The polyphonic Magnificat in Renaissance Spain: Style and context

The polyphonic Magnificat experienced rapid growth in the sixteenth century, a development that has been explored only superficially in musicological scholarship. This dissertation, the first comprehensive treatment of Spanish Magnificats across the century, explores large-scale trends in the genre with a central focus on the idea of conventional musical procedure. Arguing that the Magnificat was unique among major sacred musical genres in its unusually heavy reliance on conventional practices, I first establish the widespread adherence of the repertory to several melodic and structural conventions and then identify several traits that profoundly affect its "conventional" character.;To establish an intellectual context for the Magnificat, I consider this genre as an object of written commentary, probing the efficacy of musical theory as a witness to historical practice and undertaking the first examination of Spanish theological writings on the Magnificat from the perspective of musicology.;Shifts in texture across different verses of a Magnificat are often considered expressive devices, subtly reflecting ideas such as emptiness and hunger (in the case of reductions) or grandeur (in the case of expansions). My study of textural patterns across a broad swath of Spanish Magnificats reveals different motivations. Over the course of the sixteenth century composers crystallized a series of patterns governing the style and placement of textural modifications, both within individual Magnificat settings and across the octo tonorum series. Particularly in later decades composers used texture in increasingly systematic fashion, demonstrating a growing concern with consistency of placement and design among their Magnificat collections. This consistency speaks to composers' sensitivity to the need for polyphonic music of uniform quality and style, equally appropriate for Vespers services throughout the liturgical year.;Canon also helped reinforce large-scale organizational schemes, but its usage reveals more complex motivations as well. In the years leading up to 1600 canons were placed in increasingly ordered fashion, solemnizing the Magnificat's final verse with straightforward constructions usually based on the canticle tone and with voices set at perfect intervals. After 1600 these canons become more complex: incorporating novel melodies, partaking of learned techniques such as retrograde and inversion, and constructed on a wider range of intervals. Decisions on where and how to employ canons were motivated by three possible factors: a desire to reflect traditional ideas of modal affect by linking the most elaborate canons to tones whose associated mode displays ennobling or cheerful associations; a desire to solemnize Magnificats on tones customarily associated with important liturgical days with special canons on these tones; and a desire to reinforce organizational schemes of octo tonorum cycles by coordinating canonic intervals with the tone of the Magnificat itself.;Polychoral Magnificats, first emerging in Spain at the dawn of the seventeenth century, weakened the rigid conventions of this genre, diminishing the role of the canticle tone as melodic and structural foundation and spotlighting the traditional polychoral traits of antiphony, homophony, and expansive textures. In the process, they effected a shift in the Magnificat's focus from a "music-centered" to a "text-centered" composition, bringing a sense of textual clarity and expression never before encountered within this genre. Close study of several representative polychoral Magnificats reveals both an emphasis on clear declamation of text and a focus on enlivening textual meanings with "word-painting" devices, features typical of polychoral style generally but nevertheless a true novelty in the Magnificat's genre history. And while aspects of these polychoral pieces undoubtedly served to create a strictly musical grandeur, it is the clear, visceral expression of words, rather than the mere augmentation of spatially separated sonic forces, that gave this grandeur its most powerful effect. The advent of polychoral Magnificats further heralded a return to the idea of the Magnificat as an "occasional" piece, a locus for special music on important occasions. In an era when complete octo tonorum Magnificat cycles enabled everyday performance of Magnificats equivalent in quality and scope, polychorality reestablished a sense of hierarchical distinctiveness to the genre, one that recalls the origins of polyphonic Magnificats themselves as music for special occasions.;In considering the Magnificat's place in New Spain, I propose the idea of "genre diversification" as a motivating factor for Magnificat composition in these newly Christianized territories. I employ this term to describe a conscious effort among sacred music composers to expand the ecclesiastical repertory of polyphonic music by focusing predominantly on "peripheral" genres such as the Magnificat rather than masses and motets. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...