Volume 31, Number 2, Fall 2020 IBERIAN CONFRATERNITIES AND URBAN SOUNDSCAPES Guest-edited by Tess Knighton

EN:

Confraternities offer an example of the porosity of the early modern urban cloister for musical reasons. Many sixteenth-century Barcelonan guild and devotional confraternities were housed in nunneries and used conventual spaces that were also filled by the sound of nuns singing in the celebration of specified feasts as part of their devotional practices. This article, based on case-studies of the Benedictine convents of Sant Pere de les Puel·les and Sant Antoni i Santa Clara and the Dominican nunneries of Montsió and Els Àngels, analyzes a variety of archival documents in order to assess the close connection between the inhabitants of Barcelona and conventual ceremonies involving music through membership in a confraternity, the desire of members to be buried in convents, and the funerary ceremonies and eschatological beliefs this implied.

EN:

The original significance of the public entry of a new archbishop into Tarragona lies in the fact that the city, through its confraternities, honoured one of its social elite with a popular celebration. Urban government was based upon two authorities: the king and the archbishop. In Tarragona, a city of deeply rooted customs and traditions, the entry ritual remained almost unchanged from medieval times to the modern era. Guild confraternities were active participants in urban ritual, with their dances, figures, and fantastic animals, and thus created a nexus of identity among the urban community as a whole. Detailed descriptions in municipal chronicles make it possible to study which confraternities existed in Tarragona, and in what ways they participated in the festive celebrations and were connected to the social network, as, for a brief moment, they enjoyed an activity far removed from the daily grind of work. The aim of this article is to observe how the ecosystem of guild confraternities in Tarragona varied little over time, how they always participated with the same dance and, as a result, how the soundscape of those dances became a characteristic soundmark of urban ceremony there.

EN:

The confraternal movement in Braga dates back to the early Middle Ages with the existence of at least two confraternities from that time: the Confraternity of São João do Souto (St John [the Baptist] of Souto), a parish in the diocese of Braga, documentation for which can be traced back to 1186; and that of the Santíssima Trindade (the Most Holy Trinity), founded in 1381 in Braga Cathedral. However, it was from the end of the sixteenth century and throughout the seventeenth century that confraternities developed most fully in this region of Portugal. This article aims to identify and analyze devotional celebrations through references to music in the statutes and regulations of the main confraternities and brotherhoods in Braga between the years 1500 and 1700. The festive celebrations of patronal feast days and other important feasts in the liturgical calendar will be discussed as practices of sociability and power in which the musical investment was of particular importance. The confraternities of São João do Souto and the Misericórdia in Braga are the focus of the contribution confraternities made to the urban soundscape.

EN:

Processions for the redemption of Christian captives held for ransom in the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa were of great importance for the outward expression of Christian faith during the early modern period. The city of Valencia, as a major maritime centre in the Mediterranean, mounted many of these highly symbolic processions during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Two main religious orders were dedicated to freeing captives: the Mercedarians and the Trinitarians. This article considers the soundscape of this type of procession in Valencia at that time, and, in particular, analyzes the major role of confraternities based in the churches of the two orders in the realization of processions. Extant documentation of these two religious houses affords insight into the urban ceremonies occasioned by the redemption processions and offers detailed descriptions of the soundscape they created with the singing of psalms, motets, and the Te Deum laudamus. It also provides an interesting account of the dispute between Trinitarians and Mercedarians over control of ceremonial space in the urban complex—both physical and sonic—occasioned by the processions they organized.

EN:

Sound was important to urban devotional and guild confraternities: sounds of various kinds, including organized and semi-improvised musics, served as acoustic signals that heralded their presence and communicated their identity; and different combinations of sounds characterized their devotional activities and ceremonies. Whether based at the cathedral or a collegiate, parish or conventual church, confraternities developed a sonic identity that drew on shared elements—bells, town criers, the hiring of wind-bands and other musicians such as trumpets and drums, as well as players of stringed instruments, the organ, chant and polyphonic singing, songs and dances—that were combined in various ways according to the devotional needs and economic resources of the confraternity in question, and to the nature of the event in which they were participating. More sound was generally regarded as more prestigious, but this depended on the fluctuating economic situation of individual confraternities. The smaller brotherhoods often struggled to meet the expense of hiring musicians for the annual feast days of their patron saints. Given the proliferation of confraternities in a city such as Barcelona, the density of their devotional activity—in addition to their customary participation in general urban processions, such as those of Holy Week, Corpus Christi, and other major feasts—meant that their contribution to the urban soundscape was considerable: indeed, it is impossible to recover any real sense of it without taking into account their musical patronage and sonic contribution.