Music, manuscripts, and missionaries in the early colonial Guatemalan Highlands
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The Q'anjob'al and Chuj Mayans of Guatemala's Cuchumatán mountains fiercely resisted the Spanish colonial presence. From the earliest contact in 1525 to the late seventeenth century, chroniclers reported "imminent risk" to Spanish interlopers. And yet, those same Mayan communities embraced a European-style Catholic music tradition, as choristers, scribes, and composers. Local maestros documented and exchanged their repertoires, eventually leaving behind more than fifty volumes of music manuscripts. The same people who set "demon spirits" upon priests sang songs such as "De la sagrada Maria" (Of the sacred Mary). What power did music have that arms and scripture lacked? How did this group of remote and resistant villages become Central America's most robust center of Catholic choral music-making of its time? My dissertation picks up these questions through an examination of this "Huehuetenango collection" of manuscripts, of which only sixteen now survive. This project is the first major scholarly work dedicated to the historical context of this collection. With newly catalogued works and song analyses, this study brings to light material of an entire region of interconnected communities, recording local colonial-era language use, religious hierarchies, and social networks. I argue that the Huehuetenango collection offers rare evidence of early colonial lived experiences of the Q'anjob'al and Chuj Maya people and the Indigenization of a musico-religious tradition.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2022; ©2022 |
| Publication date | 2022; 2022 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Haag, Kirstin |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Rodin, Jesse |
| Thesis advisor | Rodin, Jesse |
| Thesis advisor | Greene, Roland, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Schultz, Anna C |
| Degree committee member | Greene, Roland, 1957- |
| Degree committee member | Schultz, Anna C |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Music |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Kirstin Haag. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Music. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2022. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/zm275px1961 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2022 by Kirstin Haag
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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