 1846 musical activity in the settlements had ceased. While

it lasted, however, music making in the California missions, rooted in plainsong

Florida

Texas, New Mexico

California

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