Singing in the City of Angels: Race, Identity, and Devotion in Early Modern Puebla de los Ángeles

Abstract

This dissertation examines the relationship between festive villancicos and religious devotion in Puebla de los Ángeles in the early seventeenth century. It offers a model for a more holistic and interdisciplinary approach to the study of sacred music in the early modern Hispanic world, and situates a local musico-poetic practice within a broader context of religious and imperial experience in the post-Tridentine Catholic Church. The principal source of this research is the collection of 270 villancicos composed by Gaspar Fernández in Puebla from 1609 to 1616. This collection also shows the impressive circulation of religious lyric poetry in Hispanic territories and the various ways in which these materials were used for liturgical singing. Based on extensive archival research, I argue that these songs not only reflect the adoption of Post-Tridentine beliefs and practices, but also de formation of a local religious identity steeped in the complexities of the city’s multi-racial nature.