Capital of Peru. Called ‘City of the Kings’, it was founded in 1535 by Francisco Pizarro, who laid the cornerstone of the cathedral. By 1540 he had employed at least six professional lay musicians and the same number of dancing-masters, who organized the dances for religious and secular celebrations. While Gonzalo Pizarro was in power (1546–8, during the civil wars) he founded a capilla de músicos whose members were considered excellent (‘lindos oficiales’) by the chronicler Garcilaso.
In Peru as in Mexico, the Amerindians took immediately to the music of the friars sent to evangelize them. Pedro de la Gasca (1492–1565), Peru’s first lawgiver, summoned representatives of all three mendicant orders to Lima in 1549 and told them to learn Quechua, set up schools and teach the Amerindians such ‘good things’ as how to sing according to the rules of art and how to sol-fa (‘dezir el sol, fa, mi, re’). A ruling of the Third Lima Council (1583) required systematic music instruction at every Amerindian mission. By 1622 Bernabé Cobo could cite the music of Santiago del Cercado, a settlement (founded 1571) of converted Amerindians annexed to the city and administered by the Jesuits, as equal to that heard in most Spanish cathedrals. In 1622 the parish church owned two organs, four sets of shawms, two trumpets, viols of various sizes and other instruments for feast-day use. Throughout the 17th century this orchestra was one of the most sought after in the city. Some of the city’s most important instrumentalists were Amerindian musicians trained by the Jesuits. There were Amerindian instrument makers (violeros) and dancing-masters living outside the Cercado in 1613.
The first polyphony printed in the New World was a Quechua four-part chanzoneta in sprightly march time, Hanacpachap cussicuinin (Juan Pérez Bocanegra, Ritual formulario, Lima, 1631, pp.708–9; copies in the Biblioteca Nacional de Perú and US-Wc). The earliest extant New World opera was mounted in the vice-regal palace at Lima (19 October 1701): Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco’s setting of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s La púrpura de la rosa.
Lima Cathedral, the seat of an archbishop from 1549, had a distinguished succession of maestros de capilla during the viceregal epoch (to 1821). Domingo Álvarez signed the first Lima Council constitutions (1552). The succentor Cristóbal de Molina (fl 1534–64), teacher of Pizarro’s mestizo daughter Francisca, arrived in Peru already ‘known in Italy and France’. The cathedral organist and maestro de capilla during the period 1612–14, Estacio de la Serna, had been royal chapel organist at Lisbon; he and his successors throughout the 17th and 18th centuries left music which is generally of excellent technical quality. As at Mexico City, the Lima maestro de capilla ran a cathedral choir school, directed singers and instrumentalists, maintained a choral library and composed new music for the chief annual festivals. There was also continuous musical activity at the vice-regal court, documented from the mid-16th century. Notable among the viceroys were the Conde de Lemos (1667–72), in whose retinue were Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco and Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz, and the Marqués de Castell dos Rius (1707–10), with Roque Ceruti and a group of French instrumentalists in his service. The monasteries of nuns, in particular during the 17th century the Encarnación and Concepción monasteries, offered music of a high standard.
Lima exceeded even Mexico City in its lavish support of drama. The plays presented by contracted troupes from 1613, especially the Calderonian autos sacramentales (from 1670 to the turn of the century), nearly always included solo songs, vocal ensembles, instrumental music and accompanied dances. With Ceruti and Bartolomé Mazza (c1725–99) the Lima lyric stage began to be dominated by emigrant Italian composers; Mazza composed nearly all the extant Lima stage music for two decades. His company was famous and notorious for its singing actresses. The first documented public opera performance in Lima, called ‘coliseo de comedias’, was Las variedades de Proteo in 1762.
In the popular music of the colonial period diverse musical traditions co-existed, of Spanish, indigenous and African origin. African drum dances were noted by the authorities from 1549. Gathered in fraternities with Catholic names, the various African ethnic groups (naciones) organized dances for the procession in the week after Corpus Christi. By 1748 Africans brought to Lima from the coasts of Guinea and Senegal and from the Congo numbered some 10,000, and in 1791 their music formed the subject of an article in Mercurio Peruano (xlviii–xlix). Dances created in Lima spread by trading routes through what are now Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, notably the zamacueca (also called mozamala, cueca, zamba, chilena and marinera). The tradition of Limeña popular music has continued in the 20th century with the various kinds of music known as musica criolla.
The Peruvian national anthem, composed by the Lima native José Bernardo Alcedo, was first performed in the Lima Teatro on 24 September 1821. Alcedo, Manuel de la Cruz Panizo (1839–89) and several other contemporary local composers were of partly African descent. Among Peruvian composers active in Lima in the early republican period Pedro Abril Tirado (1780–1856) stands out. However, concert and operatic life continued to be controlled mainly by European emigrants including Francesco Paolo Francia (1834–1904), Anton Neumane [Neumann] (1818–71), Carlo Enrico Pasta (1817–98), Claudio Rebagliatti (1833–1909) and his brother Reynaldo. Claudio directed the most important of the numerous philharmonic societies established in the 19th century; active from 1866 to 1870, it presented his 28 de julio en Lima (1868), a programmatic work incorporating typical airs of the city. The present Sociedad Filarmónica, founded in 1907, provides annual concert seasons and maintains various orchestras and chamber groups.
Until 1850 when the Teatro Variedades was opened, a monopoly on theatre had been imposed since colonial times by the Hospital de S Andrés, which owned the old coliseum; then known as the Teatro Principal, it was rebuilt several times on the same site. A new building was opened in 1874 with Il trovatore, and destroyed by fire in 1883. The new Teatro Principal seating 1400 was inaugurated in 1889 with the zarzuela El hermano Baltasar; it was replaced by the Teatro Municipal, opened in 1909 (from 1929 called Teatro Segura). In 1878 the Teatro Politeama opened with Il trovatore and in 1886 the Teatro Olimpico (later called Teatro Forero, now the Municipal) with the operetta La mascotte. The first native of Lima to compose an opera on a national subject was José María Valle Riestra (1859–1925), whose Ollanta was repeated 12 times after its première at the Principal in 1900.
The Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional gave its first concert in 1938 with 70 members in the Teatro Municipal under Theo Buchwald. He was succeeded by Hans-Günther Mommer (1960–63), Armando Sánchez Málaga (1963–4), Luis Herrara de la Fuente (1964–6), José Belaúnde Moreyra (1966–9), Carmen Moral, Leopoldo la Rosa Urbani (1970–74), Luis A. Meza and José Carlos Santos. Two orchestras have been called Orquesta Filarmónica de Lima, one active from 1980 to 1984 and another conducted from 1994 by Miguel Hart-Bedoya. In 1961 the Coro Nacional was founded.
The Academia Nacional de Música Alzedo, founded in 1929, was renamed the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in 1946 and the Escuela Nacional de Música in 1972. In 1994 it restored the name Conservatorio Nacional de Música and became an autonomous institution. Its directors have included the composers Carlos Sánchez Málaga, José Malsio, Enrique Iturriaga, Celso Garrido-Lecca and Edgar Valcárcel. The director in 1995 was Nelly Suares de Velit.
The chief collection of pre-Hispanic Peruvian musical instruments is housed at the Museo de Antropología y Arqueología. The largest collection of colonial music manuscripts belongs to the Archivo Histórico Arzobispal. Since 1985 the Pontifícia Universidad Católica has housed the Archivio de Música Tradicional Andina which collects audiovisual material in music and dance. The Biblioteca Nacional and the conservatory have important collections of Peruvian music. S Marcos University, founded in 1551, is the oldest on the continent.
StevensonRB
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ROBERT STEVENSON, J. CARLOS ESTENSSORO