From Manuscript to Sound

Photo: CSMC

Historical music manuscripts from Peru reflect the history of a country shaped by centuries of colonial heritage – and they contain poignant pieces that hardly anyone in Europe knows. On 14 June 2024, the CSMC and the HfMT Hamburg presented them on stage at ‘Kleiner Michel’.

Peru’s musical manuscripts and the archives and libraries in which they are kept provide fascinating insights into the cultural history of a country that was controlled for centuries by the Spanish colonial power, that gained independence in the early 19th century, and whose national suffered a setback after its defeat in the war against Chile in 1888. The research project ‘Archiving Colonialism: The Collections of Musical Manuscripts from Peru’ at the Cluster of Excellence UWA, which is run by musicologists Matteo Nanni and Daniel Kudo Tovar, focuses on individual experiences reflected in the manuscripts and how archival practices developed on the institutional level during this turbulent period.

On 14 June 2024, Hamburg residents could listen to selected Peruvian works from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, which are little known in Europe. Together with the Hochschule für Musik und Theater (HfMT), we brought selected sacred and secular pieces from this period to the stage of the ‘Kleiner Michel’. Among them are works by key Peruvian composers such as Juan Pérez de Bocanegra, Juan de Araujo, and Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco. The music was performed by students of the HfMT under the direction of Isolde Kittel-Zerer.