Andrés de Torrentes (1510-1580), Spanish polyphonist and chapelmaster : Opera omnia, biography and source study

Abstract

The study of the life and edition of the music of the Spanish chapelmaster and polyphonist Andres de Torrentes (1510-1580) provide the student of Renaissance music with an ideal starting-point both for the study of the thirty-four polyphonic choirbooks held in the archive of Toledo Cathedral and, in turn, for an investigation into the musical life of sixteenth-century Toledo. Torrentes is a logical starting-point because, like his contemporaries Cristobal de Morales (ca.. 1500- 1553), Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599), Sebastian de Vivanco (ca. 1550-1622), Juan Navarro (ca. 1530-1580) and Tomas Luis de Victoria (ca. 1548-1611), he was a prolific composer and one whose musical output, according to Stevenson, "entitles him to the rank of a major composer" Over fifty of Torrentes works are preserved, in manuscript, in Toledo and they include examples of all the important sacred musical genres of the sixteenth century. The manuscript sources of Torrentes1 polyphony have, moreover, survived the accidents of history which have claimed the works of so many of his Spanish contemporaries. Torrentes' career as the longest serving chapelmaster of the Spanish primatial Cathedral in Toledo in the sixteenth century was spread over three separate terms and a study of his career,based upon primary sources, provides us with valuable insights into a period which spans forty-two years (from Torrentes1 first appearance in 1538 until his death in 1580) in the life of one of the most active musical centres of Renaissance Spain. Previous research into the music of the siglo de oro falls into two clearly distinguishable 'waves', the first of which was carried out in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Spanish scholars such as Pedrell, Angles, Eslava, Elustiza and Rubio Piqueras. With the exception of two studies by Rubio Piqueras, the scholarly literature produced by this group of pioneers mentions next to nothing of either Torrentes or his music. To Rubio Piqueras fell the honour of publishing the first catalogue of the polyphonic choirbooks of Toledo Cathedral2 and the first study devoted to the music and musicians of Toledo Cathedral.3 To date, however, only three of Torrentes pieces have been published and none of the Toledan manuscript choirbooks have received the study they undoubtedly deserve. Although the second, more recent 'wave' of research was the first to employ the thorough methods of modern musicology, it has been preoccupied with a handful of major composers whose works were published during their own lifetimes, namely, Morales, Vivanco, Guerrero, Navarro, and Victoria. It was headed by Stevenson, whose authoritative monograph Spanish Cathedral Music in the Golden Age remains the most thorough and accurate account of the field. Even here, though, Torrentes is relegated to a two-sentence footnote. His name is mentioned, in passing, in Reese's Music in the Renaissance as one of a number of "Spanish composers who flourished about the middle of the sixteenth century, but who are not known to have pursued careers in Italy"4. A similar mention appears in The New Oxford History of Music5. In Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart6, Torrentes is afforded two sentences and a very incomplete and inaccurate list of works. Similar brief references together with inaccurate and/or incomplete lists of works appear in Eitnerrs Biographisch-bibliographisches Quellen- Lexikon7 and Riemann's Musik-Lexikon8. The most accurate account of Torrentes' life and works is Stevenson's entry in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians9. The present thesis is limited to a study of Torrentes' biography based upon primary sources, a detailed examination of the major manuscript sources of his music and an edition of all of the composer's music which is known to survive- Although some new information concerning performance practices in sixteenthcentury Toledo has been brought to light10, a detailed discussion of this important question lies outside the scope of the present work as, indeed, does a style-critical study of the music itself