Juan de Lienas (attivo c.1617-54) - Códice del Convento del Carmen: Salve

Camerata Renacentista de Caracas

in the picture Mexico antiguo

Juan de Lienas(fl c1617-54).
Mexican composer. What little is known of his life comes from cursory ascriptions and statements in two large manuscript collections, the Carmen Codex at the Convento del Carmen in Villa Obregón, Mexico City, and the Newberry Choirbooks. Several manuscripts refer to him with the title Don, implying that Lienas was a Spanish nobleman or, more likely, a native American cacique of noble birth. Some references are derogatory, one calling him a galán tieso rollizo (chubby, stuck-up fop), another the chiabato Lienas (which Schleifer translated as billy-goat Lienas). The same disgruntled scribe attributed compositions to Lienas with such flippant remarks as del cornudo Lienas and del famoso cornudo, which some scholars have taken as indicating that Lienas was married.

Jesús Bal y Gay assumed that the Carmen Codex was from the Convento del Carmen in Mexico City. Schleifer (1973) suggested instead the Convento de Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación, the institution that once possessed the Newberry Choirbooks. Stevenson (1974), however, pointed out that the Carmen Codex includes parts for male voices (not present at the Encarnación convent), and that the Encarnación chapel was not constructed until 1639. He concludes that the Carmen Codex was probably written between 1617 and 1639 for the Convento del Carmen, and the Newberry Choirbooks at a slightly later period (c1639-54) for the Encarnación convent. Lienass works in the two sources differ considerably in style. The Carmen Codex is steeped in the stile antico, whereas the Newberry Choirbooks explore polychoral sonorities for two or even three choirs, deployed antiphonally with vigorous, rhythmic energy. Among Lienass finest compositions are the polychoral Credidi, loosely based on a cantus firmus and unified through a recurring motif, and the mass for five voices a cappella.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Juan
• de
• Lienas
• Códice
• del
• Convento
• Carmen
• Salve
• Camerata
• Renacentista
• Caracas

[muisire]

I am deeply impressed and moved by this glorious music from a land hardly known here in Europe. Pure magic...

[arislabadie]

Absolutely beautiful, although it is uncertain that he actually was mexican, some theories say that he was actually spanish, nevertheless he lived in the New Spain and his work is some of the finest poliphony in Latin America.