Epistemological foundations of music in early colonial Mexico

This study identifies stylistic elements of music composed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mexico that reflect the epistemologies of both Iberian and Nahua cultures. It helps to shed light on the development of music in early colonial Mexico not simply as a European art transplanted to the New World but as a meeting ground for Spanish and Native cultures.;The epistemology of Spain is dealt with first. Although Michel Foucault identified certain concepts as the epistemic foundations of culture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, he ignored the peculiarities of Spanish culture within the larger European sphere. Chapter 2 identifies and discusses the distinctive characteristic---ironic reversal---that seems to have characterized the Spanish approach to resemblance and representation.;Chapter 3 discusses Spanish music within the framework of Spanish epistemology, addressing not only distinctively Spanish stylistic traits but also the most typically Spanish genre of the Renaissance, the villancico. This chapter also deals with mystical approach of St. John of the Cross to what he calls "silent music" and "sounding solitude.";Chapter 4 is a discussion of preconquest Nahua culture. James Lockhart has identified a cellular or modular mode of organization as an underlying principle of Nahua culture. This seems to have been a manifestation of a way of thinking that functioned similarly to a Foucaultian episteme and can be found in a variety of Nahua modes of discourse including music.;Chapter 5 examines music with Nahuatl texts composed in the early colonial period. This music manifests indigenous thought processes, resulting in a peculiar compositional style---the result of a European musical vocabulary separated from its original context and put to the service of Nahua ways of thinking.;The final chapter considers the methodological implications of an epistemological approach to the study of music.