In our 16th Annual Holiday Concert, we’ll immerse ourselves in music composed in Central and South America during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The mixture of styles was exceedingly complex and constantly changing as Indigenous cultures interacted not only with each other but also with influences from Europe, primarily in the form of Spanish and Portuguese colonization and persistent proselytizing and religious conversion by the Catholic Church. From what is modern-day Mexico, we’ll hear villancicos (Christmas Carols) and other masterworks by Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (c. 1590–1664) and Gaspar Fernandez (c. 1566–1629) who both worked at the great cathedral in Puebla. Their music creatively and consistently integrates indigenous and European models. 

We’ll also hear Serenísima una Noche, a villancico by Fr. Jerónimo González de Mendoza (c. 1633–1661) from Puebla and a beautiful lullaby Xicochi Conetzintle adapted by Fernandez in Nahuatl, a prominent Indigenous language in Mexico. The program features several songs from a remarkable 1785 collection known as the Trujillo Codex. Assembled by Bishop Martinez for the King of Spain, the Codex brought together over 1400 watercolor paintings and musical scores documenting Indigenous life (people, customs, flora, fauna, and geography) in colonial Peru. We’ll hear the elegant cantata O Daliso for soprano and continuo by Domenico Zipoli (1688–1726) (an Italian Jesuit who worked in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru); the thrilling and jaunty tenor solo, Vaya de Jácara, Amigos, by Guatemalan composer Raphael Castellanos (1725–1791); and a recorder arrangement of an 18th-century Bolivian song La Matutina Estrella.