Part IV
11
Noel O’Regan
The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, signed in 1559, cemented Spain’s position as the dominant political power in Italy and put an end to French hopes of seriously challenging that dominance for the rest of the century. In subsequent years the French position in Rome was further weakened due to its wars of religion, while the popes of the Catholic Reformation found a natural, if prickly, ally in Philip II in their moves towards reform. Spanish hegemony continued through at least the first quarter of the following century, a period which Fernand Braudel has labelled the ‘pax hispanica’.1 Rivalry between the major powers continued but it was now played out diplomatically, in arguments over precedence, or through processions and other religious and secular celebrations, part of the function of which was to aggrandize the nation organizing them.
Thomas Dandelet has chronicled the activities of the Spanish colony in Rome between 1500 and 1700, focusing particularly on the ceremonial and devotional rituals of the Castilian Church of S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli and its associated Archicofradía de la Santísima Resurrección, formally approved by Pope Gregory XIII in 1579 and raised to the rank of Archicofradía by the Hispanophile Pope Gregory XIV in 1591.2 Though a relative latecomer to the family of national confraternities, the confraternity quickly took on responsibility for both the spiritual and corporal needs of the large Spanish community in Rome.3 Dandelet saw it as a successful attempt to unite the various Iberian nationalities in Rome in a single Spanish nation which, though based in the Castilian Church of S. Giacomo, took its membership and officials from all emigrants from the Iberian Peninsula. The confraternity of S. Maria di Monserrato had been founded in 1495 to serve the Aragonese, Catalans and those from the Balearic Islands. Other national confraternities were based a short distance from the Piazza Navona, heightening the sense of competition. The main French confraternity was based at the Church of S. Luigi dei Francesi (also begun in 1518), just a couple of streets away,4 while the German nation maintained the Church of S. Maria dell’Anima with an associated confraternity on the other side of the Piazza Navona.5 This study examines something of the role played by music and musicians in the activities of the Spanish Archicofradía and its associated church. The work of other scholars, as well as that of the author, is reviewed in the process of assessing the contribution made by music and musicians to the celebration of Spanish hegemony.6
The pageantry with which the Spaniards celebrated their major feast days and other dynastic occasions reflected the power of a dominant nation determined to mount an impressive display. In this regard they were greatly helped by the position of S. Giacomo, which faced onto one of Rome’s finest squares, the Piazza Navona, built over and retaining the shape of the stadium of Domitian. Although its main entrance was on the Via della Sapienza to the east of the Piazza, a second façade with two entrance doors was built on the Piazza during the reign of the Aragonese Pope Alexander VI Borgia (1492–1503). The Piazza Navona was exploited by the Castilians for elaborate processions, culminating in one of the most extravagant celebrations of all on Easter morning during the Jubilee Year of 1650,7 celebrated during the papacy of the Spanish-leaning Pope Innocent X Pamphili, whose family was rebuilding and exploiting the Piazza for its own aggrandizement.8
In general, the importance of music for public displays has been overlooked by historians, despite its inclusion in contemporary descriptions. Yet music had a crucial part to play, in processions and during the solemn Masses and vespers that preceded or followed them. Processions needed music then, just as they do nowadays; a silent procession is too powerful for normal usage. This music took various forms, with groups of friars chanting plainsong hymns and litanies, small groups of mildly experienced singers improvising harmony around plainsong, more experienced singers performing polyphony, and instrumentalists playing polyphonic music on cornetts and trombones, or fanfares on trumpets.9 These groups were placed at various points in the procession so as to draw attention to significant items being carried such as images, relics or the Blessed Sacrament. Bells were rung and charges of gunpowder and fireworks set off.10
The earliest surviving reference to the Piazza Navona’s use for Spanish celebrations was during Carnival in 1492, when the fall of Granada was celebrated with a trionfo in which Spanish soldiers assaulted a castle defended by Moors.11 A masked procession then entered S. Giacomo, where it met another procession of clergy with crosses singing the Te Deum while masked people representing Ferdinand and Isabella offered their standards to the church. Music played a prominent part in the annual Corpus Christi procession held during the octave day of that feast; payments for the hire of singers and the trumpeters of either the Campidoglio or Castel Sant’Angelo survive from 1550 onwards.12 Music was also central to the Masses and vespers services that marked the patronal feast day of St James the Greater on 25 July. From the early sixteenth century the papal choir came as a body and sang High Mass in the morning, in recognition of the contribution made by the Spanish singers in that choir;13 those Spanish singers, of whom there was always a significant number (including the castrati who were mainly Spanish until the early 1600s), returned in the afternoon for second vespers. Some of the Spanish singers would also have sung at first vespers the previous afternoon, with singers from other choirs in the city hired to swell the numbers at both vespers celebrations.14 The music for vespers would have included elaborate psalm settings and a Magnificat for two, three or four choirs of voices and instruments (often placed on specially constructed platforms). Similarly, the movements of the ordinary of the Mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei) would have been sung in settings for from four to six voices by the papal choir, along with motets which would have included some multiple-choir settings.
The founding of their confraternity in 1579 saw the Spaniards step up their use of the Piazza Navona for religious display, including music. The major patronal celebration of the Resurrection was held just before dawn on Easter Sunday morning, identifying the Spanish nation with the most climactic moment of the church’s year. It also formed the climax to a series of processions undertaken by many of the city’s confraternities on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, going to St Peter’s Basilica to be shown the relics of the Passion held there (the veil of Veronica and part of the lance of Longinus) and then to the sepolcro or altar of repose in the Cappella Paolina in the Vatican. The Spanish procession was held around the Piazza Navona; it centred on the Blessed Sacrament, which was carried in a monstrance held by a Spanish prelate, with a baldachin or processional canopy carried by the Spanish ambassador and other noblemen. In fact, small payments to trumpeters for Easter morning in 1573 and 1576 show that a procession was already taking place on a small scale before the official founding of the archconfraternity.15 In 1579 a small payment of 2.35 scudi was made to Giovanni Battista Jacomelli, called ‘del violino’, because of his prowess on that still relatively new instrument.16
Table 11.1 lists the payments to musicians for which records survive for Easter Sunday mornings up to 1650, including the name of the musician where this is provided. Those named were predominantly Spaniards, apart from Jacomelli and three significant Italian composing musicians. Ruggiero Giovanelli and Asprilio Pacelli were hired while they were maestri di cappella at the nearby Collegio Germanico, patronized by the Austrian Habsburgs as Holy Roman Emperors and so an obvious place to look for maestri.18 Paolo Tarditi was maestro di cappella of a short-lived permanent choir at S. Giacomo between 1616 and 1623 (see below). It can be seen that growth in the sums of money spent was exponential during the 1580s and reached a further peak in the Jubilee Year of 1600. By the 1590s these were the largest sums being paid to musicians in Rome for any single occasion. The procession was not held between 1626 and 1649, ostensibly for financial reasons but also presumably because of the pro-French leanings of Pope Urban VIII (1623–1644); it was resurrected for the Holy Year of 1650 (see below). Fortunately, detailed lists of musicians employed survive for a number of years. The list for 1581 (Table 11.2) includes three bass singers (‘bajos’), two boy sopranos (‘mochachos’) and two further singers from the papal chapel. A violin, a lute (‘laud’), a shawm (‘pifaro’), a cornett and a trombone, as well as a harpsichord, accompanied the singers of polyphony. In addition, two separate groups of ‘menestriles’ (further shawms, cornetts and sackbutts) and ‘trompetas’ (trumpeters playing fanfares) took part.
Table 11.1 Easter Sunday morning procession by the Archicofradía de la Santísima Resurrección in the Piazza Navona: money spent on music in years for which information survives17
Copyright © 2014, Noel O’Regan
A similar list survives from 1583 (Table 11.3). While the singers are not so easily identified they seem to have comprised three sopranos, four altos, two tenors and two basses; the instruments included a violin (rabebillo o ravequino), cornet, trombone, lute, violone and organ (organico). The singers came from S. Luigi dei Francesi and S. Giovanni in Laterano, with some of the latter staying overnight and being given food. The inclusion of singers from the French emigrants’ church shows the promiscuity of singers across national boundaries, which was common in the city. Singers from S. Luigi (who were almost all Italians), one of a just a small number of basilicas and churches to have a regular choir, were hired by S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli, S. Maria di Monserrato, S. Maria del’Anima and other national confraternities to help celebrate major feast days.
Table 11.2 Archicofradía de la Santísima Resurrección de Roma: list of expenses paid for musicians on Easter morning 1581
Copyright © 2014 Noel O’Regan
Table 11.3 Archicofradía de la Santísima Resurrección de Roma: list of expenses paid for musicians on Easter morning 1583
Copyright © 2014 Noel O’Regan
While no detailed list of singers survives from 1586 a list of general expenses helps put expenditure on music into context. The total expended for the procession was 137.20 scudi of which the largest single amount was 46 scudi for musicians (with a further 3.46 scudi spent on food for those singers who slept in S. Giacomo overnight, as well as 2 scudi for trumpeters). Candles cost 39.62 scudi, gunpowder for the artillery 10.38 scudi, fireworks 10 scudi, the cleaning of the piazza and its decoration with branches 6.90 scudi, festoons over the doors 2.50 scudi, together with various small expenses on painters, porters, etc.
A list for 1591 (Table 11.4) shows a very significant rise in expenditure and mentions singers from all of the city’s church choirs. Judging by the sums listed, all of the singers from St Peter’s were present (perhaps with their maestro di cappella, Giovanni P. da Palestrina), as were those of the smaller choirs of S. Maria Maggiore, S. Giovanni in Laterano and S. Luigi dei Francesi. If we take 1 scudo as an average amount of money paid to a singer, there were about 58 singers, as well as a lute, three trombones and an organist. The separate payment of 2 scudi to the falsettist Giovanni Luca [Conforti] is a sign of his fame as a singer and improviser.19 In charge overall was Ruggiero Giovanelli, who was paid an extra 4 scudi for his efforts, which might have included some composition.
Table 11.4 Archicofradía de la Santísima Resurrección de Roma: List of expenses paid for musicians on Easter morning 1591
Copyright © 2014 Noel O’Regan
Although no list of musicians survives from 1592 we do have an important engraving of the Easter morning procession by the architect Girolamo Rainaldi with an associated description (Figure 11.1).
The engraving shows the full Piazza, with the Blessed Sacrament being carried out of the Church of S. Giacomo under its baldachin at the end of the procession, preceded by robed prelates; the head of the procession is meanwhile approaching the church, having gone around the Piazza. Four trumpeters are clearly visible leading the procession. The description is worth quoting extensively for the details it gives about the decorations, the constructions and the fireworks, as well as the music:
11.1 Easter morning procession in the Piazza Navona 1592. Engraving by Girolamo Rainaldi Copyright © Courtesy of Albertina Museum, Vienna.
In the Church of S. Giacomo, called of the Spaniards, there is a Chapel of the Resurrection of Our Lord, very rich and pretty with most beautiful and precious adornments, in which is erected a confraternity of the Spanish nation which is called, however, the Company of the Resurrection. In this chapel, after celebrating a solemn office [of Matins] with the best polyphonic music and various instruments, the procession of the Most Blessed Sacrament is held two hours before daylight …. The façade of the church was adorned with festoons and a great number of lights arranged so that they showed different colours. Around the piazza there was a palisade in front of the houses where the procession passed, in which were planted select green trees laden with small white candles glued on, among which sounded the sweetest sounds of artificial birds. On the palisade there were also many balls with varied coloured lights inside them … On four palace balconies there were choirs20 of the most select musicians of Rome, singing some things appropriate to the mystery of the Resurrection … On the three fountains which can be seen in this piazza, on the first there was a [representation of the] City of God, decorated with beautiful doors and full of musicians. On the second there was a [representation of] Hell, full of caverns and flashes of light with six devils and, on the top, Lucifer, which signified the seven deadly sins and they shot out flames from their mouths. On the third there was a Holy Sepulchre of Christ made with beautiful artifice. There were two wires strung across the piazza, one with a whale which shot out fire from its mouth … On the other was a phoenix which was covered in flames with many festoons.21
The distribution of the musicians on balconies and in one of the ephemeral constructions (representing the City of God, the new Jerusalem) is significant here. Artificial birdsong was used to heighten the effect of dawn. It is clear that there had been careful planning of the soundscape in this as in other years.
Thomas Dandelet quotes a contemporary description by Girolamo Accolti of the mock naval battle that took place on the Piazza Navona on Easter morning in 1596 preceding the procession.22 The latter was accompanied by a choir of 24 singers, according to Accolti, while a further seven choirs, each one also made up of 24 singers, were stationed around the Piazza. This enormous number of singers sounds exaggerated but may be close to the truth if the amount of money expended exceeded the 150 scudi spent in 1595 (see Table 11.1). In these years every singer in the city must have been mustered on the Piazza, particularly in the Holy Year of 1600 when 200 scudi was spent on musicians alone. In 1596 Pope Clement VIII, increasingly irritated by the Spaniards’ arrogance in political and religious matters, protested against their exaggerated display in processions around the Piazza Navona but this seems not to have had any effect.23 Each year the Vicar of Rome issued orders banning all coaches from the Piazza, as well as prostitutes, during the procession. Women watching the procession were to be separated from men and no one was to interfere with the lights or other decorations.24
A further detailed list of musicians survives from 1604, with the Sicilian papal singer Martino Lamotta in charge: published by Francesco Luisi, it gives detailed information about the positioning of the 82 musicians involved (6 maestri di cappella, 66 further singers, 6 trombone players, 4 cornett players).25 There were 7 choirs in total, 6 placed on platforms around the piazza, and the 7th processing in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Each platform choir had roughly 12 musicians including a maestro di cappella; we are not told how the 10 instrumentalists were divided up; the choir before the Blessed Sacrament had 8 singers. A further 4 instrumentalists (organist, violin, lute and theorbo players) were placed inside the church to accompany singers there. The singers came from 9 different institutions.26
Documents surviving from 1614 give the order of the procession and of the music and fireworks accompanying it. The procession was led by the trumpeters from the Campidoglio (as in the 1592 engraving) and the marshal of the procession dressed in white. Next came various lackeys of prelates and of the Spanish Ambassador preceding the archconfraternity’s standard carried by its camerlengo; courtiers carrying torches were then followed by the image of the Virgin, carried by four Spanish courtiers; next a cross accompanied by clerics, the chaplains of S. Giacomo, the officials of the archconfraternity and, finally, the Sacrament, under a baldachin carried by the Spanish ambassador and other nobles. The procession began an hour and a half before dawn so that the Sacrament would re-enter S. Giacomo just as dawn broke. As for the music, we are told only that the Tantum ergo27 was commenced as soon as the prelate took up the monstrance and continued in the church until he reached the piazza; meanwhile between the appearance of the standard and that of the monstrance the minstrels from Castel Sant’Angelo played in the Piazza. Fireworks on a rotating girandola were set off at the appearance of the monstrance and the four choirs (presumably on platforms in the Piazza) sang motets. As the Sacrament reached the Vicolo di Madama halfway along the Piazza, further fireworks were set off, followed by music from choirs and instrumentalists until the halfway stage at the Vicolo della Pace when there were more fireworks, then music by voices and instruments again until the Sacrament reached the altar of the Portuguese on the other side of the Piazza, where there were further fireworks and music. A final prayer preceded the lighting of the most spectacular of the firework displays representing the Hell which Christ had overcome. We do not have any further details of the actual music sung; there seems no question of the four choirs (or six in other years) having sung together, since the distance involved would have been too great. Rather, each would have sung or played its own motet, with settings of texts appropriate to Easter morning as described in 1592.
After a hiatus during the pro-French Barberini papacy, the election of Innocent X Pamphili in 1644 brought the Spaniards back onto the Piazza Navona. Innocent had been nuncio in Spain and was perceived as pro-Spanish. He and his family proceeded to enlarge their modest house on the Piazza Navona into the imposing Palazzo Pamphili designed by Girolamo Rainaldi and completed by his son Carlo.28 Significantly positioned directly across the Piazza from S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli, it was largely complete by the Jubilee Year of 1650. The Pamphili continued to reorganize the Piazza, commissioning Bernini’s Fountain of the Rivers at its centre as well as Borromini’s Church of S. Agnese, moving away the street market and in the process turning it into one of Rome’s great baroque spaces.
All of this set the stage for Easter Sunday 1650. The architect and composer Carlo Rainaldi, son of Girolamo, was responsible for designing the ephemeral structures and he and Domenico Barrière produced an engraving which shows and labels these structures, as well as the fireworks and the eight high platforms constructed for the musicians (Figure 11.2).
Four of these platforms were placed around the Fountain of the Rivers, where the musicians could have sung a motet for four choirs; the other four were placed closer to the four corners of the Piazza and can be clearly seen in the engraving. At the S. Giacomo end of the Piazza there was a large triumphal arch with a statue of the risen Christ built by the Castilians, at the other end the Aragonese had built a similar arch for a statue of the Virgin Mary. The Portuguese had constructed an altar halfway down the side of the Piazza, where S. Agnese now stands. The tableau included platforms with the pagan gods, such as Bacchus, Pluto and Venus, who were consumed by fireworks – metaphorically destroyed by the risen Christ. The diarist Giacinto Gigli recorded that many people stayed away for fear of the fireworks.29 He also recorded that there were eight choirs of musicians and that the total spent on the occasion was a staggering 12,000 scudi. Payment records do not survive in the archives for the music so we do not know who organized the event. An active composer, Carlo Rainaldi may have composed some of the music.
11.2 Easter morning procession in the Piazza Navona 1650. Engraving by Carlo Rainaldi Copyright © Biblioteca Hertziana.
If the Easter procession was the high point of the archconfraternity’s year, it was by no means the only occasion on which musicians were involved. It also sponsored a twice-yearly celebration of the Quarantore, or Forty Hours devotion, in which the Blessed Sacrament was displayed in an elaborately decorated apparato in S. Giacomo for 40 continuous hours (commemorating Christ’s 40 hours in the tomb).30 The devotion commenced and ended with Mass and Benediction, accompanied by music, and it was also customary to have motets sung at regular intervals during the two days. Payments to musicians for this devotion survive for a number of years, normally ranging from between 5 scudi and 10 scudi, but occasionally exceeding that sum, as in March of the Jubilee Year of 1600 when 28.50 scudi were given to an unnamed maestro, or in 1616 when Taddeo de Bassi received 18 scudi.31 An undated list in the archives (which is probably from 1606) records that 22 musicians (18 singers, a violinist, a lutenist and two organists) took part in the Quarantore from a variety of churches in the city. The same document lists 12 singers for a ‘Messa del Eccellentissimo S. Duca di Sessa’, probably a Requiem Mass for the former Spanish ambassador in Rome who died in Valladolid in January 1606.32
The duke had been the resident ambassador in 1601 when the birth of Philip III’s first child Anne of Austria, future queen of France and mother of Louis XIV, was celebrated with great solemnity over two days. The archives of the archconfraternity record a decision on 11 October
to have a very fine feast of music in this church at which the Te Deum laudamus would be sung late next Saturday, and on the following Sunday a Mass of the Holy Spirit would be sung most solemnly, and also for three nights commencing on the said Saturday night there should be great celebrations with many excellent illuminations, shawms, drums, trumpets and mortars, all in abundance and with great rejoicing. This is to happen continuously for the three nights at both façades of the church, that of the Sapienza and that on the Piazza Navona.33
The same document preserves a description of the ceremony:
late on Saturday at 22 hours the Te Deum laudamus was sung very solemnly with polyphony from the papal chapel in three choirs, who also sang a motet at the beginning and at the end, which was like the harmony of the heavens … On the following Sunday the Mass of the Holy Spirit was sung by Monsignor de Cordoba with polyphony from the papal chapel sung very solemnly and with many musical instruments.34
The total cost of all the celebrations was 150 scudi. Of that, 22 scudi was spent on the music which was organized by the Spaniard Francisco Soto, Oratorian father and castrato in the papal choir. He was paid for ten papal singers plus three from other choirs, a violinist, a lutenist, a theorbo player and four organists.35 There were two small organs as well as S. Giacomo’s large organ, plus a spinet at the Mass. The presence of papal singers on this and other occasions added both musical and political prestige to these events and was a clear signal of papal approval.36
At the other end of life, deaths of members of the Spanish royal family were also occasions for music. One such occasion celebrated the exequies of Queen Isabella on 7 February 1645 when there was ‘sumptuous music’ for three choirs, which included instruments and some of the most famous musicians of Rome, including members of the papal choir.37 Requiem Masses continued for a week, with music for two choirs on the second day, just one choir on the remaining days apart from the eighth day, when the singing was in falsobordone – simple harmonized chanting. Papal singers had a more overtly political role when select groups sang at papal banquets offered to foreign ambassadors. In January 1646, for example, Pope Innocent X gave a banquet in honour of the Spanish Viceroy of Naples, the Duke of Arcos. The diario of the papal singers records that ‘at the first drink by His Holiness, [the singers] commenced singing a motet for eight voices with organ; later concertini for two, three, four and five voices composed by the papal choir’s maestro [Francesco Ranoglio] were sung until the end of the dinner’.38 Nine of the singers, one of whom played the organ, were called for the occasion so that the singing was performed by one singer on each part.
It is perhaps surprising that, with all of this musical activity taking place, the Spanish church and confraternity did not set up its own regular paid choir, as had its French counterpart at S. Luigi dei Francesi. This did eventually happen in 1616, with on average two adult singers per part and two to three boys, but the cost of maintaining it proved too high and it was disbanded in 1623, though it was reconstituted in the 1680s.39 The Aragonese Church of S. Maria di Monserrato did have some singers in the 1560s and 1570s (including the composer Tomás Luis de Victoria) and maintained a regular choir for most of the 1580s, but it too was not able to support this choir financially and it was disbanded in 1588.40 Thereafter it relied on bringing in singers from one or more of the city’s established choirs, such as those in the major basilicas. Sums of money spent here remained reasonable and there is no evidence of the same extravagant processions as at S. Giacomo.
The canonization of Spanish saints was a further occasion which led to outpourings of celebration. Thomas Dandelet has dealt with these in some detail, starting with that of Diego of Alcalà in 1588, followed by Raymond of Penafort in 1601 and culminating in the canonization of four Spaniards in 1622: Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, Francis Xavier and Isidore of Madrid.41 While these canonizations themselves were a cause of great rejoicing, the more popular celebrations occurred on the day following when the banners featuring pictures of the new saints were traditionally brought in procession to the Roman church most closely associated with each saint. The Spanish castrato papal singer Francisco Soto was paid 17 scudi for music at S. Giacomo on the occasion of the canonization of the Spaniard Diego of Alcalá. The banner of Raymond of Penafort was brought to S. Maria di Monserrato in 1601 amid great celebration which would have involved some music. In 1622 a grand procession left St Peter’s and went first to the Chiesa Nuova to deposit the banner of Philip Neri, then on to S. Giacomo with that of Isidore, the Gesù with those of Ignatius and Francis, and finally to the Carmelite S. Maria della Scala in Trastevere where the banner of Teresa was left. The diary of Giacinto Gigli describes how each banner had a choir beside it in the procession and, on arrival at each of the churches, the banner was received with music inside and with the sound of trumpets and drums outside.42 In the succeeding days solemn masses and vespers were celebrated in each church, again with large-scale music. The unprecedented number of Spanish saints in 1622 gave a huge boost to Spanish pride and turned the procession with banners into something like a ‘triumphal victory parade for the Spaniards’ as Dandelet has described it.43
Rivalry between members of the French and Spanish nations also found its way into the activities of two of Rome’s major confraternities: the French and their supporters tended to join the Arciconfraternita del Gonfalone, while those of Spain were more likely to be found in that of SS. Crocifisso in S. Marcello. The French writer Michel de Montaigne noted in his diary describing his visit to Rome in 1580–1581 that the French king was a member of the Gonfalone;44 it was probably the oldest Roman confraternity, tracing its origins back to some thirteenth-century groups of Racommandati della Beata Virgine based in a number of Roman churches which amalgamated to form the Gonfalone in the late fifteenth century.45 SS. Crocifisso grew out of devotion to a crucifix in S. Marcello which survived a major fire in that church in 1519. Both confraternities built oratories which became important centres for Lenten devotional services involving music; that of SS. Crocifisso in particular pioneered musical services which helped establish the oratorio during the seventeenth century. From 1589 the Cardinal Protector of SS. Crocifisso was Alessandro Montalto who had Spanish leanings as well as a strong interest in music;46 also prominent in the confraternity was his younger brother, Prince Michele Peretti of Venafro, whose title derived from the Kingdom of Naples.
Both confraternities took part in the series of Holy Thursday/Good Friday processions mentioned above, which involved flagellants and the carrying of images and tableaux related to the Passion and included at least two groups of musicians. These processions were especially prominent during Holy Years when pilgrims hosted by each confraternity also took part.47 In 1625 the two brothers of the recently elected Pope Urban VIII Barberini were strategically divided between the two archconfraternities’ Holy Week processions: Carlo Barberini processed with the Gonfalone, while Cardinal Antonio Barberini went with SS. Crocifisso.48 In the next Jubilee Year of 1650, however, the continuing Franco–Spanish war spilled over on to the city streets as fighting broke out, with pro-French supporters attacking the SS. Crocifisso procession on Holy Thursday evening as the Spanish ambassador and cardinals who were taking part arrived at the Piazza di Monte Giardano.49 As the procession was starting up there had been a disagreement about precedence involving the ambassador. The crucifix was abandoned and, as people fled, no one would pick it up, causing great scandal to pilgrims; the procession did eventually regroup and carry on to St Peter’s. The procession, despite its religious intent and the solemnity of the feast, took on political significance because of the presence of the Spanish ambassador.
The historian of Roman ceremony Maria Antonietta Visceglia has concluded that
in general terms the various ceremonies of the 1650 Jubilee became a stage on which the competition between the universalism of the Church and the universalist aspirations of the Spanish monarchy was played out, between the political and military power of Spain and the limited territorial power of the papacy … this was a confrontation which characterized much of the life of the city in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and which manifested itself in the competition to appropriate the nerve-centres of the urban space, like the Piazza Navona, and the politicization of, and confrontation between, confraternities.50
As we have seen, music had a significant part to play in that competition to appropriate the city’s important urban spaces, through its role in processions. According to the religious historian Luigi Fiorani it was in processions that devotion and politics most vividly came together in the Counter-Reformation period.51
The Spaniards in particular were prepared to spend very large sums on music for processions and other ceremonial occasions, seeing it as a necessary part of their prestige-building. Like the impressive ephemeral structures built to house statues or fireworks, however, that music has not survived. Indeed, those structures were very often portrayed in engravings and so can be studied, but the music was even more ephemeral. No specific pieces of music can be associated with the Spanish celebrations although, since we know the names of particular composers who were in charge in particular years, we could speculate about possible repertory. Decisions about what to sing were never recorded and seem to have been made at a low level, by the maestro in charge on the particular day. Like members of other nations, the Spaniards wanted a bellissima musica, which would enhance the celebrations, fill the piazza or church with sound emanating from various quarters and aggrandize the home nation and its representatives. In that they were well served by both Spanish and Italian musicians active in Rome in the early modern period. There is no evidence that the style of the music played owed much to Spanish musical traditions apart, perhaps, from a predilection for instruments. The singers and players involved were either Italian or part of an international group that had made Rome their home. Prestige demanded that all national confraternities perform the newest musical styles, which generally involved multiple choirs in ‘surround sound’ and which were being pioneered in centres like Rome and Venice at this time.52 It was ideal political music, guaranteed to impress and raise the minds of participants and onlookers to the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, while also persuading them of the power and wealth of those who were paying for it.
Notes
1 F. Braudel, ‘L’Italia fuori d’Italia, Due Secoli e Tre Italie’, in Storia d’Italia, vol. 2 (Turin, 1974), pp. 2091–2248, at p. 2156.
2 T. J. Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 1500–1700 (New Haven and London, 2001).
3 M. Maroni Lumbroso, A. Martini, Le Confraternite Romane nelle loro Chiese (Rome, 1963), pp. 341–3.
4 J. Lionnet, ‘La Musique a Saint-Louis des Français de Rome au XVII siècle’, Note d’Archivio, nuova serie, 3 (1985), supplement (part 1); 4 (1986), supplement (part 2).
5 Lumbroso, Martini, Le Confraternite Romane, pp. 236–9.
6 F. Luisi, ‘S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli e la Festa della Resurrezione in Piazza Navona’, in O. Mischiati, P. Russo (eds), La Cappella Musicale nell’Italia della Controriforma: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi nel IV Centenario di Fondazione della Cappella Musicale di S. Biagio di Cento, Cento, 13–15 Ottobre 1989 (Florence, 1993), pp. 75–103; J. Lionnet, ‘La Musique à San Giacomo deli Spagnoli au XVIIème Siècle et les Archives de la Congrégation des Espagnols de Rome’, in B. M. Antolini, A. Morelli, V. Vita Spagnuolo (eds), La Musica a Roma attraverso le Fonti D’Archivio, Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Roma 4–7 Giugno 1992 (Lucca, 1994), pp. 479–505; N. O’Regan, ‘Victoria, Soto and the Spanish Archconfraternity of the Resurrection in Rome’, Early Music, 22 (1994), pp. 279–95; N. O’Regan, ‘Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Roman Churches Revisited’, Early Music, 28 (2000), pp. 403–408. For the period before the Council of Trent: K. Pietschmann, ‘Músicos y Conjuntos Musicales en las Fiestas Religiosas de la Iglesia Nacional Española de Santiago en Roma antes del Concilio de Trento’, Anthologica Annua 46 (1999), pp. 451–76; K. Pietschmann, ‘Musikpflege im dienste nationaler Repräsentation: Musicker an S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli in Rome bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts’, Studi Musicali 31 (2002), pp. 109–44.
7 M. Boiteux, ‘Fêtes et traditions espagnoles à Rome au XVIIe siècle’, M. Fagiolo, M. L. Madonna (eds), Barocco Romano e Barocco Italiano: Il Teatro, L’Effimero, L’Allegoria (Rome, 1985), pp. 117–34.
8 S. C. Leone, The Palazzo Pamphili in Piazza Navona: Constructing Identity in Early Modern Rome (London, 2008).
9 N. O’Regan, ‘Processions and their Music in post-Tridentine Rome’, Recercare 4 (1992): pp. 45–80.
10 Rome was famous for its fireworks in the early modern period. K. Salatino, Incendiary Art: The Representation of Fireworks in Early Modern Europe (Los Angeles, 1997), pp. 36–7.
11 S. C. Leone, The Palazzo Pamphilj, p. 80.
12 The pope maintained a group of six state trumpeters at Castel Sant’Angelo, while the city government had a similar group based on the Campidoglio. Both establishments included a group of six piffari, players of shawms, cornetts and trombones, who played more complex music at receptions, processions and banquets. A. Cametti, ‘I Musici del Campidoglio’, Archivio della Reale Società Romana di Storia Patria 48 (1925), pp. 95–135.
13 R. Sherr, ‘The “Spanish Nation” in the Papal Chapel, 1492–1521’, Early Music, XX (1992), 601–609.
14 Lionnet, ‘La Musique’; O’Regan, ‘Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Roman Churches’.
15 Rome, Archive of the Pontificio Collegio Español (hereafter APCE), H-II-545, f. 106; H-II-548, f. 98.
16 P. M. Tagmann and I. Fenlon, ‘Jacomelli, Giovanni Battista’, New Grove Encyclopaedia of Music and Musicians (London, 2001).
17 The information in this and the following tables has been acquired from the documents in APCE. Individual documents are not listed here.
18 T. D. Culley, A Study of the Musicians Connected with the German College in Rome During the 17th Century and of their Activities in Northern Europe, Jesuits and Music, I (Rome, 1970).
19 Carol MacClintock and Iain Fenlon, ‘Conforti, Giovanni Battista’, New Grove.
20 The text has been rubbed out here and what looks like a figure 6 has been written over.
21 ‘Questa prospetiva é stata ritratta con ogni diligenza per me, Hieronimo Rainaldi Romano (Rome, 1592). ‘Nella Chiesa di S. Giacomo detta de Spagnuoli, vi é una Cappella della Resurrettione di N[ostr]o Sig[nor]e molto ricca et vaga di bellissima et pretiossimi adornamenti, nella quale è eretta una confraternita d[e]lla natione Spagnuola, la quale pero si chiama la Compagnia della Resurrettione, in questa Capella doppo celebrato un’offitio solenne con musica principalissima et vari concerti d’istromenti, si fa la Processione del S[antissi]mo Sacramento due hore ava[n]ti il giorno… La faccia della Chiesa era ornata di festoni e gran’ numero di lumi accomodati in modo che facevano diversi colori. At[t]orno alla Piazza vi era un steccato avanti le case dove passava la Processione, in questo steccato v erano plantati arbore scelti di verdura tutti carche di candelette bianche apicciate et fra essi sentivano suavissimi ca[n]ti d’ucelli finti dipiù sopra esso steccato vi era molte palle co[n] lumi dentro de varii colori. Tutte le parti di questa piazza resplendevano d’infinitissimi lumi che vi si sedevano le finestre poi delli palazzi et tutte l’altre stanze i tetti i palchi i[n]tavolati, et ogni parte, in som[m]a di questa piazza era piena di venti. Di rimpetto alla chiesa sud[ett] a di S. Gia[com]o si era preparato un belissimo et ornatissimo altare per riporvi alquanto il S[acr]o Sacramento. A quattro renghiere di palazzi stavano ? cori dei più scelti musici di Roma, ca[n]tando alcune cose appropriate al misterio della Resurrettione di Christo N[ostr]o Signore… Sopra tre fontane che si veggano in questa Piazza. Nella prima vi era una Civitas Dei ornata di bellissime porte tutta piena de musici. Nella secunda vi era un’Inferno tutto di caverne et vampe di fuoco co[n] sei diavoli, et incima ill’ Lucifero che significavano li sette peccati mortali et buttavano foco p la bocca. Nella terza vi era il Santo Sepulcro di Cristo fatte co[i] bell[issi]mi artificii. Erano in detta piazza atraversette doi corde in una vi era una balena che buttava foco p[er] la bocca… Nell altra una fenice che andava tutta in foco con molti festoni.’
22 G. Accolti, La Festa et Ordine Belissimo che tiene la Natione di Spagna nel far la Processione del Santissimo Sacramento, la Domenica di Resurretione, nel Aurora in Roma, intorno a Piazza Navona, 1596 (Rome, 1596). Dandelet, Spanish Rome, pp. 110–111.
23 Avvisi di Roma, 30 April 1596, Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urb. Lat. 1064, quoted in L. Pastor, The History of the Popes, trans. Ralph F. Kerr (London, 1933), p. 150.
24 Luisi, ‘S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli’, pp. 94–5.
25 Luisi, ‘S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli’, p. 98. Since it is a contract drawn up before the event, the amount of money spent is not mentioned.
26 St Peter’s (18), St John Lateran (5), St Mary Major (12), S. Spirito in Sassia (4), S. Lorenzo in Damaso (4), S. Apollinare/German College (5), S. Maria dei Monti (3), S. Maria in Vallicella/Chiesa Nuova (3). These numbers roughly match what we know about the relative size of these choirs at this period.
27 The final two verses of the eucharistic hymn Pange lingua gloriosi, which were commonly sung during Benediction services.
28 Leone, The Palazzo Pamphili.
29 G. Gigli, Diario di Roma (Rome, 1958), p. 357.
30 M. S. Weil, ‘The Devotion of the Forty Hours and Roman Baroque Illusion’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 37 (1974), pp. 218–48. R. Diez, ‘Le Quarantore: una Predica Figurata’, in Marcello Fagiolo (ed.) La Festa a Roma dal Rinascimento as 1870: Atlante (Turin, 1997), pp. 84–97.
31 APCE, A-IV-127, non-foliated; A-IV-143, non-foliated.
32 Quoted in Luisi, ‘S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli’, pp. 99–100.
33 APCE, N-V-1193, f. 69. ‘que se haga una muy buena fiesta de musica en esta yglesia a donde se cantara il Te Deum Laudamus el sabado que viene a la tarde, y el domingo diguinte se cantara la misa muy solemne de Espiritu Sancto, y tres noches annco cominçando desdel dicho sabado que viene a la noche se haian grandes alegrias con muchas y muy buenas luminarias, chirimias, tambores, trompetas, botas y morteretes, y tres noches continuas en las dos faciatas dela yglesia, de la Sapiençia y Plaça Nagona’.
34 APCE, N-V-1193, f. 69. ‘el sabado a la tarde a 22 horas se canto el Te Deum laudamus muy solemne con la musica de la Capilla del papa a tres coros, cantando al principio y al fin un motete que fue armonia del çielo… El Domingo siguiente se canto la misa del spiritu sancto que la dizo Monsr. de Cordoba con la musica dela Capilla del Papa con gran solemnidad y muchos instrumentos de musica.’
35 APCE, N-IV-128, unfoliated. The full list is given in O’Regan, ‘Victoria, Soto’, p. 287.
36 Other one-off occasions for which records of payments to musicians survive include a Requiem Mass for the Emperor Ferdinand I in 1564 (1 scudo) and the celebration of the Spanish victory in the battle of Isla Terceira in the Azores in 1582 (9 scudi paid to the Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria who organized the music).
37 The Queen died on 6 October 1644, but the organization of the official exequies took some time. M. Moli Frigola, ‘Donne, Candele, Lacrime e Morte: Funerali di Regine Spagnole nell’Italia del Seicento’ in Fagiolo and Madonna (eds), Barocco Romano, pp. 135–58.
38 J. Lionnet, ‘La Cappella Pontificia e il Regno di Napoli durante il seicento’, in D. Antonio D’Alessandro, A. Ziino (eds), La Musica a Napoli durante il Seicento: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Napoli, 11–14 Aprile 1985 (Rome, 1987), pp. 541–54.
39 Lionnet, ‘La Musique’.
40 O’Regan,‘Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Roman Churches’.
41 Dandelet, Spanish Rome, pp. 170–87. Philip Neri was canonized on the same day as the four Spaniards in 1622.
42 Gigli, Diario, pp. 60–61.
43 Dandelet, Spanish Rome, p. 186.
44 M. de Montaigne, The Diary of Montaigne’s Journey to Italy in 1580 and 1581, translated with introduction and notes by E. J. Trechmann (London, 1929), p. 157.
45 Lumbroso, Martini, Le Confraternite Romane, pp. 186–212.
46 J. Chater, ‘Musical Patronage in Rome at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century: The Case of Cardinal Montalto’, Studi Musicali, 16 (1987), pp. 179–227; J. W. Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera from the Circles around Cardinal Montalto (Oxford, 1997).
47 O’Regan, ‘Processions and their Music’.
48 M. A. Visceglia, La Città Rituale: Roma e le sue Cerimonie in Età Moderna (Rome, 2002), pp. 258–9.
49 Gigli, Diario, pp. 354–5.
50 Visceglia, La Città Rituale, p. 13. ‘Piu in generale il cerimoniale diventa un campo in cui si gioca a Roma una competizione tra l’universalismo dela Chiesa e l’aspirazione spagnola alla monarchia universale, tra la potenza politica e militare della Spagna e il limitato potere territoriale del pontifice…un confronto…che segna molto la vita della città tra Cinque e Seicento e che si manifesta nella concorrenza per l’appropriazione di luoghi neuralgii dello spazio urbano (Piazza Navona, ad esempio) e nelle politicizzazione e contrapposizione delle confraternite’.
51 Luigi Fiorani, ‘Processioni tra Devozione e Politica’, in Fagiolo (ed.) La Festa a Roma, pp. 66–83. ‘Devozione e politica convivono ampiamente in una processions, perché devozione e politica sono intimamente connesse nella Roma barocca, e diciamo pure nelle sociteà modellate dai canoni ideologici della Controriforma’.
52 N. O’Regan, Sacred Polychoral Music in Rome 1575–1621 (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1988).