Cristóbal de Morales (ca. 1500-53): A Fourth-Centenary Biography

Cristóbal de Morales (ca. 1500-53): A Fourth-Centenary BiographyAuthor(s): Robert StevensonSource: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring, 1953), pp. 3-42Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/829997 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 05:56

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of California Press and American Musicological Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Musicological Society.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.38 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 05:56:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=amusoc

http://www.jstor.org/stable/829997?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Cristobal de Morales (ca. 1500-53): A Fourth-Centenary Biography

BY ROBERT STEVENSON

I

N o SPANISH COMPOSER Of the I6th century was more lauded during

his lifetime and for two hundred years after his death than Morales. He first began to publish in I539. Two years later he was called in print "the most excellent Morales,"' and during the next two decades 40 different publications containing his compositions appeared at such di- verse centers as Antwerp, Augsburg, Lyons, Milan, Nuremberg, Rome, Salamanca, Valladolid, Venice, and Wittenberg. On the one hand he was the only Spanish composer of his century whom the Lutherans sufficiently admired to include in their own denominational collections.2 On the other hand his music appealed to as wise and witty a man as Rabelais, who in the year of Morales's death published a fanciful description of a garden where in imagination he heard "Morales and other delightful musicians sweetly singing.'"

In Spain he was honored during his lifetime as the leading national composer. Juan Bermudo, the most knowledgeable Spanish theoretician of the age, called him "the light of Spain in music,"' and thought no higher testimonial for his own treatise could be procured than a recom- mendatory letter from the "unsur- passable" Morales. Whenever he mentioned him, as he frequently did in both the i549 and i555 editions of his Declaracidn de instrumentos and in his smaller work, El arte tripharia (x55o), he apostrophized him as the "excellent," the "outstanding," or the "unique" Morales. Diego Ortiz, the Toledan composer whose Glose sopra le cadenze (Rome, 1553) won him Pope Julius III's protection, was as outspoken in praise of Morales as was Bermudo. Describing Ortiz's devotion to Morales, Cerone said: 5

Diego Ortiz, one of the best composers of his time, strove always, insofar as he was able, to imitate Morales, whose works were everywhere in Spain held in high repute; but he admitted that he lagged far behind Morales. Hoping to keep pace with Morales, he said, was a futile dream, and he added he could no more hope to equal him than could a mere hobbler hope to stay abreast the fastest charioteer. He said his own efforts to imitate Morales re- minded him of the feeble efforts of the

1 On the title-page of Scotus's 1541 col- lected edition of motets by Gombert and Morales, the latter's name appeared in this phrase, "excellentissimi Morales motectis."

2 Georg Rhaw, Luther's chosen music printer, included five Morales Magnificats of twelve verses each in his Postremum vespertini of- ficii opus (Wittenberg, 1544). On the title- page appeared portraits of Luther, who was still alive, and of the Elector John Frederick. The next year Rhaw printed at Wittenberg a three-movement motet by Morales in his Of- ficiorum (ut vocant) de Nativitate, Circum- cisione, Epiphania . . . Tomus primus.

3 FranCois Rabelais, La vie, faicts & dicts heroiques de Gargantua, & de son filz Pan- urge: Avec la prognostication Pantagrueline (1553), p. 668: "Je ouy Adrian Willaert, Gombert . . Morales . . . & autres joyeulx musiciens . . . mignonnement chantans."

4 Juan Bermudo, Comienga el libro llamado declaracic5 de instrumitos (Osuna: Juan de Le6n, I555), fol. 84v: "Christoual de Morales, que es luz de Espafia en la Musica."

5 Pedro Cerone, El melopeo y maestro (Naples: Juan Bautista Gargano, I613), p. 144.

3



4 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

historian Timaeus who unsuccessfully tried to imitate the great Thucydides.

Widely admired during his lifetime, Morales was even more widely admired after his death. As far afield as Mexico his music was copied, admired, and performed in the latter half of the I6th century. In I559 at a brilliant commemorative ceremony honoring the deceased Charles V, for instance, several of Morales's compositions were chosen for performance at Mexico City because they were thought best suited to the ex- alted dignity of the occasion. The chronicler, Cervantes de Salazar, listed each of them by name and said they dissolved the audience in tears and gave "great contentment to the hearers."6 The present wide dispersal of manuscript copies of Morales's music in Mexico, Spain, and Italy proves concretely the geographic spread of his reputation. The number of publishing centers where his music continued to be printed for two-thirds of a century after his death also, proves the wide currency of his music. Between 1553, the year of his death, and i600, 30 imprints containing his music appeared at Alcalh de Henares, Ant- werp, Louvain, Nuremberg, Paris, Seville, and Venice. Even after I6oo, despite the change in musical think- ing, his music was still reprinted at Venice, and as late as 1619 one Vene- tian publisher found his Magnificats still in sufficiently wide demand to make a new transcribed version for women's voices only a profitable commercial venture.7

The extent of his fame in Italy during the latter half of his own century is shown not only in the imposing list of Italian imprints but also in the frequent references to his music in Italian bibliographies and music treatises. In his Libraria (1550), a bibliography, Anton Fran- cesco Doni listed Morales's motets with those of Willaert, Gombert, and Jachet of Mantua as the best of their time and placed Morales's Masses in the same category as those of Josquin des Prez.A In his L'arte del contraponto (1586-89), Artusi appealed to Morales as a precedent for certain procedures which could not be justified from Palestrina's works.9 In his Prattica di musica

(i592), Zacconi not only invoked Morales's authority but also quoted liberally from his works, sometimes choosing excerpts for quotation from compositions, such as the Mente tota Mass, now no longer extant.10 In Book III of his Vesper Psalms (1594), Baccusi cited Willaert and Morales as the two principal masters of four- part writing during the century and professed them rather than any others as models because of their purity in the conduct of voices."1

His fame having been so securely established during his own century, it was natural that theorists of the

I7th and I8th centuries should fre-

quently have mentioned him. In his El melopeo y maestro (Naples, 16 13), published 60 years after Mor-

6 J. Garcia Icazbalceta, Bibliografia Mexi- cana del sigqlo XVI (M6xico: Libreria de Andrade y Morales, i886), p. I20.

7 Indice di tutte le opere di musica che si trovano nella stampa della pagina: di Ales- sandro Vincenti (Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1619), p. 14: "Magnificat . .

.Morales fatti

a voci pari a 4 dal Borsaro."

8 Anton Francesco Doni, Libraria (Venice, 1550), "La musica stampata: Madrigali, mottetti, Messe, et canzoni" (appendix).

9 Giovanni Maria Artusi, L'arte del contraponto (Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1598), p. 40.

to Lodovico Zacconi, Prattica di musica (Venice: Bartolomeo Carampello, 1596), fols. I64v, 188r, I9or, 192r.

11 G. Baini, Memorie storico-critiche della vita e delle opere di Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (Rome: Societh Tipografica, 1828), Vol. I, p. Io6.



CRISTOBAL DE MORALES (CA. I500-53) 5 ales's death, Cerone still commended him as one of the best sacred composers for his own contemporaries to imitate.12 Filippo Kesperle at Venice in I625 listed as the five best polyphonists who had written for the pontifical choir during the pre- ceding century Josquin des Prez, Morales, Arcadelt, Palestrina, and

Nanini.Y3 In Portugal as in Italy Morales continued to be highly valued during the I7th century. The three: Portuguese theorists, Antonio Fernandez (1626), Alvarez Frouvo (1662), and Nunes da Sylva (1685), all appealed to Morales's precedent as decisive when discussing certain moot points of contrapuntal theory.'4

In the I8th-century musical histories Morales was always recognized as one of the twin giants of Spanish music, the other being Victoria. The three Italians of the century who treated him most fully were Adami, Fornari, and Martini. Andrea Adami in his Osservazioni ( 171 i) called Morales's five-voice motet, Lamenta- batur Jacob, the most precious composition in the entire Sistine Chapel archive, not even excepting any work of Palestrina, and described its performance as an annual event.15 In

his historical observations Adami listed as Palestrina's two most notable

predecessors the Fleming, Josquin, and the Spaniard, Morales.'6 After examining Morales's Masses he called them "admirably polished works, learnedly contrived, and composed in a strictly ecclesiastical style." In his Narrazione istorica dell' origine, progressi, e privilegi della Pontificia Cappella (0749), Matteo Fornari commended Morales as the only predecessor of Palestrina who had shown him how to set words contra-

puntally but at the same time in-

telligibly.'7 Assuming that in the Pope Marcellus Mass Palestrina had achieved his noblest results in pre- serving word clarity while at the same time writing independent voice

parts, Fornari found in Morales's

Magnificats the only earlier compositions that showed Palestrina how to

proceed. In his Esemplare o sia sag- gio fondamentale pratico di contrap- punto (i774), Martini printed ex-

cerpts from three of Morales's Mag- nificats, those in Tones II, III, and V, submitting them as models still faithfully to be followed by aspiring contrapuntists of his own generation.

When moreover histories began to

appear in English, Morales headed the list of Spanish composers. Both Hawkins and Burney dwelt on his

importance. Hawkins included a

12 Cerone, op. cit., p. 89. 13 Filippo Kesperle, Alcuni salmi et motetti

di Vincenzo de Grandis posti in spartitura (Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1625), dedication.

14 Antonio Fernandez, Arte de musica (Lis- bon: Pedro Craesbeeck, 1626), p. 19; P. Ioao6 Alvarez Frouvo, Discursos sobre a perfeic, am do diathesaron . . Em defensa da mod- erna musica, & reposta sobre os tres breves negros de Christova5 de Morales (Lisbon: Antonio Craesbeeck de Mello, 1662), p. 97; P. Manoel Nunes da Sylva, Arte minima (Lisbon: Joam Galram, 1685), p. 35.

15 Andrea Adami da Bolsena, Osservazioni per ben regolare il coro della Cappella Ponti- ficia (Rome: Antonio de' Rossi, 17I ), p. 27: "On the third Sunday in Lent . . . the chapelmaster requires the Offertory to be sung at a diligent pace in order to allow ample time for the singing of the motet, Lamenta- batur Jacob, by Crist6bal de Morales which follows (found at fol. 6o in choirbook I09).

The whole of it is sung, both first and second parts; since it is the most precious composition ('la pii preziosa composizione') in our entire archive, our singers are required to sing it with their best attention." On p. I65 Adami called Lamentabatur Jacob "a marvel of art" ("una maraviglia dell'Arte").

16 Ibid., p. 1 I. 17 Fornari's manuscript account is in the

Vatican Library, Capp. Sist. 606. At page 18 he said: "Trov6 ancora il modo di stendere le parole sotto le note con chiarezza maggiore di quella usata fino a quel tempo da tanti grandi uomini, e dallo stesso Morales; il quale nel suo libro di Magnificat stampato in Venezia 1'anno 1562: ne avea mostrata la prima strada."




portrait and Burney, after scoring two of his three-part compositions then preserved at the British Mu- seum, tried to estimate the charac- teristic features of his style.18

With such a background it would be natural to suppose that when histories of music and historical editions of music were first published in Spain, Morales would have been one of the first whose biography would have been explored and one of the first honored with a complete edition of his works. Strangely, however, this did not occur. Soriano Fuertes in his four-volume Historia de la mz~sica espafiola (1855-1859) set down less factual information concerning Morales19 than had Burney the Englishman in his A General History of Music published 70 years earlier. Several motets of Morales were published in score outside Spain in the I9th century, beginning in 1824 with G. E. Fischer's Zwei Motetten; but the first Spanish scored version of a Morales motet did not appear until almost a half century later.20 The most considerable attempt to redress the wrongs done Morales by I9th- century Spanish historians and edi- tors was the first volume (1894) of

Felipe Pedrell's Hispaniae schola musica sacra. But even Pedrell's volume cruelly misrepresented Morales. It contained a scant 5o-odd pages, 19 of which were devoted to an Officium defunctorum never printed during Morales's lifetime and surviv- ing today only in an I8th-century copy. The most famous of Morales's niotets--Lamentabatur Jacob-was transposed into four flats and the whole of Part II ("Prosternens se") omitted, with the result that the formal design could not be dis- cerned. The six sections of Mag- nificat VIII, while not transposed, were overloaded with specious acci- dentals and with the same kind of expressive directions Wagner added to Palestrina's Stabat Mater. Even at the instant of Pedrell's publication reviewers in such foreign periodicals as the Rivista musicale italiana recognized his editorial transgressions,21 but for lack of a better, Pedrell's was accepted as at least a representative collection. Even the merit of being a representative collection was, however, denied Pedrell's collection, when it was belatedly discovered that he had printed as "Morales's most typical and glorious composition" a motet, O vos omnes, actually by Victoria. Obsessed with the idea that the 15th-century Netherlanders were machinists rather than musicians, Pedrell devoted his every energy in the historical introduction to a refutation of Ambros's claim that Morales showed Netherlandish influences.22

18 Burney's observations on Morales's style were founded on insufficient evidence, but at least he put himself to some labor. His scor- ings of two Morales motets may be seen in the British Museum Ms. Add. 11,584. In Ms. Add. 34,071 may be seen his scoring of Morales's madrigal, "Ditimi o si, o no."

19 Felipe Pedrell in Hispaniae schola musica sacra (Barcelona: Juan Pujol, 1894), Vol. I, p. xviii, attributed to Soriano Fuertes the manufacturing of an impossible date for Mora- les's birth, January 2, 1512, a date that has been copied in a number of reference works, although it was a sheer fabrication.

2o Hilari6n Eslava in Lira Sacro-Hispana (Madrid: M. Martin Salazar, 1869), Vol. I, published Emendemus in melius, Lamenta- batur Jacob (Pt. I), O Crux ave speciosa, and Verbum iniquum et dolosum. Eslava used manuscript copies in the Escorial to prepare his scores.

21 Rivista musicale italiana II (i895), PP. 349-51.

22 Pedrell, op. cit., p. ix, discoursed at length on the "incomparable motet, 0 vos omnes, . . . a work not superseded by any later artistic advance, in which appeared in concentrated essence the true genius of religious art: when a predecessor of Palestrina [ !] could create marvellously inspired works such as this one, which is completely devoid



CRISTOBAL DE MORALES (CA. 1500-5 3) 7

Pedrell later discovered his cardinal error in attributing Victoria's O vos omnes to Morales. But he never admitted his mistake in print. His judg- ment on Morales's style set the pat- tern for all Spanish discussion ot Morales's music during the first half of the 20oth century, and it is therefore not surprising to encounter distorted accounts of Morales's life and works wherever one turns in contemporary Spanish publications. In an Historia de la musica espafiola, Morales is represented on one page as dying on a certain specified day, while on the very next page he is represented as dying perhaps three months later! 23 In a 1950 Spanish edition of the Della Corte and Pannain Historia de la muisica, a specially added section on Spanish masters has it that Morales died on June 14, 1553, an obviously impossible date since the Actas Capitulares of Toledo Cathedral, Vol. IX (1552-1555), fol. I2 I'-a primary document-show that Morales was still alive on Au- gust i. In one article one date for Morales's final departure from Rome is found,24 and in another article

still another date.25 Morales is said to have left Rome in Escobedo's com- pany and to have returned to Spain with the latter, but meantime the published Sistine Diaries26 and the manuscript source, the Puncta Can- torzi2 z54 usque ad z54Y per totum (Capp. Sist. Diar. 2), fol. 77', assert exactly the contrary, viz., that Esco- bedo did not accompany Morales to Spain but rather came back to Rome from Spain on the day Morales left for home.

As if all these inconsistencies in handling Morales's dates were not enough, still further inconsistencies crop up when his works are dis- cussed. If one reads the supposedly authoritative Spanish edition of the Della Corte and Pannain Historia, total confusion is the result. It says, for instance: "One [of Morales's Masses] is founded on the villancico Tristezas me matan, triste de mi, another on L'Homme arm6, Charles V's favorite theme."27 But there are two L'Homme armd Masses by Morales! The Historia continues: "The rest [of Morales's Masses] are based on Gregorian themes." On every count these statements must be impugned. Morales wrote a Mille regretz Mass, a CaFa Mass, both on secular subjects. Far from Gregorian subjects, seven of his published

of counterpoint and shows no trace of Nether- landish influence, who can fail to be con- vinced that the genesis of our Spanish music lies in the expressive element . . . new to music when Morales came upon it, and therefore an indisputable contribution of the Spanish soul." On p. viii Pedrell said the Netherlanders lost themselves in excrescences of counterpoint, and on p. iv he claimed that "the sole excellencies to be found in Nether- landish music consist in scholastic artifices and in an elaborate apparatus of canons and fugues." Pedrell's enormous prestige in Spain has caused such manifestly unfair generaliza- tions as these to be accepted at face value.

23 Higinio Angl6s, Historia de la mtisica espaiiola (in Johannes Wolf's Historia de la misica, Spanish translation; Barcelona: Edi- torial Labor, s. a., I934), p. 369: "muri6 en MAlaga el dia 14 de junio del afio 1553"; p. 370: "su muerte acaeci6 entre el 14 de junio y 7 de octubre del afio 1553."

24Enciclopedia Italiana, Vol. XXXV (Veg- Zyg), p. 312, col. I, line 25: "Morales departed for Spain on May 9, 1545."'

25 Angl6s, op. cit., p. 370: "Morales asked permission to leave for his home on May I, 1545." The Sistine Diaries say "Morales abiit ad partes de licentia per menses decem" on May I, 1545 (Puncta Cantoril 154 usque ad 1545 per totum, Capp. Sist. Diar. 2).

26 Note d'archivio (July-September, 1933), p. 270: "Scopedus reuersus est de partibus Romae."

27 A. Della Corte and G. Pannain, Historia de la mtisica . . . ampliada y anotada bajo la direccitn de Mons. Higinio Angles (Barce- lona: Editorial Labor, 195o), Vol. I, p. 291. Mitjana, whose authority Angles seems content to invoke, does not say L'Homme arme was a "tema predilecto de Carlos V," but rather that Mille regretz was Charles V's favorite (Estudios sobre algunos mizsicos espaioles, IgI8, p. 203).




Masses were founded on popular French and Flemish motets. Morales parodied the anonymous Vulnerasti cor meum from Petrucci's Motetti de la corona (1514), two? Mouton motets from the same collection, another Mouton motet first printed in Attaingnant's XII motetz (1529), a Gombert, a Richafort, and a Verdelot motet, each of the last three being taken from 1532 publications at Lyons. The first page of Morales's Missa L'Homme armnd (5 v.) from the second book of Masses is shown in Illustration i, a portrait of the "armed man" himself forming a part of the ornamental initial.

Perhaps, however, it is too much to expect that the Spaniards of our own time should take Morales to heart, even though he was a Spanish giant. As long ago as i549, Juan Bermudo recognized that Morales was more of a foreigner than a Spaniard as far as his musical style was concerned. In the preface to, his Declaracidn de instrumentos

(i549), he spoke of "the foreign music that today comes from the excellent Crist6bal de Morales, the profound Gombert, and other foreigners," and went on to explain: "I count our Morales as a foreign composer because if his music has the charm and sonorousness of Spanish music it at the same time lacks nothing of the profundity, the technical polish, and the artifice of foreign music."28

Ambros saw Morales as a lineal descendant of the later 15th-century Netherlanders,29 and it was just this assertion of foreign influence in his music that Pedrell was bent at all

costs upon denying. A Spaniard today could ill afford, however, to take up Bermudo's statement that Mora- les's music was essentially music in a foreign style. To do so would not only run counter to Pedrell's authority but would destroy the self-satisfaction of those who, while not wishing to perform or study Mora- les's music, yet like to believe it was somehow quintessentially Spanish with no smallest foreign impurities intermixed.

To show that seven of Morales's sixteen published Masses were parodied on French and Flemish motets30 but none on Spanish motets would win no scholar the friendship of Spaniards today. Nor would the fact that an additional three of his published Masses were founded on French chansons 3 but none on Span- ish songs gather applause. To count the large number of Masses and motets in which extended canon is the principal unifying device, or to call attention to a Mass such as the Ave maris stella, which is really a Missa ad fugam with canon at the fourth below appearing throughout, would necessarily destroy the very foundations of Pedrell's theory that Morales was no contrapuntist but

28 Bermudo, ComienCa el libro primero dela declaraci3 de instrumitos (Osuna: Juan de Le6n, 1549), fol. xv (prologue).

29 A. W. Ambros, Geschichte der Musik (Breslau, 1862-68), Vol. III, pp. 570-74.

30 The Benedicta es celorum regina, Gaude Barbara, and Queramus cum pastoribus Masses were parodied on motets of the same names by Jean Mouton; the first two of these motets were published in Petrucci's Motetti de la corona: Libro primo (1514), and the third in Attaingnant's XII Motetz a quatre et cinq voix (1529). Morales's Aspice Domine Mass was parodied on Gombert's motet of the same name, first published in Moderne's Motetti del fiore: Primus liber cum quatuor vocibus (1532). His Quem dicunt homines was parodied on Jean Richafort's motet in Moderne's Primus liber (1532). His Si bona suscepimus was parodied on Philippe Verde- lot's motet in Moderne's Secundus liber cum quinque vocibus (1532). His Vulnerasti cor meum was parodied on the anonymous motet of the same name in Petrucci's Motetti de la corona (1514).

31 Two on L'Homme armd; one on Mille regretz.



CRISTOBAL DE MORALES (CA. 1500-53) 9

instead a mystic communing with God only in "familiar" style. To show that all Morales's Magnificats in the first edition (Venice, I542) were set polyphonically throughout, rather than as a succession of alter- nating polyphonic and plainsong verses would show that Morales himself cared little for the "authentic"

Spanish way, if Pedrell was right in

assuming that "escrita ab antiquo more hispano"32 necessarily meant that a composer had to conform to the alternation idea throughout all twelve verses of the Magnificat.

Handicapped then as is an outsider approaching Morales, because of the relative inaccessibility of documents in Spanish ecclesiastical archives, it still devolves upon foreigners to re- suscitate a lifelike Morales if we are to have one; only the foreigner can be free to show how intimately Morales was enmeshed in the web of foreign musical influences and how international was his musical outlook. The foreigner can speak out boldly against the injustices done Morales by 19th-century Spaniards. A foreigner can concede Morales's own intense pride in being a Spani- ard and, what is more, a Sevillian, without having to follow suit by asserting he knew no musical influences but those of Spain or Seville. A foreigner can write a life of Mora- les without having to treat his ten years in Rome as a mere passing in- terlude but can instead interpret them as the crucial years in his creative career.

Morales was born in Seville, and according to Angl6s, who gives no documentation, in the year 1500.33

That he was a native of Seville finds

documentary support not in any record yet discovered at Seville itself but rather in the printed caption heading each of his Masses but one in the two volumes published at Rome in 1544. The heading reads, "Christophorus Morales Hispalensis." That he was ordained in the diocese of Seville finds documentary support in the records of his entrance into the pontifical choir on Septem- ber I, I535, when he was called "clericus hispalensis dioecesis"34 and of his induction into the chapelmastership of the Toledo Cathedral on

August 31, i545, when he was called

"cl6rigo dela diocesis de Sevilla."35 Since the family name Morales was

extremely common in Seville during the early years of the i6th century, it is now difficult to tie a fast knot

attaching the composer Morales to

any of the other known Moraleses. In the Archivo general de protocolos at Seville an investigator has found a record of a "Crist6bal Morales, cantor del sefior Duque de Medina Sidonia, vecino de S. Miguel,"36 dated September 25, 1503. It has therefore been conjectured that the composer Morales who is our present concern may have been son of the Crist6bal Morales who in 1503 was a singer in the household establish- ment of the powerful Duke of Medina Sidonia. A Rodrigo de Mora- les was listed in 1540 at Seville Cathe- dral (Libro de entradas arch., Cat.)37 as "tafiedor de los organos" (organ player) and may quite conceivably have been a relative of the composer; but until decisive links have

32 Pedrell, op. cit., p. xxviii. 33 Angles in Historia de la misica espaiola

(1934), p. 369; also in Della Corte and Pannain (1950), p. 290.

34 Capp. Sist. Diar. I, fol. I7.r 35 Toledo Cathedral, Actos Capitulares desde

1545 asta 1547 (Vol. 7), fol. 49v. 36 Juan B. de Elhistiza and Gonzalo Castrillo

HernAndez, Antologia musical (Siglo de oro de la mtisica lit'rgica de Espaja) (Barcelona: Rafael Casulleras, 1933), p. LI.

37 Ibid.



IO JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

been found, all such family identi- fications must remain merely con- jectural.

The principal musicians in Seville during Morales's youth were Pedro

Fernandez de Castilleja, Pedro de Escobar, and Francisco de Pefialosa. Fernindez de Castilleja has been called Morales's teacher because he had the title of "maestro de los maestros de Espafia,"38 i.e., teacher of the masters of Spain. Three of

Fernandez de Castilleja's composi- tions39 are today preserved in a Seville Cathedral choirbook along with three of Morales's, and if they are at all typical, he composed only in a simple, homophonic style without indulging in any "arid scholastic exercises in counterpoint," as Pedrell liked to refer to imitative writing. Since Fernindez de Castilleja was choirmaster in Seville from August I3, I514, until i549 and as a pen- sioner enjoyed partial revenues of the office for the next 25 years, Morales was effectively prevented from aspiring to the Seville chapelmastership, which it is strongly to be supposed he might have occupied had not Castilleja lived to an un- conscionable age.

Pedro de Escobar can only pre- sumptively be connected with Mora- les,40 but his compositions-spread widely over Spain and Portugal-are

superior in craftsmanship to Castil-

leja's, and his musical influence, whatever the formal relation of master and pupil, would have told more positively upon Morales. Pefia- losa, possessor of the best technique of any Spanish composer at the beginning of the I6th century, was first named canon at Seville in 15o6 but did not actively occupy his canonry.41 He was again named a canon on January 3, 1513, but during the years 1517 and I5I8 was in Rome as a pontifical choir singer. Two briefs from Leo X show the pope interested in helping Pefialosa conserve his Seville canonry while resident in Rome as a pontifical singer. Pefialosa wrote at least five masses on secular themes, one of them a L'Homme arme'. His Nunca fue' pena mayor shows a large number of musical mannerisms that Morales later made typically his own;42 if Castilleja was his teacher, Pefialosa was the composer in whose style he preferred to write.

The earliest document as yet discovered which actually names Mora- les was found by the eminent Spanish diplomat and musicologist, Rafael Mitjana. He discovered in the 1526 Actas Capitulares at Avila Cathedral a notice dated August 8 which read: "Se nombro a Xpval de Morales [como maestro de capilla] con cien ducados de salario al afio," i.e., at an annual salary of ioo ducats.43 The same day the cathedral chapter also decreed that a pair of large organs be installed to replace the previously

38 Francisco Guerrero, Viage de Hierusalen (Valladolid: Imp. de Valdiuieljo, 1669), prologue.

39 The three compositions are (i) Salve a 4 (fols. 14v-17r); (2) 0 Gloriosa a 4 (fols. 86v-87r); (3) Deo dicamus A 4 (fols. 96'-

97r). 40 Escobar was named "maestro de capilla" on May 24, 1507, and received the added title of "magister puerorum" on January 3, 1513; if, as is to be suspected, Morales started as a choirboy at Seville, Escobar would have been his mentor. The latter relinquished his duties as "master of the choirboys" before January 3, 1513. See Angles, La muisica en la corte de los Reyes Cat6licos (Madrid, 1941), Vol. I, p. 7.

41 Ibid. 42 Among them, the incomplete nota cam-

biata, skips from dissonances, anticipations. See measures 9, 15, 34, 45 (fifths), 56, 58, 65 in Pefialosa's Nunca fu6 pena mayor Mass (Angles, La mizsica en la corte de los Reyes Cat6licos, Vol. I, pp. 99 f-.). 43Avila Cathedral, Libro de Actas Capi- tulares de la Cathdral (1526), fol.

99r.



CRISTOBAL DE MORALES (CA. I 500-5 3) I

used portatives.44 This new pair cannot, however, have been available for daily use during the first three years of Morales's Avila chapelmastership. As late as February 23, 1529, the cathedral chapter ordered that no other improvement in cathedral property be attempted until the installation of the organs was complete.45

At Avila, as later at Toledo and Malaga where he occupied chapelmasterships upon his return from Rome, Morales immediately set about adding to the choral library of the cathedral.46 The cathedral chapter seems generously to have approved his purchases. An inventory of the choirbooks in possession of the cathedral in 1540 lists a book of Josquin des Prez's Masses and another book of Noel Baudouin's Masses.4' Mora- les had a sufficient complement of trained singers to execute these works. A list of cathedral singers made September 14, 1530, shows seven musical prebendaries, two chorus masters, one for polyphony and the other for plainchant, in addition to two organists.48 This list does

not include choirboys (mozos de coro), whose instruction was a part of the chapelmaster's official duty. The seven musical prebendaries in the i530 list received salaries which supposedly enabled them to give full time to their cathedral singing; the choirboys, on the other hand, received modest salaries, four ducats a year being mentioned as a sufficient salary.49 They were in addition housed, fed, and clothed, and trained in reading, writing, "canto de 6r- gano," and "contrapunto."50

On October 12, 1530, a successor, Sepi'lveda, was named to the Avila chapelmastership. Morales's precise movements during the next five years are unknown. It has been suggested that he went to Rome in 1531 in the entourage of Cardinal Alfonso Manrique, archbishop of Seville and grand inquisitor of Spain.51 Fornari said that Morales, upon arriving in Rome, studied with Gaudio Mell, a "Fleming," but no one has yet satis-

44 Ibid. 45 Avila, Actas Capitulares (1528-29), fol.

3o': "Este dia mandaron sus mercedes que ninguna obra se haga hasta que se haga el coro y se baxen los organos y los altares." This notice substantially repeats one in the capitular acts dated August 3, 1528 (fol. 13r). For a connected account of Avila Cathedral during Morales's tenure see Gabriel M. Ver- gara y Martin, Estudio hist6rico de Avila y su territorio (Madrid, 1896), pp. 162-172.

46Actas Capitulares (1528-29), fol. 6v (dated March 27, 1528): "Comision-Este dia cometieron a los sefiores Arcediano de Arevalo e chantre e maestrescuela para que entiendan en los libros de canto de organo que se an de conprar e que les encargan la conciencia que vean lo que valen e non mas, testigos dichos.-Abinieronle por nueve ducados."

47 See Le Mdnestrel (January 16, 1920), p. 27 (communication from R. Mitjana).

48 Avila, Actas Capitulares (1529-1533), fol. 8'. In this list the name of Juan Vazquez appears as "director of plainchant"; it would be tempting to suppose this were the same

Juan Visquez who published a Recopilaci6n de sonetos y villancicos (Seville, 156o). The Avila notice reads in part as follows: "Estos son los oficiales que eligieron los Reverendos Sefiores dean y cabildo de la Iglesia Catedral de Avila en el dia de San (ebrian para el afio de mill e quinientos treinta afios.

Organista. Luis Lopez. Organista de los Maytines. Miguel de Nava. Sochantre. Alonso de Herrera. Maestro de Canto llano. Juan Vazquez. Maestro de Canto de Organo. Barrio Nuevo.

Seven singers are named, but the list is obviously not meant to be complete; no basses are mentioned, for instance. But the Actas (fol. 33r) mention a bass as having been received before the above list was made up.

49 Actas Capitulares (1528-29), unnumbered folio at the end, under date of September 3, 1529: "Este dia mandaron sus mercedes dar cuatro ducados a Juanico moro de coro de salario en cada un afio .. ."

5so What the choirmaster was to teach his choirboys was specified in the Actas Capi- tulares (1529-1533), fol. 42v: "muestre [a] los nifios canto de organo y contrapunto."

51 Rafael Mitjana, Estudios sobre algunos musicos espailoles (Madrid, 1918), p. 19o.



1 2 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

factorily solved the problem of Gaudio Mell's identity.52 Actually it is unnecessary to suppose that Morales studied with any one in Rome, since as Avila chapelmaster he had occupied a post reserved for an already finished musician. In 1540 the Avila choral library possessed three Masses by Morales, supposedly written before his departure in I530.53 At Avila today is conserved an I8th-century manuscript copy of his four-voice Officium defunctorum (Libro de facistol I, pp. Ioo-131),54 and if this was a composition from his pre-Roman period he was already a competent composer, if not yet a profoundly learned contrapuntist, before leaving Avila.

III Morales joined the papal choir on

September I, I535,"6 the same day on which Pope Paul III commissioned Michelangelo to paint the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. Later he said that Paul III personally

chose him for the choir.56 Two methods are known to have been used by I6th-century popes in re- cruiting foreign singers for their personal choir. Either they sent out scouts, as Clement VII did when he sent Jean Conseil [Consilium] to Bourges and Cambrai with instructions to capture the best singers for his personal choir,57 or they sent notice of vacancies to their nuncios in France or Spain, as the case might be, offering to pay travel expenses to Rome for likely singers proposed to the nuncios by leading chapelmas- ters in the countries concerned.58 In any case, it is evident that throughout the whole of the century the papal choir was made up of three well-defined groups of singers-the French (along with a sprinkling of Flemings), the Spanish, and the Italian. Cognizance of this tripartite division along national lines was taken on all principal feast days when the singers separated to go to their respective national churches in Rome, the French to the Church of St. Louis and the Spanish to the Church of St. James.

Early in the century the foreign singers outnumbered the Italians, but on February 19, 1512, Pope Julius II, concerned over the poor showing made by locally trained singers in competition with Spanish and French singers, issued a bull, In altissimo militantes, whose provisions established the Cappella Julia as a training choir for a dozen talented Roman

52 Gaudio Mell was first mentioned in Antimo Liberati's Lettera scritta dal Sig. Antimo Liberati in risposta ad una del Sig. Ovidio Persapegi (Rome: Mascardi, 1685), p. 22.

53 Mitjana's discovery of this list was re- ported in Le Menestrel (January 16, 1920).

54 Edited in score by Pedrell, op. cit., pp. i- 20. Pedrell added a large number of fanciful tempo-indications. The first eight pages contain seriatim the following marks: Presto (Gloriose), Presto (Laudabiliter), Presto (Ferventer), Presto (Fervide), Presto (Gravi- ter), Presto (Severiter), Moderato (Pie), Presto (Gloriose). The Avila I8th-century manuscript affords not the slightest justifica- tion for all these overwrought directions.

55 Capp. Sist. Diar. i, fol. 17r: "Eodem die fuit admissus in cantorem D. Cristophorus de moralis clericus hispalensis dioecesis et in parua capella a venerabili viro Bartholomeo de Crota Magistro Capelle, in presentia omnium cantorum superpellitio indutus, necnon per sacra Euangelia, obseruare privilegia, tenere- que secreta capelle atque suis confratibus obedire iurauit." On fol. i7': "Eciam eodem die prescriptus Cristophorus de Moralis soluit decem ducatos ad participandum omnia regalia more solito preterea duos ducatos soluit pro suo superpellitio."

56 In the Dedication of his Missarum liber secundus (Rome: Dorici fratres, 1544): "quod cum me iampridem inter chori tui musicos collocaueris .

57 F. X. Haberl, Die Rimische "Schola Cantorum" und die Piipstlichen Kapellslinger (Leipzig, 1888), pp. 72-3.

58 R. Casimiri, "Melchior Robledo, maestro a Saragozza: Juan Navarro, maestro ad Avila," Note d'archivio (July-December, 1934), pp. 203-206.




youths.59 The efforts to nourish a generation of Roman singers who could successfully compete with the better prepared French and Spanish did not produce immediate results, however, and at the time Morales joined the choir three other Spani- ards, Nufiez, Calasans, and Sanchez were singing; two other Spaniards, Bartolom6 Escobedo (August 23, 1536) and Pedro Ordofiez (April 29, 1539) joined during Morales's first term in the choir. Because of the evident clannishness of the national groups in the choir it is among this group of five that one should probably look for Morales's closest personal associates during his decade in Rome. The published Sistine Diaries show that when occasionally Mora- les wanted a day off he asked Esco- bedo or Sinchez and not any of the Italians or French to substitute for him; and sometimes he sacrificed his own regular weekday off in order to substitute for Escobedo or Sinchez.

Morales's ten years in Rome are documented with gratifying fullness. Two diaries, one for his first five- year term (Liber punctorum Capelle / s. mj dnj nrj pape Incipiens / prima die Januari] anno / dnj millesimo quingentesimo trigesimo quinto) consisting of 149 leaves, and another for his second five-year term (Puncta Cantorit 1541 usque ad 1545 per totum) consisting of 94 leaves, tell where the choir sang every day, who was absent and for what cause, what kind of special or unusual ceremonies the choir participated in, what kinds of gifts were received for distribution among the choir members, and what kinds of official action were taken by the choir on voting matters. Because of the minute character of the entries, all of which were written by the "puncta-

tor" (the diarist, who was a choir member elected annually to the post) and all of which were written the very day of the happening, these entries are of paramount value. They enable the student of Morales's life to reconstruct his everyday movements through an entire decade.

Morales's name appears 441 times in the two volumes of diary covering his time in Rome. Of these notices 339 have to do with his tardiness for or absence from matins. Sixty-five have to do with his absences on account of illness. The remaining are scattered under several headings, such as "ad septem ecclesias," "ad ripam," "habuit scatulam," "mutauit domum," "licentiam eundi foras," and "condenpnati in scutis duobus." Not only the entries which list his name but also the entries which tell what the choir did when he was present are obviously useful. The best way of handling these notices will be to begin with the first and proceed chronologically.

On the day of his admission he received the surplice at the hands of the pope's delegate charged with governing the choir, Bartholomeo de Crota. In the presence of the whole choir, which at the time of his entry consisted of 24 singers, he swore to uphold the traditions of the choir, not to divulge its secrets, and to respect the senior members of the choir. The following day he paid ten ducats into the choir chest for distribution among the senior members, this amount being a set fee for his privilege of sharing the tips handed out on special occasions such as the anniversary of the pope's coronation, the creation of new cardinals, or special ceremonies ordered by the pope not in the liturgical calendar.60

59 Haberl, op. cit., p. 62. 6so "Memoralia ad Summum Pontificem pro

Cantoribus Cappellanis," Capp. Sist. 657, fol.




He paid at the same time another two ducats for his surplice. Since his title "cantor cappellanus" meant that he was to be considered a

"chaplain" as well as singer, he was obliged to wear the cassock off as well as on duty; this obligation applied to all in the choir and not simply to members who were in

major orders before entering the choir. His regular monthly salary was fixed at eight ducats.61

On November 9, 1535, he had his first permission to cross over the Tiber to the section ("rione") where public amusements were allowed (the district surrounding the present Piazza Testaccio). Since, however, he had permission only seven times during his decade in Rome for a holiday trip of this sort, he can hardly be accused of frivolity. On January 3, I536, he was absent from his choir duties on a one-day pilgrimage to the "seven churches," i.e., to seven designated ancient churches including the four patriarchal ones; this one-day pilgrimage is still taken by visitors in Rome or by Romans themselves as a special act of piety, but the difficulty in covering all seven in a day was much greater in Mora- les's time. A little later in January, 1536, occur the first notices of Morales's illnesses, a type of notice that was to become more and more frequent as the years passed.

During the early spring of 1536 Pope Paul III, a devotee of spectacle, brought his court to a high pitch of readiness for the Emperor Charles V's entry into Rome. Two printed pamphlets conserved in the Biblioteca Angelica describe the preparations

followed by the entry; for example, eleven churches fallen into disuse were torn down, simply to make a broad highway for Charles's ap- proach, and every attempt was made visually and aurally to enhance the splendor of the occasion. On April 5 he entered the city and the same day went to St. Peter's, where the papal choir greeted him with a specially composed antiphon; he remained in the city until Easter, and on the Tuesday following, April I8, left in the evening after having distributed ioo scudi to the papal singers as a mark of special favor for the music which they had sung during Holy Week and at Easter.62 The diaries show that frequent occasions of such a kind were given Morales when with a small band of the best musicians of his day he could sing and have his own music sung in the presence of kings, em- perors, cardinals, and great nobility; such prestigious performance oppor- tunities undoubtedly had much to do with spreading his fame immediately throughout the whole of Europe. If it cannot be proved that Morales's own music was sung in the Emperor's presence in April 1536, it is at least certain that at the next meeting of pope and emperor two years later in Nice Morales was the composer of the official welcome music."8

On June 18, 1536, and again on the following July 25, the Spaniards were in their own national church, that of St. James (Santiago). The Spanish laity in Rome were strongly interknit during Morales's epoch, and on every July 25, the great national saint's day, they gathered in their own church, and when pos-

4r; six specific occasions during the year are listed in this memorial when tips in the amount of two scudi are distributed by the pope.

61 Fornari, op. cit., p. 48.

62 Capp. Sist. Diar. I, fol. 28v, dated Tues- day, April I8, 1536.

63R. Mitiana, "Espagne," in Lavignac's Encyclopedie de la musique (Paris, 1920), pp. 1976-77.



CRISTOBAL DE MORALES (CA. I 500-5 3) 15 sible engaged the entire papal choir; twice during Morales's decade in Rome the entire choir sang, each time receiving handsome honoraria. Not only did the entire choir sing occasionally, but the Spaniards in the choir took an active part in the parish life of their national church. The two singers Nufiez and Sinchez frequently took part in parish affairs, 6 and any future Morales re- searches must take into account the several pertinent documents preserved in the Santiago parish archive touching on activities of Spanish papal singers. "

On August 23, 1536, when Esco- bedo, a clergyman from the diocese of Zamora, entered the choir, the French contingent registered a violent protest, refusing to attend his inauguration. An extremely delicate balance between the French and Spanish was maintained at this period; Escobedo's entrance brought the number of Spaniards to the same level as the number of French. For refusing to attend Escobedo's inauguration the French were each fined a month's salary,66 but their protest told. The next three foreigners chosen for the choir after Escobedo were French. The cause of their specific complaint against Escobedo in 1536 cannot now be known, but he, like all the other Spaniards in the choir, with the one exception of Morales, left a record of being a hot-tempered man. On

one occasion, just before Mass was to begin, he called a fellow-singer "a fat pig" in a loud tone of voice,67 and another time during vespers called a singer who had missed his place "you ass" in a loud tone.68 The other Spaniards, with the exception of Morales, showed themselves similarly hot-tempered. Juan Sinchez, first admitted in June, 1529, was the most flamboyant. In February I538 he was in trouble for striking someone who fled, and in January i540, not wishing to sing the part allotted him by the director, he hit him "in the presence of the Sacrament," thus creating a "very great scandal." He was imprisoned, but the Spaniards in the choir banded together and sent Ordofiez to plead with the pope. The pope reinstated him, but upon his return Sanchez lost his senior status in the choir. In the negotiations the Spaniards stuck together and pleaded collectively; no better illustration of their clannishness could be given."9 After rein- statement he continued to behave badly, frequently pretending to be sick when he wanted a day off and quarreling with other choir members. Ordofiez also incurred heavy fines for his quarrelsomeness and for pretending to be sick when he wanted a holiday.70 Even the eldest of the Spaniards in the choir during Mora- les's decade-Nufiez, who had come into the choir in I52o and who had a daughter old enough to be professed in religion during Morales's 64 "Libro de decretos," Codex 72, Ambas-

ciata di Spagna a la Santa Sede, fols. 50o,

53r, 54r. 65 Other documents in the Santiago archive

(now in the keeping of the Spanish Ambas- sador to the Holy See) which are germane: "Registro de cuentas generales, del camer- lengo: 1535 [Doc. 509 bis]; 1545 [Doc. 5161"; "Capilla de miisica: Cantores, m-isicos, 6rgano [Doc. 2241]."

a66 Capp. Sist. Diar. I, fol. 36', dated Au- gust 23, 1536; fol. 37r, dated September 3, 1536.

67 R. Casimiri, "I Diarii Sistini," Note d'archivio (January-March, 1934), p. 78 (September 6, 1546).

68 Ibid., p. 84 (January 5, 1547). 69 Capp. Sist. Diar. I, fol. 20or, dated Janu-

ary 15, 1540. A complete file on Sainchez's misconduct, which began as early as 1532, appears in Capp. Sist. Ms. 678, fols. 112-121.

70 Capp. Sist. Diar. 2, fols. 35r and 44r (fines for quarreling); fol. 59r (other misbehavior).




second term 71--quarreled with a fellow singer during a religious act and scandalized the pope; like Sanchez and Ordofiez, he pretended to be sick when it suited his convenience to work in his garden.

The individual records of the other Spaniards in the choir must be studied if Morales's own rather tame record is properly to be evaluated. Morales has on occasion been called a "restless" man by modem historians. Actually his choir record shows he was the most pacific of the Spanish crew; only once was he fined for quarreling, and that once the fine was later remitted since the hard words had passed outside chapel. His record shows frequent illness, espe- cially during his second term. But never was he found malingering. All his sicknesses must have been real, since the choir members would otherwise have exposed him as they did Sanchez, Ordofiez, and Nufiez, when they feigned illness. If he be- haved with Sunday School correct- ness, it should, however, be added that he never was elected to any office during his ten-year sojourn with the choir. Calasans, Ordofiez, and even Sainchez held choir offices to which they were elected by their fellow choir members during the period i535-45, but not Morales. His preoccupation with composing cannot have been sufficient reason for exclusion from an elective post. Arcadelt, admitted December 30, 1540, was as prolific a composer as Morales, but within three years he attained sufficient popularity with his fellow singers to capture an office (abbas, 1544). A more correct estimate of Morales's personal dispo- sition drawn from the Sistine Diaries

would represent him as thoughtful and courteous but without con- spicuous forcefulness. This estimate finds added confirmation in the records of his chapelmasterships after he returned to Spain.

Paul III though already 67 when Morales joined the choir proved to be a traveling pope. Morales accom- panied him on three extended jour- neys, the first to a peace conference at Nice in June i538, the second to Loreto (on the Adriatic) during September i539, and the third to Busseto for a parley with Charles V during June i543. The oldest composition of Morales which can be specifically dated was his six-voice cantata in two movements, Jubilate Deo omnis terra, written for the June 1538, peace celebrations at Nice. After infinite manoeuvering, the pope succeeded in inducing both Charles V and Francis I to sign a ten-year peace pact at Nice. Con- vinced that music might somehow soothe the principals to the treaty, the pope brought along twenty of his own singers, all of them richly garbed in new velvet cassocks sur- mounted with silk surplices, the cost of these sumptuous garments being paid for out of his own discretionary funds.72 En route to the conference he added several instrumentalists to his musical entourage-trombonists from Bologna,7" violinists from Milan,7' and trumpeters, drummers, and bombard players from Genoa.75 Morales's cantata achieved its end, and Charles V was evidently pleased by it. When it was later reprinted in

71 Ibid., fol. 49r, dated February I0, I544. Another chorister mentioned as married was Leonard Barre, admitted as singer July 13, 1537.

72 Leon Dorez, La Cour du Pape Paul III d'aprks les registres de la trdsorerie secrkte (Paris, 1932), Vol. II, p. 225 (dated June 8, 1538): "Et piii 7 trecento d'oro . . . per comprare ciambellotti per vestire li cantori di Capella."

7. Ibid., p. 229. 74 Ibid., p. 223. 75 Ibid., p. 228.




arrangement for two guitars (Enri- quez de Valderrnbano) at Valladolid in i547 and for one guitar (Fuen- Ilana) at Seville in i554, the names of Paulus, Carolus, and Franciscus were printed as in the order of the original cantata text, but in deference to the emperor both the Spanish imprints raised his name to this order of capitals-CAROLVS. The vihuela arrangements and the printing of the vocal parts at Venice in 1549 testify to the continuing popularity of Morales's cantata, even though it was originally conceived only as an oc- casional composition.

The two sections of the cantata are organically welded. The unifying device throughout is the repetition of the following five-note motto- theme in the second tenor:

Ga8 - de - 8 - -m

This five-note theme, interspersed by rests of a breve or semibreve, is always set to the one word "Gaude- amus," but meantime the other five voices discourse on the merits of pope, emperor, and king and exhort the whole earth to sing praises to God because the two princes, Charles and Francis, have ushered in a happy age by concluding a most Christian peace. The constructive plan of this motet was one which Morales evidently delighted in having hit upon, since in several later six- and five- voice compositions-the 6 v. Veni Domine, et noli tardare and the 5 v. Tu es Petrus and Emendemus in melius, for example-he returned to it. But it was no discovery of Mora- les's, but rather one he learned from his predecessor in the papal choir, Jean Conseil (Consilium), a Parisian priest whose choir term lasted from 1526 until 1535, the year in which he

died.76 In the Toledo Cathedral Codex 13, the copying of which was completed in 1554,77 appears Con- seil's six-voice motet, Tempus faciendi Domine (fols. 77-82), with a second tenor incessantly singing the interjection "O clemens!" over a short motto-theme, while the other five voices weave a contrapuntal web with other words. The likeness in constructive plan--one voice singing a short ejaculation over a short motto-theme incessantly repeated while the other voices singing other words weave their web---is self-evident; not only is the formal plan the same, but even the allotment of the parts is the same, since in both Con- seil's motet and Morales's peace cantata the second tenor sings the motto- theme. Though compositions other than Conseil's Tempus faciendi Domine may have influenced Mora- les in favor of this particular unifying device, the presence of this Conseil motet in a Toledo codex, the copying of which was commissioned after Morales returned from Rome to occupy the Toledo chapelmastership and most of the contents of which are his own compositions, shows decisively his acquaintance with Conseil's prior experiments in unification. Rafael Mitjana, the scholar who first pointed out Mora- les's fondness for the device, left the impression that Morales had hit upon a beautiful Spanish idea when he evolved this constructive principle, but the weight of evidence seems to show that this principle was not so much distinctively Spanish as it was French.

The next datable composition of

76 Dorez, La Cour du Pape Paul III, Vol. I, p. 221, fn. 2.

77 F. Rubio Piqueras, Cddices polifdnicos toledanos (Toledo, n. d.), lists the date when each of the codices was copied. His 1554 date for Cod. 13 has been verified.




Morales shows him returning to the same constructive principle. In the six-voice Gaude et laetare Ferrariensis civitas the second Cantus sings over a repeated short musical phrase these Scriptural words: "Magnificabo nomen tuum in aeternum," while in the meantime the other five voices discourse contrapuntally on the great good fortune that has come to the city of Ferrara because the wise pontiff, Paul, had chosen from among the many great lights of Italy Ippo- lito d'Este II to be a cardinal. The pope made the appointment on De- cember 20, 1538 but withheld the news from the public ("riservato in pectore") until March 5, 1539; the announcement reached Ferrara the following Sunday, March 9. In the intervening months Ippolito, who knew of the coming announcement, prepared a sumptuous celebration. Morales's Gaude et laetare was only one of a number of congratulatory odes prepared on commission. On March 9 in a ceremony during which the bishop, Ottaviano Castelli, sang at the Duomo the Missa de Spiritu Sancto 78 Morales's two-movement cantata was sung. Morales was not, however, present.79 A record of the sum paid him for this festive cantata has not been found at Ferrara, but the munificent treatment Ippolito gave other musicians 80 (Palestrina was the most famous of the many whom he is known to have patronized) 8 would suggest that Morales was well paid.

In determining Morales's financial advantages in Rome it would be necessary to take account of com- missions and other known emolu- ments. A month after the Ferrara celebration, for instance, he is mentioned in the Sistine Diaries as receiving the feast-box sent regularly from the pope's kitchen to choir members on a rotation basis.82 Though this was payment "in kind" rather than in cash, it represented additional income. Each of the choir members was also provided at papal expense with a servant and (when traveling) a horse.83 The name of Morales's servant during his first term in Rome has not been preserved, but on July 22, 1539, he asked permission to be away three or four days while searching for suitable medicines for his servant, who was sick. On the following September 9 he left Rome with eleven other singers to accompany the pope to Loreto.84 This trip lasted exactly a month.

Another extremely important financial advantage enjoyed by the papal singers from France and Spain was a ten months' paid leave after every five-year term in the pope's service.85 Having completed his first term in 1540, Morales sought license for a Spanish trip and received it on April 4. Actually he stayed away more than a year, and his name is not mentioned again in the Sistine Diaries

78Vincenzo Pacifici, Ippolito II d'Este: Cardinale di Ferrara (Tivoli, 1920), p. 54.

79 The Capp. Sist. Diar. I, fol. 89v, shows he was in Rome on March 9, 1539; but he had taken a four-day trip between February 24 and 28.

so0 See Pacifici, op. cit., pp. 385-87, for lists of musicians patronized by Ippolito II. See also G. Radiciotti, L'arte musicale in Tivoli nei secoli XVI, XVII, e XVIII (Tivoli, 1921), pp. 9 ff.

s81 Palestrina dedicated his Liber primus

mottettorum (Rome, 1569) to Ippolito II; he spoke of Ippolito's "beneficia, quae in me quotidie confers."

82 In Capp. Sist. 688 thirty annual feasts appeared in a "Lista delle scatole che haiio li sigri cantori, di .N. Sre. tutto l'ano dal palazzo," when feast-boxes were customarily distributed. Morales received five such feast- boxes during his decade in Rome, on April 2, 1539, March 28, 1540, May 25, 1541, May 26, 1542, and June 28, 1544.

83 Capp. Sist. Diar. r, fol. 37v. 84 Ibid., fols. io8' and Ior. 85 Haberl, op. cit., p. ioi (ch. XXIII).



CRISTOBAL DE MORALES (CA. 1500-53) 19 until May 25, i541. His name appeared every month, however, in the papal pay vouchers, the "mandati di pagamento ai Cappellani cantori" as they were called.86 In December, 1540, Paul III raised the base pay of every one in the choir from eight to nine ducats a month. Whatever in- ducements Morales may have felt while at home in Spain, he found it impossible to resist returning to Rome; the financial advantages can have been no small part of the reason.

Morales's first printed compositions appeared in 1539, two of them at Lyons and one at Venice. The Lyons imprint (containing his two four-voice motets, Jam non dicam vos servos and Sub tuum presidium configimus) was Jacques Moderne's Motetti del fiore ... quartus liber; the Venetian imprint (containing his madrigal Ditimi o si o no) was Antonio Gardane's II quarto libro di madrigali d'Archadelt ... con alcuni madrigali d'altri autori. Nothing can better illustrate the pronounced contrast between the publishing careers of Morales and of his famous com- patriot, Victoria, than the circumstances surrounding their maiden publications. Morales's compositions appeared in anthologies, without patronage, and in part books. Vic- toria's motets of 1572 were published in sumptuous folio under the powerful patronage of Otto Cardinal Truchsess. Morales was presumably in his fortieth year, Victoria in his twenty-fourth." Of the 70 imprints containing Morales's music published before 16oo, more than 50 were anthologies. Victoria, whatever his

contemporary reputation,88 was not anthologized. Only two anthologies printed before 1700 contained any Victoria.89

Not only Morales's motets, but also his Masses, were anthologized. In 1540 three of his Masses appeared. Two (the 5 v. De Beata Virgine and the 5 v. L'Homme arme) were published in conjunction with others by Jachet of Mantua; one (the 4 v. De Beata Virgine) was published in conjunction with others by Jachet and Gombert. In i541 a sheaf of motets appeared in a pair of imprints primarily devoted to the works of Gombert (Charles V's chapelmaster). Having once begun, Morales's compositions continued to appear in increasing numbers every year but one during the next decade. If only in one year during his lifetime did he see his compositions through the press in the sort of sumptuous folio that Victoria almost invariably achieved, at least his compositions were popular enough to see print without patronage.

After his return to Rome in May 154i, Morales seems still to have de- layed rejoining the choir as a regular participant in its daily exercises until the end of October. On May 25 he received the special feast-box from the pope's kitchen ("habuit scatulam"), but no further mention of

86 Capp. Sist. 678, fols. 99-o0i. 87 For evidence pointing to 1548 as Vic-

toria's birthdate, see D. Ferreol Hernandez, "La cuna y la escuela de Tomas L. de Vic- toria," in Ritmo, Afio XI, Num. 141 (Extraor- dinario, 1940), pp. 27-34.

88 Casimiri in "I1 Vittoria," Note d'archivio (April-June, 1934), P. 132, quoted a document from the Biblioteca Riccardiana at Florence purporting to show Victoria's reputation in Italy around I6oo was that of being "the ape of Palestrina" ("il Vittoria chiamato la scimia [scimmia] del Palestrina"). If not highly regarded in Italy, Victoria was highly esteemed in England, on the testimony of Peacham.

89 Robert Eitner, Bibliographie der Musik- Sammeiwerke des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhun- derts (Berlin, 1877), pp. 225 and 268; the two compositions anthologized were an 8 v. Litany and the 4 v. O Magnum Mysterium.




him occurs until October 25. When Morales was regularly present he missed on an average one matins a week, always duly recorded in the diaries. But between May 25 and October 25 he is not so much as mentioned in the diaries; it must be inferred he was not on the roster of duty singers during those months. As soon as he began regularly to sing again, he returned to the habit he had indulged in during his first term, that of missing early service.

Morales's second term is notable because of the increasing number of days he lost from his duties on account of sickness. His change of residence ("mutauit domum") on July 10, I542, may have been moti- vated by his desire to transfer to a healthier site. It is, of course, now impossible to decide specifically the cause of Morales's recurring sicknesses, but malaria has been suggested as a possible ailment.90 If this was his disease, it was of the intermittent type which allowed him to know in advance when he would have an attack.91 His record of days lost on account of sickness shows only 9 days in 1536 and 14 and 15 the two next years; but in his last three years ( 1543, 544, 1545) he lost 35, 9o, and 60 days respectively.

Morales's last considerable journey as a member of the pope's retinue occurred in the spring of 1543. Paul III, though now 75, still considered a personal encounter with Charles V to be the best means of reconciling

certain differences that had arisen since the meeting at Nice in 1538. On March 4, 1543, the pope licensed his 22 able-bodied singers (Costanzo Festa and two others were left behind) to proceed to Bologna, ad- vancing to each personal expense money for the trip and for servant and horse. On March 17 the pope made a triumphant entry into Bologna (within papal dominions) and his choir sang a Te Deum. Shortly after Easter the retinue moved to Modena, then to Parma, then to Piacenza, then back to Parma, then to Ferrara, and at the end of April back to Bologna. There on May 15 Morales obtained a special license for one month in order to visit Genoa.92 His reason for wishing to visit this city can be conjectured; Charles V was expected there, and Morales may have hoped by means of a personal interview to secure the imperial chapelmastership, vacant at the moment. If the chapelmastership was his objective, he was unsuccessful. The post went instead to Thomas Crecquillon, chapelmaster from 1544 to I557.93 Charles V remained in Genoa from May 25 until June 2. Morales then cut short his month's leave and returned to the pope a week before his leave was to have expired. The pope's next move was towards Parma, where he arrived June ii. Within the next few days occurred the one instance during Morales's entire papal decade when he flew into a rage and incurred a fine for violent words passed with another choir member, his opponent

90 Reasons: (i) Malaria was an extremely common ailment in Rome; (2) Morales constantly hoped a change of climate would help; (3) When not suffering an attack, he could go about his business normally; (4) His con- dition progressively worsened, showing a chronic case; (5) He could know in advance when he would have an attack.

91 Capp. Sist. Diar. x fol. 81v: "Morales asseruit cras se esse infirmum" (Monday, November I8, I538).

92 Capp. Sist. Diar. 2, fol. 35v: "D. Morales obtinuit licentiam pro vno mense eundi Janue."

93 For Crecquillon's term as chapelmaster, see Angl6s, La

minsica en la corte de Carlos V

(Barcelona, 1944), p. 69. For Charles V's dates in Genoa, see Manuel de Foronda y Aguilera, Estancias y viajes del Emperador Carlos V (Madrid, 1914), p. 546.



CRISTOBAL DE MORALES (CA. 1500-53) 2 x

being Calasans.14 Since both were fined equal amounts, provocation on both sides is probable. If Morales had returned from an unsuccessful suit to the emperor, his mood of pique and disappointment may have ac- counted for his unique outbreak. It is significant that he quarreled not with an Italian or Frenchman, but with one of his own Spanish colleagues. In their personal quarrels the Spaniards time and again (as the Sistine Diaries show) fought with each other, not with other nationals.

At midday on June 21 the pope met Charles V at Busseto and there continued in personal conference with him during the next four days. The assemblage was extremely brilliant, the pope having brought thirteen cardinals to enhance the dignity of the occasion. Both emperor and pope were attended by honor guards of 500 footmen and 200 horsemen. Each day the office was sung, followed by Mass. Titian was present to paint pope and emperor.95 The meeting was made resplendent in every way the aged but astute pope could devise. After their successful exertions in lending splendor to the occasion the pope rewarded his singers with a three months' vacation (beginning July 6).

Despite this vacation, Morales returned early in October a sick man. He was absent sick during most of November and during the whole of January and February of the next year, i544. In '544, the year when he published his two folio volumes of Masses, it so turned out that he was sick 90 days; that he was really sick and not simply reading proof for his Masses which were being printed by the Dorici brothers, two

Brescian music printers who monop- olized the Rome printing business at the mid-century,"6 is proved by such annotations in the diary as this: "Habuit licentiam vsque ad festum purificationis pro sanitate recuper- anda." 7 The year, then, during which it would be but natural to suppose that Morales had reached his pinnacle in Rome turned out to be the worst as far as his health was concerned. His subsequent decision to remain in Spain rather than to return after his second leave of absence at home must certainly be read in the light of his own serious problem.

It is obvious from the dedications in both books of Masses that Morales hoped to find patronage outside Rome. The first was dedicated to Cosimo de' Medici, Duke of Flor- ence, and suggested that Cosimo ("whose ancestors had always liberally patronized music") should take him into service. Morales promised that if Cosimo would thus honor him, all future efforts from his own pen would be dedicated solely to the duke's service. That Morales's sonorous 55o-word Latin dedication failed of its intended effect is proved by Cosimo's failure to take him into service. Even more palpably Mora- les's dedication is proved to have misfired, because after promising to dedicate all future efforts to him if he would but shed some rays of his beneficent light upon Morales, the composer later in the same year dedicated his second book of Masses to the pope. Cosimo can have given him not the smallest encouragement if, within only a few months of his

94 Capp. Sist. Diar. z, fol. 44' (fine assessed December 22, 1543).

95 Pietro Vitali, Le pitture di Busseto (Parma, I819), p. 42.

96 On the Dorici brothers, see P. Guerrini, "Per la storia della musica a Brescia: Frammenti e documenti," Note d'archivio (January-March, 1934), p. 2.

97 Capp. Sist. Diar. 2, fol. 46v (January 13, 1544).




promise to dedicate all future works to him, Morales had to fall back on his own employer for his second dedication.

If Morales's dedication to Cosimo is proved to have been a thrust in the wrong direction, at least the dedication itself is worth studying for the light it throws on Morales's own character and personal history. In the absence of contrary evidence, it must be assumed that Morales personally wrote both his introductions. He presented both dedications as products of his own pen, and only the fact they were written in what seems far too learned a brand of Latin for anyone except a classical scholar affords any reason to think he could have shammed them. Ob- viously if he did write them, he had mastered the language. The elegance of Goudimel's Latin prose proves that at least one other contemporary composer had mastered the best humanist brand of the language. Morales said in his dedication to Cosimo:

If up to the present moment I have not made my mark in extremely weighty or distinguished affairs, nevertheless my exertions are known in those fields of study which comprise the liberal arts, for in mastering them I have continuously exercised myself from early youth. I have worked with such diligence that no pro- fessional musician can, I believe, despise my learning. How fruitful have been my studies is of course not mine to say but is for others to judge. ...

In both his dedications it was obviously his intent to prove beyond cavil his mastery of at least the liberal arts contained in the trivium.98

If there is any false modulation

in his first dedication, it is his deroga- tion of light and amorous music. Cosimo had the reputation of being a perfect Machiavellian prince; he was sufficiently obsequious in church matters when it came time, for instance, to have his adolescent son made a cardinal, but in music his taste was entirely for lascivious madrigals. His own maestro di cappella since i539, Corteccia, dedicated to him in 1544 the first book of his Madriali a quatro, apologizing for the grossness of the words.99 Whatever aspirations for ducal favor Morales may have entertained were therefore badly placed, and he can hardly have helped his cause by dif- ferentiating between "light and play- ful music . . . fittest for wanton love" and the "grave and decorous music suitable for divine praises" in a lengthy passage in his dedication. Cosimo was still in the early years of his rule at Florence when Morales dedicated his first book, and although he now seems the worst possible choice of a prospective patron, Morales perhaps yielded to the duke's reputation for piety cunningly built up but founded on sand.

In his second dedication, to Pope Paul, he also discoursed at length on the superiority of grave and serious music written in praise of God to all light and trifling love-songs. The dedication closes as follows:

If Your Holiness will but favor me and out of the boundless store of dignities at Your disposal but confer upon me some testimonial of Your favor, my own indi- gence will be relieved, and Your patronage will stimulate me to compose better works in days to come. Others also will by the example of Your generosity be encouraged

98 The three lower arts in the so-called seven liberal arts were grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric; the four higher ones were geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy.

99 Francesco Corteccia, appointed Cosimo's chapelmaster in 1539, wrote the madrigal- sequence for the duke's marriage with Eleo- nora of Toledo (I539).




to turn from vain and trifling songs to divine praises. Farewell.

Morales's dedication to the pope, 00oo words longer than that to

Cosimo, should certainly have won him some tangible mark of favor. Paul III had from earliest years notably favored musicians. Also, he appreciated learned music, whereas there is no reason to believe that Cosimo did. As a youth he had studied, for instance, Ptolemy's De musica in the original Greek,100 and if we may believe his master of ceremonies, Blasius de Cesena, was well enough trained in the theory of music to understand the intricacies of the art.101 Morales appealed to his love of learning by mentioning in his dedication an obscure second century Roman author who had written on the affective power of music.102 Moreover Morales began this second collection with a Mass, Tu es vas electionis, sanctissime Paule, whose scriptural words Paul applied to himself. In each movement in this Mass the tenor intoned the words "Thou art a chosen vessel, Paul," which were originally spoken by Christ to Paul the Apostle on the Damascus road. The other voices sang the liturgical text, but the tenor sang only the complimentary words from Scripture which Paul throughout his pontificate always applied to himself. 03

But if Paul was a "vas electionis" he was also, as a wit expressed it, a "vas dilationis," that is, a chosen vessel but a vessel always late arriving in port. Morales, it can be seen from his dedication, hoped the pope would reward him with a lucrative benefice not demanding actual residence. This was not an unwarranted expectation. During Morales's earlier Seville years, Francisco de Peiialosa had sung in Leo X's choir, while clinging to a Seville canonry. But if Paul III was minded to give Morales such a reward, he never moved to put his intention into practice. Morales cannot therefore have been anything than galled when on April 2 2 of the ensuing year Paul bestowed splendid benefices on three of his French choir singers but passed him over.104 Even more piqued he must have been when he reflected that two of the singers thus rewarded were his juniors in the choir. Arcadelt, who had distinguished himself as a composer of madrigals but not of sacred music, was five years his junior in the choir; Danckerts was three years his junior. Ivo Barry, though six years his senior in the: choir, was no more a composer of sacred music than was Arcadelt. By conferring choice benefices on these three, the pope not only brushed aside Morales's personal plea for a benefice but also disregarded Morales's request that he reward composers of sacred music rather than frivolous composers.

Morales can have been only a dis- appointed man when he bid his colleagues farewell on May I, i545, and commenced his second ten months' leave. Irritations of other sorts had certainly clouded his last

100 Dorez, La Cour du Pape Paul III, Vol. I, p. 8.

101o"Diarium Blasij de Cesena Magistri Ceremoniarum" (Fondo Borghese, Serie IV, 64), fols. 317, 318, 326.

1o02Aulus Gellius (130-I80) said in his Noctes Atticae (III, Io, 13) that music can distend the veins and arteries.

103 On the woodcut which adorns the title- page of Morales's Missarum liber secundus the composer holds open a book which Paul III is in the act of blessing. The open pages in the book show the Tu es vas antiphon, which in abbreviated form then becomes the tenor cantus firmus of Morales's complimentary Mass.

104 Angelo Mercati, "Favori di Paolo III a musici," Note d'archivio (April-June, 1933), p. IIo.




months in the choir. On his last Holy Saturday, while the pope and college of cardinals were present, two of the most senior members of the choir flew at each other during the blessing of the new oils, shouting in a loud voice and scandalizing the pope and every one else present.'05 On Easter day Blasius Nufiez and another singer caused a scandal, in the presence of the pope and cardinals, by calling each other names in a loud tone of voice.'06 Recurring incidents of this kind shrow there was considerable. tension in the choir during Morales's last weeks in it. A contributing factor may have been the wrangling over what provisions to include in the new Constitutiones Capellae Pontificiae, which were in the process of being framed. On Easter Monday (April 6, I545) a committee of six was elected to sit with the bishop of Assisi, episcopal patron of the choir, for the purpose of composing the new constitutions.107 But because the new rules touched every singer, every one wished to have a part in framing them. The old constitutions had been destroyed during the 1527 sack of Rome, and during the intervening period oral tradition had prevailed as an insecure guide. Morales's part in the actual drafting of the new constitutions can have been small at best, but a place was left for his ratifying signature when they were completed in November, 1545.108

The constitutions comprise 59 chapters'09 and touch every phase of the singers' lives. The more important provisions may be briefly summarized, since they show the customs prevailing during Morales's epoch. A singer need not be in holy orders but must be a man of honor and good repute. When a new member is proposed, his character shall first be examined, and then he shall be brought to a musical examination conducted by the choir members themselves. The first requisite is his voice quality; the second, his ability to keep his part in homophony; the third, his sufficiency as a singer of contrapuntal music; the fourth, his ability to sing plainsong; and the fifth, his sight-reading ability. A secret vote shall be taken after his musical examination, and no singer may be admitted unless two-thirds of the singers plus one vote for his admission. After being admitted and having attended to all the financial formalities, he must attend solely to the daily routine in the pope's chapel and may not sing elsewhere nor carry on other business. His duties as a new singer include moving the heavy choir books into place; as soon as another newer singer enters he no longer moves them into place for everyday singing, but he still carries them with his junior novice in the choir during processions. Only when two singers are junior to him can he consider his chores as a porter ended.

Absolute silence during divine office is required. All business such as requests for leaves of absence must be directed to the most senior member of the choir present. Special

105 Casimiri, "I Diarii Sistini," Note d'archivio (July-September, 1933), p. 274.

lo0 Ibid., p. 270. 307 Note d'archivio (January-March, 1932),

p. 55. The Spaniards elected to sit on the committee were Calasans and Sanchez.

10s The original constitutions (Capp. Sist. 6ii) show at p. 31 on the second space from the bottom a blank where Morales was to have signed (between the signatures of Stefanus de Toro and Antonius Capellus). The signatures appear in order of choir seniority. (Choir documents always listed in

order of seniority rather than alphabetically.) De Toro [Thoro] was admitted August i, I535, Morales September I, I535, Capellus March 28, 1536.

109 Reprinted in Haberl, op. cit., pp. 96- io8.




requests must be approved by two- thirds plus one secret vote. Heavy fines are to be assessed for malingering or other false reports. Every five years an extended leave is granted, five months for Italians, ten for French and Spanish. The feast-box from the pope's kitchen is to be awarded by rotation to choristers, who should divide it among their colleagues. Ceremonies for creation of new cardinals, for the exequies of a pope, for the creation and coronation of a new pope are to follow a prescribed routine. All unusual choir business not covered by provisions of the constitutions shall be entrusted to a committee of three, six, or nine members, composed of Italians, French, and Spaniards in equal numbers. The reason for this division by nations is that "experience has shown the singers divide always into their own national groups, and speak their own language with each other."

The constitutions as adopted in 1545 did not prescribe exactly the number of singers which the choir should contain. An undated I6th- century memorial in the Sistine archive said, "From the time of Martin V until Clement VII there was no fixed number in the pontifical choir. . . . Clement fixed the number at 24, of whom 7 should be sopranos, 7 contraltos, 4 tenors, and 6 basses."110 During Paul III's pontificate the number of singers rose from 20o (in 1535) to 32 (in 1545).111 If the I545 constitutions do not fix the total number of singers in the choir, they do set eight singers, of

whom two each must be sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses, as the mini- mum number necessary for any choral service.112 When during sum- mer vacations the pope wanted Mass sung, he never called for less than eight, and usually for twelve singers."3 Only once during Morales's decade was an occasion recorded when, the choir being present, the ordinary of the Mass was said instead of sung.'14 What is more, the Mass was always sung polyphonically instead of in plainchant. Once in 1545 it was recorded that "on account of rain there were an insufficient number of singers present, sopranos being entirely lacking; therefore Mass was not sung [polyphonically] but plainchanted, and those not present were fined." 115

Even at the most solemn occasions polyphonic music, and not plainsong, was the norm. For instance, the constitutions prescribe the singing of cantus figuratus even at a funeral.116

Considerable attention was paid the distribution of parts; it is therefore likely that when a singer of a certain range quit the choir he was succeeded by another singer of like

110 "Memoralia ad Summum Pontificem pro cantoribus cappellanis Cappellae Ponti- ficiae" (Capp. Sist. 657), fol. 1. 111 For a complete list of the 2o at the beginning of 1535, copied from the Sistine Diaries, see Casimiri, Note d'archivio (Jan- uary-March, 1932), p. 54; for the 32 singers at the beginning of 1545, ibid. (October- December, 1933), p. 333.

112Haberl, op. cit., p. lOl (Ch. XXV). 113On his September 11, 1536, trip to

Viterbo he took nine singers; on his Septem- ber 9, 1539, trip to Loreto, twelve; on his September 3, 1540, trip to Viterbo, twelve; on his January 11, 1543, trip, eight; while at Viterbo he called eight singers from their vacation on August 14, 1543. Enough in- stances have been given to show that even when the pope went away for only a week or fortnight he insisted on carrying with him at least a double quartet.

114On September I5, 1539 "Fuit missa lecta cum motetto"; half the singers were gone from Rome on this day, twelve of them having been selected to attend the pope during his Loreto trip.

115 Casimiri in Note d'archivio (July-Sep- tember, 1933), p. 276: "Propter inopiam cantorum maxime supranorum ob pluuiam non fuit cantata missa, sed plane celebrata, ideo ordinatum fuit ut qui non comparuerunt punctarentur" (August 30, 1545).

116 Constitutions, ch. XXIX.




range. Nowhere in the Sistine Diaries is Morales's exact range recorded, but his successor was a baritone ("indutus est cotta pro barritono") ; "17 the next singer admitted was a tenor.11s Since the exact ranges of the singers admitted during 1546 and 1547-the two years after Morales's quitting-are known, and since none was a falsettist (soprano or alto), it seems highly unlikely that Morales was himself a falsettist. Further evidence comes from his appointment in the Rafion de tenor at Toledo Cathedral when entering on his chapelmastership there in September 1545. Because many Spanish singers in the pontifical choir later in the century were falsettists, Dr. Burney assumed mis- takenly that all Spaniards during the century were falsettists. But he seems not to have known that such a Spaniard as Calasans, who entered in 1529, was a bass."19 The best evidence now available would lead one to suppose that Morales's voice was a high baritone or tenor.

IV Morales's May journey in i543

having proved fruitless, and his two dedicated volumes of Masses in 1544 having brought him no appointments from either the duke of Florence or the pope, his attention must immediately have been drawn to the vacancy in the chapelmastership at Toledo which was announced by the canons of the Toledo Cathedral on March i6, i545. The chapelmaster-

ships in Spain during this particular epoch were all publicly advertised by means of placards affixed to the doors of the principal churches in Salamanca, Valladolid, Alcalh de Henares, and Madrid, and in other public places, it being the intent of cathedral chapters that no chapelmastership should be filled until several competitors had offered themselves for a public competition.120 Crucial chapelmasterships and organ posts were not infrequently held open for six to ten months until a sufficient number of acceptable competitors had presented themselves. The examination set at Toledo Cathedral differed little from those at other leading cathedrals. A candidate at Toledo was required at this particular epoch to compose trial compositions in three, four, and five parts above a given plainchant melody, to write a fabordon for a psalm-intonation formula, to compose a motet with given words, and to write a double-choir Asperges. His compositions were put to the test of an actual performance, and the canons of the cathedral decided in secret vote which candidate was most fit for the post. Since creative ability was crucial in the test, the cathedral chapter notified Morales that he was awarded a slight additional amount over and above the regularly budgeted salary for the chapelmastership "because of his outstanding powers as a composer as demonstrated in the books of polyphony published at Rome where he had lived with His Holiness, Pope Paul III."121

117 Casimiri, Note d'archivio (January- March, 1934), p. 76; "Jo. Aloysius de epi- scopis," as his name appears in the notice of induction into the choir, received the cotta June 28, 1546.

18 Francisco de Montalbo, admitted Jan- uary 30, I547, was a tenor; see Enrico Celani, "I cantori della Cappella Pontificia," Rivista musicale italiana XIV (1907), p. Ioi.

119 Ibid., p. 96.

120 F. Rubio Piqueras, MUisica y miisicos toledanos (Toledo, 1923), p. 94.

121 Toledo, Actos Capitulares desde 1545 asta 1547 (Vol. 7), fols. 49'-5or: "E demas de la dicha Racion atenta la abilidad y suficiencia del dicho cristoval de Morales Ifol. 50or] en la musica, segun consta por los libros de canto de organo impresos en Roma



CRISTOBAL DE MORALES (CA. I500-53) 27

The Toledo canons thought they conferred no small favor when they bestowed a chapelmastership on a successful candidate. As Cardinal Sileceo, archbishop of Toledo and primate of Spain, said in 1549:122

It is a well known and verified fact that the Cathedral of Toledo is the most illus- trious, the richest, the most splendid, the best staffed, and the most completely staffed of any in all the Spanish dominions. Except St. Peter's in Rome, in fact, there is no other cathedral in Christendom that can surpass it.

When, therefore, the cathedral chapter gave Morales the post and added a sum of 6,000 maravedis to the regular salary of 37,500 maravedis a year, thus making a total of 43,500 maravedis, the canons legitimately felt that they had done handsomely by Morales. Their feeling of self- satisfaction is more than amply brought out in the record of their later financial dealings with Morales, who unfortunately did not find it possible to live within the salary provided. In order properly to understand his financial difficulties it is necessary first to understand what his salary meant. At his first post in Avila he had received 00oo ducats a year. A ducat equalled 375 maravedis.123 At Avila, then, Morales had

received quite as much money as the regular chapelmaster's pay at Toledo without bonus would have been. Yet the Toledo canons let it be empha- sized several times in the course of their dealings with him that in their opinion he was if not overpaid at least very well paid.

The chapelmaster's duties at Toledo as at Avila included instructing the choirboys (seises) in singing and music theory, boarding them in his own house, and fulfilling all the func- tions of a parent.124 The number of choirboys whom Morales had to board and train can be accurately estimated. Records of the numbers of choirboys admitted each year were kept for the mid-years of the i6th century and may now be seen in Legajo 65 at the Capitular Library in Toledo. In 1549 and i55o eight new choirboys were admitted each year. In 1553 eleven were admitted.125

Assuming eight, however, as a fair annual average for new choirboys, it can easily be seen that if the choirboys remained no longer than two years there would have been no less than sixteen in the chapelmaster's protective custody; if three: years is

donde a vivido con la santidad de nuestro sefior el Papa Paulo tercio, lo nombraron por maestro de Capilla, y le asignaron de salario cient ducados todos de la obra en que entran los diez myll maravedis de salario ordinario que hasta aqui solia llevar y mas le dieron seys mill maravedis cada un afio para ayudar al alquiler de una casa que se le pague asimesmo de fondos de la obra."

122 Brit. Mus., Egerton Ms. 415, fol. 75': "Como sea cossa muy aueriguada y notoria esta sancta yglessia de Toledo ser la mas illustre, mas rica, y mas poderossa, y demas rninistros de todas quantas ay en los Reynos de Espafia, y aun despues dela de San Pedro en Roma, ninguna Iglessia en toda la cris- tiandad se halla mas que ella."

123SEarl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501-1650

(Cambridge, Mass., 1934), p. 55, n. 3. Ham- ilton's analysis of price movements on food staples around the middle of the century, p. 285, illuminates the reasons for Morales's disasters.

124The Toledo Actos Capitulares, 1545- 1547, fol. 50r, mention as one of the terms of Morales's contract: "E ansimesmo en- cargaron al susodicho los seyses e que se le de lo que se suele dar por el mantenimiento de ellos." On fol. 245v the chapelmaster's duties were "para que tenga cargo de ensefiar y mantener los seyses," and the chapelmaster must obediently heed the instructions of the canon maestrescuela in all matters relating to the seises. The chapelmaster did not choose them, although his advice may be heeded in the selection process (Actos Capitulares desde 1548 asta 1551, fol. I34r). The maestrescuela had the last word in choosing new seises (Ibid., fol. 123').

125 Toledo Capitular Library, "Expedientes de Limpieza de Sangre," Legajo 65 (Ex- pedientes 1776-18io).




accepted as a likelier life span for a choirboy, then their numbers rose to the middle twenties. At the very least, the chapelmaster was weighted with a major educational responsibility in which he was only par- tially aided by a canon entitled maestrescuela ("schoolmaster"),1216 who was responsible for seeing them properly instructed in the rudiments of reading and writing the Latin and Spanish languages.

Morales was not slow in demon- strating his utter incompetence as a guardian of small choirboys. How- ever well he may have discharged this part of a chapelmaster's duties at Avila, when he was still a man in his twenties, he failed miserably at Toledo, when he was approximately 45. He failed first because he overspent on their subsistence, thus run- ning up debts he could not pay. According to the terms of his en- gagement, he was obliged "to main- tain the choirboys at their previously accustomed level of subsistence," but in attempting to do so he had so grossly overspent within seven months that he had to borrow 20 ducats from the chief steward (refitolero). 27 The cathedral chapter approved this loan only because of the dearness of the times, the early months of 1546 having been a season when food prices were suddenly forced upward by crop failures.128

Not only did he have to borrow on March 26, 1546, but again on Octo- ber 13 of the same year. In the meantime he had been gravely ill; the cathedral chapter in approving a further loan of 28 ducats noted that his illness had been an expen- sive one.'29 In approving the further loan on October 13 the chapter further noted he had not paid his subsistence bills due the chief steward between April and August. Morales's bad financial management resulted, then, in his having spent within his first thirteen months at Toledo two- thirds more than his immediate predecessor in the chapelmastership, Andres de Torrentes, had spent in an equivalent length of time. For pur- poses of understanding his own personal finances, to this two-thirds overdraft should be added the 90 ducats he received from the pope's treasury for the ten months' leave he enjoyed between May 1, 1545, and March i, 1546. What a papal ducat was worth in terms of Castile currency during 1545 is not immediately ascertainable, but with a continuing papal income, a stated salary sixteen per cent in excess of that paid any predecssor at Toledo, plus a loan equal to almost half his base pay, the Toledo authorities had reason to consider him an intolerably bad business man during his first year.

Within the very first month of his arrival, Morales began building up 126 The maestrescuela, a canon, was an ec-

clesiastical superior of the maestro de capilla, a mere prebend. For those unacquainted with Spanish cathedrals, the distinction may seem of small moment. It is, however, of utmost moment.

127 A. C. 1545-1547, fols. I26v-I27r (March 26, 1546): "Este dia en el Cabildo de la Santa Iglesia de Toledo estando los sefiores Dean y Cabildo capitularmente ayuntados mandaron al venerable Diego de Mora Ra- cionero su Refitolero, que preste veynte ducados [fol. I27r] al venerable Cristoval de Morales Racionero y maeso de Capilla atenta la carestia del tiempo."

128 Rubio Piqueras, Misica y misicos

toledanos, p. 88, recounted a famine in Jan- uary, 1546.

129A. C. 1545-1547, fol. 171' (October 13, 1546): "Este dia los dichos sefiores Ilamados por cedula mandaron que los veynte y ocho ducados en que se vendieron los veinte y cinco alamos secos de la huerta del Alaytique se presten a Cristoval Morales Racionero maestro de la musica para ayudar al gasto de su enfermedad e que el Refitolero los cobre del de los turnos de abril y agosto del afio venidero de 1547, de cada turno la mitad y que se cargue al Refitolero que es cargo es- traordinario deste afio."



CRISTOBAL DE MORALES (CA. I 500-5 3) 29 the choral library at Toledo. On September 25, 1545, the cathedral

chapter appointed a commission of three to investigate the money value of various books of polyphony he had brought with him and presented to the choir library.'30 How much he was paid for these choirbooks is not known; but if it was a considerable amount, during his initial year he extracted money from the chapter on four fronts--base pay, bonus for his Roman reputation, loans because of the dearness of the times, and book sales. When therefore on August 9, 1547, less than two years after his appointment, he renounced the chapelmastership, the Toledo chapter can have shed very few tears. The Actos Capitulares desde

154y asta 1547, now conserved at Toledo, contain a minute record of cathedral business during Morales's 23 months, but no entry shows that the canons tried to hold him when he resigned. Instead of trying to hold him, the chapter set their protono- tary to work with a group of canon lawyers to rescind the raise in salary, so that the next chapelmaster should come on at the former scale of a flat 00oo ducats..31

If the Toledo chapter was glad to be rid of Morales, he can have been scarcely less happy to go. The only contemporary likeness of him, a woodcut in the 1544 second book of Masses shows him as a man with sunken cheeks, bags under his eyes, and thinning hair (see Illustration 2). His pensive, wan look-if habitual-- cannot have increased his effective- ness as a disciplinarian for choirboys.

He had had nothing of that sort to do in Rome but instead had consorted with the best musicians of his time. The caliber of his musical associates in Rome may be indicated by listing only those singers in the choir who had the same day off, Wednesday, of each week--Co- stanzo Festa and Arcadelt,132 two of the best composers of the epoch. At Toledo he was expected to consort on terms of near-equality with his two organists, neither of whom was a person of musical distinction.'33 Morales did not have the right to tell either organist when to play and when not to play. The times for organ music were already rigidly prescribed by a capitular act of March 29, 5o09, which said: "The organist . . . shall play during the entire office, at early Mass and at High Mass, and at vespers ... except during Lent, Advent, and other prohibited seasons."'14 If any specific directions were needed, the organist, whose ecclesiastical rank was exactly as high as that of the chapelmaster, took his instructions not from the chapelmaster but from two canons.135 Morales's duty was not to instruct

1s30ol Ibid., fol. 66v (September 25, 1545): "Este dia los dichos sefiores cometieron a los sefiores obrero y visitadores que vean lo que valen los libros de Canto de organo que dio morales mso de Capilla y se le pague de la obra lo que valiere."

131 Ibid., fol. 244v (December zo, 1547).

132 Capp. Sist. Diar. 2, fol. 94r 1s3 Francisco Sacedo occupied the organ

prebend from February 9, 1541, until Au- gust 9, I547 (A. C. I545-47, fol. 226'); Juan de Pefialosa, "clerigo de la diocesis de To- ledo," was his suborganist and succeeded him as organ prebendary. Two other organists, Francisco L6pez (A. C. 1548-51, fol. 109r) and Ximenez, whose first name is not given but who is simply called "musico de tecla" or "de organo" (A. C., 1548-51, fols. 4v and 69v) appear frequently in the financial records of the cathedral, but their services were irregular.

134 Rubio Piqueras, Mzisica y misicos toledanos, pp. 65-6.

135 A. C., 1548-1551, fol. IIIr, lists Ber- nardino Capata and Diego Ortiz as the two canons to whom "cometieron . . . los ss . que den orden con los musicos de organo como y quando an de tafier." Canon Ortiz was not the same person as the Diego Ortiz who published Glose sopra le cadenze (Rome, 1553).




or command but rather to cooperate with the two organists and the other instrumentalists hired by the cathedral chapter.136

The a cappella ideal which Morales had known at Rome was thus completely alien to Toledo. Throughout the entire year, except during penitential seasons, accom- panied music was the rule. That Morales felt no urge to compose while at Toledo can be proved by listing his compositions copied into the Toledo choirbooks during his immediate epoch. Of the thirteen Masses in these choirbooks only one had not already been published at Rome, and that one is a Missa cortilla ("short Mass"). Several codices contain dates indicating when the copying was completed. Only a very few of his motets in Codices 21 (1549), 17 (1550), and 13 (I554) had not already been published before he left Rome. The exceptions, such as the five-voice Circundederunt me, are conspicuously shorter than his other older motets in the same codex. One infallible proof that he felt no stim- ulus to compose at Toledo is the absence of any motets in the Toledo choirbooks honoring Toledan saints. At Rome he published motets honoring such unscriptural saints as An- thony, Martin, and Lucy, but at Toledo he wrote no motets for SS. Ildephonsus, Eugenius, or Leo- cadia, all of whom were first-class saints in the Toledan calendar. Andres de Torrentes, who had been

chapelmaster before Morales and was invited back to succeed him, wrote motets for all three of these. Indeed, the most astounding thing about the entire extant Morales repertory is the complete absence of any motets or other compositions honoring Spanish saints-or even St. James (Santiago), patron Saint of Spain.'37 Victoria, supposedly more Italianized than Morales, wrote motets honoring both Ildephonsus and St. James and also a Vexilla Regis "in the Spanish man- ner." When Victoria, supposedly the a cappella composer par excellence, came back to Spain, he adapted to the Spanish situation by writing with organ accompaniment; Morales did not. Victoria wrote for antiphonal choirs, long idiomatic in Spain because of the ubiquitous divided coro;138 Morales did not. Morales's refusal to bow low before local Spanish custom after his return from Rome cannot, and should not, be lightly explained away.

V Having quit Toledo, Morales es-

capes notice for two years, and not until August 1549 are his where- abouts again securely known. In his small treatise, El arte tripharia (Osuna, I55o), Juan Bermudo called Morales "maestro de Capilla de mi sefior el duque de Arcos."139 The copyright privilege, which can only have been given after it was completely written, was dated Novem- ber I8, 1549. In a prefatory license printed in the book, Bermudo's own 136 See Rubio Piqueras, op. cit., p. 8I, for

the name of an instrumentalist, Garcia Gon- zalez, "ministril desta Santa Iglesia" in 1553. An extremely useful reference to the constant use of instruments at Toledo, even in accompanying plainchant, will be found in Summi Templi Toletani, dated 1549 (Brit. Mus. Egerton Ms. 1882), at fol. 40r. Dr. Blas Ortiz, the author, vicar general of To- ledo diocese, writes at length of "ministriles, y sacabuches, y instrumentos," used at Mass and in the Divine Office.

137 The attribution of a "Himno de San- tiago" (Toledo Codex 25) to Morales is not founded on any evidence from the codex itself and must be rejected.

138s For a discussion of Victoria's organ ac- companiments see Pedrell, Thomae Ludovici Victoria Abulensis: Opera omnia (Leipzig, 1902), Vol. I, p. xi.

139 Bermudo, Comidga el arte Tripharia (Osuna: Juan de Le6n, I550), fol. 24r.




provincial superior spoke of having read it; 140 the license is dated August i, which would be a terminal date for its composition. Dofia Isabel Pacheco, abbess for whose use El arte tripharia, was written, was, in- terestingly enough, an aunt of the Duquesa de Arcos.

Don Luis Crist6bal Ponce de Leon, Duke of Arcos, of whose private chapel at the modest Andalusian town of Marchena Morales was chapelmaster after leaving Toledo, seems hardly a powerful enough patron for him to have chosen volun- tarily at his mature stage. Only the proximity to his native Seville can be advanced as sufficient reason for Morales's occupying himself with such a minor post. Certainly for a composer who had consorted on terms of musical equality with the Emperor Charles V's chapelmaster, whose own compositions had been everywhere acclaimed, and who had recently occupied the chapelmastership at the primatial cathedral in Spain, a post as chapelmaster to a local duke seems unduly anticlimactic. On October 20, 1550, Morales was still chapelmaster for the Duke of Arcos, on which date he wrote a commendatory letter to be inserted in the forthcoming second edition of Bermudo's Declaracidn de instrumentos. Just as the two Latin dedications (i544) are his only Latin prose extant, so this commendatory letter is his only Spanish prose extant. The letter itself,'41 which occupies one printed page, not only commends Bermudo's Declaracidn but sets forth Morales's educational ideals.

Morales begins by saying he knows of no other book as useful as Ber- mudo's. He finds the style fluent

and pleasing, and above all succinct, so that the reader is immediately taken to the heart of the matter rather than lost in circumlocutions. He finds Bermudo's order of presentation commendable because it leads from the known to the unknown, the imperfect to the perfect, the least complicated to the most complex. This order of presentation, thinks Morales, is above all others to be preferred in an instructional book. It is the natural order, and the natural in art is always to be preferred. While going directly to the point, Bermudo has said all that needs saying on essential issues. He has welded practice and theory together. For the first time, Morales says, he has found a book which sets down the actual procedures used by perform- ing musicians.

The obvious intent of Morales's letter was to win as many sympa- thetic readers as possible for Ber- mudo's text. But the letter is not only useful in revealing what he thought of Bermudo. It is also useful in revealing Morales's own "educational philosophy," if in skeleton form. In comparison with all the Spanish music texts printed before it,142 Bermudo's Declaracidn is much the most progressive in outlook. "When the times change, so does the music; avoid old-fashioned music,"143 was Bermudo's constant text. "A composer of genius invents new musical ideas; Vives and Erasmus improved Latin; so have composers

140 Ibid., fol 2'. 141 Bermudo, Declaracid6n (555), fol. I28'

(Preface to Bk. V).

142 Among them: Domingo Marcos Duran, Lux bella (Seville, 1492); Diego del Puerto, Portus musice (Salamanca, 1504); Bartho- lome de Molina, Lux videntis (Valladolid, 1506) ; Gonzalo Martinez de Bizcargui, Arte de canto ilano (Zaragoza, I5o8); Francisco Tovar, Libro de musica practica (Barcelona, I51o); Juan Martinez, Arte de canto ilano (Alcali de Henares, I532); Pedro Ferrer, Intonario general (Zaragoza, I548).

143 Bermudo, El arte tripharia, fol. 24r




of our own time improved music,"''44 said Bermudo. "The composers whom I recommend are Antonio Cabez6n, Crist6bal de Morales, and Gombert;145 . . . the best music to begin with . . . would be that of Juan Vasquez; . . . then the music of Josquin, of Adrian [Willaert], of Jachet of Mantua .. ."146 Properly to appreciate Bermudo's outlook it would be necessary to picture an analogous situation in the 20oth century. A theorist now who would suggest beginning with Stravinsky would be no more of a radical than was Bermudo. "We musicians our- selves are aware that the spirit of the times demands we constantly do something new," Morales had said in the dedication of his own second book of Masses, and it was this outlook of progressivism that Bermudo endorsed.

VI Morales's last appointment was to

the chapelmastership at Malaga. His induction occurred on November 26, I551. Unlike Toledo or Seville, the Mailaga cathedral appointments were during the I6th century directly within the gift of the Crown. The king had the prerogative of naming any functionary in the cathedral, a hereditary privilege bestowed on Ferdinand of Aragon at the time the kingdom of Granada was recon- quered. The Actos Capitulares at Malaga describe the chapter meeting of November 27, 1551i:147

The cathedral chapter met in a regular business session under the presidency of the bishop. Crist6bal de Morales, holding appointment from the bishop and cathedral chapter as a singer, entered and presented through me, secretary of the chapter, a royal decree signed by His Highness the Prince [Philip] and by certain of His councillors, bestowing upon him the musical prebend left vacant at the death of the former legally entitled occupant, Diego Hernindez, chapelmaster, the said Crist6bal de Morales having entered his name as contender for the post when notice of its vacancy was publicly distributed. He presented also a writ and deed of possession of the said prebend signed by the Most Reverend and Illus- trious Don Fray Bernardo Manrique, Bishop of Milaga. The royal patent properly notarized by Andr6s de la Cuevas

144Declaraci6n (1555), fol. 66v, col. 2. 145 El arte tripharia, fol. 24r. 146Declaracidn (1555), fol. 60r, col. 2.

His progressivism is instanced also by his re- narks on the music of "the old law" ("dela ey vieja") and on consonance and dissonance Lt fol. 66r, and on "glosas" at fol. 84'.

147 Since the Spanish original, which is onger than the English abridgment, has not ,een printed except in a defective transcript, t is presented here in full (A. C., 1550-1554, ol. 74 recto & verso) :

"Vyernes veynte y siete de noviembre del

dho afio de 1551. Se juntaron en su cabo y ayuntamiento segun lo tienen de uso y cos- tumbre su S"'r Rma y los sefiores [then the names of the canons of the cathedral]. Iten en el dho cabo entro christoval de morales cantor por mandado de su Sria Rma y de los dichos sefiores y presento ante los dh?m sefiores y por ante my el dh0 secretario una provision real de su magestad firmada del principe nuestro sefior y de otros del su consejo en que le haze merced de la racion de musica que vaco por fin y muerte de Diego Hernan- dez maestro de capylla legitimo poseedor della, en que el dho christoval de morales fue uno de los oppositores que a ella se op- pusieron por los edictos publicos que para ello se pusieron y uno de los nombrados en ella y una provision y collacion que della le hizo el muy yll" y rmO sr d00 fray brdO manrique obispo de malaga por virtud della dicha provisyon y md real que parecio estar firmada de su nonbre y de andres de las cuevas notario y pidio a los dichos sefiores dignidades y canonigos y si necesario era les requeria y requirio obedescan y cunplan las dichas provision y collacion y en cunplimiento dellas le manden dar la posesyon dela dicha racion de maestro de capylla y vistos por los dho. sefiores las dichas provision y collacion y leydas por mi el dho secretario dixeron que las obedecian y obedecieron con la reverencia y acatamiento que deven y que estan puestos de cunplir lo en ellos contenydo en cuyo cunplimiento dixeron que mandavan y mandaron dar la posesion de la dicha racion al dicho christoval de morales y para sela dar lo cometieron al dicho sefior canonigo Sebas- tian de Corita el qual juntamente conmigo el dicho secretario y con Juan de la pefia per-



CRIST6BAL DE MORALES (CA. 1500-53) 33

instructing, and if necessary, commanding the cathedral chapter to confirm the episcopal deed of possession and to bestow the prebend of chapelmaster upon Chris- t6bal de Morales having been seen by all the canons and read aloud by me, the secretary, the canons then agreed they must accept and obey the provisions of the royal decree with all due reverence and must submit to the order therein contained; in compliance with which they declared and decreed that possession of the said prebend should be conferred upon the said Crist6bal de Morales. To comply with the royal will the chapter entrusted the task of institution to Canon Sebastian de Gorita, Juan de la Pefia, verger, and me, secretary; for which purpose we went into the choir of the cathedral with the said Crist6bal de Morales, and after placing him in the archdeacon's upper choir stall designated for such installation ceremonies, the said Morales being properly attired in surplice, I then

asked and demanded that Canon Gorita proceed with the installation ceremony....

The canons in the Malaga cathedral chapter can be shown to have accepted Morales as chapelmaster only reluctantly. In usual cases in- volving the selection of a new chapelmaster the royal will was only nomi- nally exercised, the canons in the chapter having the right to hear and vote on the candidates who had submitted their names as contenders for the vacancy. After Morales's death, for instance, when the chapelmastership again fell vacant, five contenders submitted themselves for examination. The canons then voted in a secret ballot, the result of which was the election of Francisco Guerrero to the post.s48 But when Morales presented himself he was not voted upon by the canons, and they had no option in the choice. Instead of choosing their own man and then securing royal confirmation of their choice, they were obliged to accept a chapelmaster whose name had been legally entered in the list of contenders, but on whom they had not been given an opportunity to vote.

Upon entering his duties Morales immediately felt the weight of opposition. His singers refused to obey him, and a week after he was in- stituted the chapter, in order to preserve discipline, issued orders to all the singers that they must submit to him.149 Acknowledged everywhere throughout the world as a master, as Guerrero (his pupil) said of him, upon entering a provincial post he could not preserve discipline.

tiguero fuimos al coro desta santa iglesia con el dicho Christoval de morales y estando en una silla de las altas del coro del seiior arcediano de Malaga que dixeron ser donde se abija de dar la posesion de la dicha racion, el dicho Christoval de morales vestido con sobrepelliz pidio y requirio al dicho sefior canonigo le de la dicha possesyon como le fue cometido, el qual dixo que estava presto de lo asi cunplir y en cunplimiento dello y en seiial de la dicha posesyon asento al dicho Christoval de morales en la dicha silla, el qual en prosecucion y confirmacion della abajo un libro que alli estava y derramo dineros y hizo otros abtos de posesion en la qual quedo pacificamente syn contradicion de persona que de presente pareciese y lo pidio por testi- monio, siendo presentes por testigos Juan Thomas beneficiado de la yglesia de sefior Santiago desta dicha cibdad y Salvador Franco y Francisco Coracho, clerigos, vecinos della y otros muchos, y antes que al dicho Christoval de morales le fuese dada la dicha posesyon, estando en el dicho cabildo se hinco delante [de] su Sria Rm" de rodillas y en un misal que para ello fue traido juro en un evangelio de cunplir y guardar los es- tatutos deste obispado y lo contenido en el capitulo cinquenta y nueve dellos que por mi el dho secretario fue leido de verbo ad verbum. -Va escripto entre renglones o Edonde] diz en sefial-Quedo la dicha provision real con los edictos y abtos de la dicha vacante que paso ante mi.

Bachiller Diego Sanchez de Antequera-Secretario"

148 A. C., 1550-1554, fol. I92v. 149 Ibid., fol. 75': "Iten proveyeron y man-

daron que los cantores desta yglesia sigan la correccion de christoval de Morales racionero maestro de capilla y en todo le obedezcan en sus oficios de cantores sin exceder de lo que el les dixere y encargare, lo qual les fue noti- ficado a todos los dichos cantores."




A singer on equal terms with the best in the papal chapel at Rome, he encountered such opposition from his singers at Milaga that the cathedral chapter had to intervene in his behalf in order to avert a total collapse of authority. Morales's continuing inability to enforce discipline is borne out by several subsequent entries in the Mailaga capitular acts. On July 22, 1552, the cathedral chapter notified "all the singers" that they must come to the Salves on Saturdays properly habited in surplices, and that for each time missed they would be fined half a real.150 The same day the chapter issued this order: "On days when the choir sings the Agnus in plainchant, the singers are to wait until the organist has played one Agnus, and then to respond with the next Agnus sung all the way through, and not as they have formerly been doing."151 On August 8 Bishop Manrique expressed his personal displeasure at the slov- enly way invitatories were being sung at matins and threatened fines unless more singers attended.152

During Morales's two-year term at Milaga, several incidents show that the cathedral chapter was deter- mined to keep not only his singers but him also in tight reins. On June 13, i552, he appeared before the chapter with a request for a short leave of absence in order that he might go back to Seville. In his request he mentioned he had completed a sufficient number of months

to entitle him statutorily to such a leave. The chapter after hearing him in person replied that he might have just so much time as the proper cathedral statute allowed him "and no more" (y no mas).1 3 His behavior and that of his singers during a procession on May 6, 1553, provoked the cathedral chapter to fine him and his singers.154 Having never once during his entire decade in Rome offended against liturgical proprie- ties, at Milaga his personal conduct during a ceremony and his inability to discipline his singers caused him a reprimand.

The opinion which the Milaga chapter held of him is sharply brought out by the contrast in honorific titles bestowed on him and on his organist. The organ prebend, vacant when he was inducted as chapelmaster, was filled on March 5, i552, by appointment of a Juan Doyz155 from Navarre as "organista y mrisico de tecla." Doyz came with no edict already signed by "our dread sovereign" forcing himself upon the chapter, but instead under- went the routine examination pre-

15o Ibid., fol. o105: "Ansi mandaron que a los cantores se les notifique que vengan a los salues de cada sabado y q traigan sobre- pelliees sino q se les quitava por cada salue medio real notificoseles a todos."

151 Ibid.: "Yten sele mando dezir al sochantre q en los dias q responde el coro a canto llano los agnus los responda alternatim desta manera que tafiido por el organo un agnus responda el coro otro agnus entero y no como hasta aqui."

152 Ibid., fol. Io6r.

153Ibid., fol 10o4 fol': "Ante los quales sefiores parescio el RrO morales y dixo como el cantor vilches abia scripto que si le recibie- sen con el mismo partido que le abian dado que bidria a servir a esta sta y.gia. Y tanbien que suplicava a sus mds que le diesen liCen- qia por que el queria yr a su trra en aca- bando su resideneia que seria en fin deste presente mes y asi se salio. ... Mando se le responder que quanto a lo del cantor contra alto que si viniese que si se recibiria con el mismo partido que sele abia sefialado y que quanto a su liCenCia [fol. 10o4] que se le daua conforme a la que el estatuto que habla sobre el maestro de capilla le da y no mas y ansi se le respondio."

154 Ibid., fol. 149r: "Yten que para el primer Cabildo se trate si remitira la pena en que fueron penados morales el maesthro de capilla y los cantores el dia le San Joan ante portam latinam en la procesion."

155 Ibid., fols. 83' and 87'. Doyz's name is variously spelled in the capitular acts. His opponent on February 8, 1552, was Jer6nimo Nufiez.



CRIST6BAL DE MORALES (CA. I500-53) 35

scribed for all candidates.156 The canons were thus free to accept or reject him as their personal pleasure should dictate. But the canons having once elected him, the capitular acts then speak of him as "el venerable don Juan Doyz . . . presbitero,"'57 specifically charging him "to play the organs on all the days in the church calendar designated by cathedral statute."'158 The name of Mora- les, in contrast, never once occurs in the Milaga capitular acts as "el venerable don Crist6bal de Morales ... presbitero." At Toledo he had been, when he first went there at least, the "venerable" Crist6bal de Morales,'"5 but never so at Milaga. In I6th-century Spain, when honorific titles and elaborate formality were everywhere the rule, to have never been called by anything else than his bare name without so much as the courteous prefix "Don" cannot be passed over as insignificant.

Morales asked for his second leave of absence-a leave which turned out to be his last-on June 14, '553.

He appeared on that day before the chapter "humbly begging their Wor- ships for permission to take a short trip which of necessity he was obliged to make, and also asking that the three days' fine assessed his singers [for misbehavior] at the procession on May 6, S. Joann. ante Portam Latin., be remitted." 160 It was well the chapter gave him permission to go on his trip, and also remitted the fines, for it was the last time they should be troubled by any request from him. What the nature of Mora- les's business trip was cannot now be known, but it is certain that despite the advantages of climate and any others he may have enjoyed at M~laga,161 he regretted his stay. On July 4, three weeks after his farewell appearance before the Milaga chapter, the chapelmastership at Toledo was again declared vacant. Almost immediately Morales put in his application to return to the Toledo post he had renounced six years previously.

The Toledo chapter, however, did not throw open any welcoming arms for the returning prodigal. Had the chapter so desired, he might have been invited back without necessity of another formal competition. Tor- rentes, who like Morales, renounced the Toledo chapelmastership, and then later, when it was again vacant, sent the chapter word he would like to return, received an invitation to come back without again compet-

156At fol. 83r (February 3, 1552) is described the chapter's deliberations on the kind of examination to set for the organ contest. Morales was not present, but at the conclu- sion of their meeting the dean said he would consult with Morales in the afternoon of the same day in order to get some musical advice. Morales had no vote when the time came to elect.

157 It is a notable fact that nowhere in any Avila, Rome, Toledo, or Milaga record does Morales receive the title "presbitero." At Toledo, on the other hand, the title "presbitero" often appears after other clergymen's names to indicate priest's orders. Perhaps Morales was only a deacon. The mere fact that he was called "cldrigo" does not necessarily mean that he was a priest. Records of ordinations at Seville (where Morales presumably was ordained) prior to 1589 are not preserved, and therefore his precise status is not ascertainable.

158 A. C. 1550-1554, fol. 87': "cargo de tafier los organos con todos aquellos dias que por el estatuto que sobre . . . esta mandado."

159 Toledo Actos Capitulares desde 1545 asta r547, fol. 127r (March 26, 1546). But later Toledo documents drop the courtesy.

160 Milaga A. C., 1550-1554, fols. 151' and 152': "En catorze dias del mes de Junio de 1553 primeramente parescio ante los dhos sefiores el racro Chrual de morales mo de Capilla y dixo ql queria yr un poco de camino por necesidad G a ello le forqaua j suplicaua a sus ifids tuviesen por bien j fuese con recles como el statuto se lo da y 4 la pena de tres dias en que fueron penados los cantores en la procesion de San Joan de porta latina, q suplicaua a sus mds se la remitiesen."

161 Milaga has perhaps the best winter climate of any Spanish city.




ing.162 But Torrentes had virtues Morales lacked. For one thing, he looked after the choirboys. The Toledo chapter could not praise him sufficiently for his attentiveness to their physical welfare.163 Because the maestrescuela-the canon charged with responsibility for the choirboys -liked the way Torrentes housed and boarded them, Torrentes could name his own time for a return and came back with only the formality of a letter of invitation. But not so in Morales's case.

Morales's letter saying he would like to return was read in the Toledo chapter on August ii, I553. Im- mediately the maestrescuela, Don Bernardino de Alcaraz, began to find difficulties. "If Morales wants to compete, well and good; let him go ahead. But the chapter here should not endorse him."164 Another canon, Francisco de Silva, took a critical view. "He said the chapter should carefully see whether its authority would not be exceeded by inviting Morales to come to this worthy cathedral just now; and besides, since the announcement of a vacancy had been publicly made, the competition should be held."165 No such scruples

afflicted the conscience of any canon when Torrentes was invited back under precisely similar circumstances on November 19, 1547. But Morales's was yet again another case.

On September 4, 1553, with Diego Garcia as his proxy, he formally applied for permission to compete, attesting his application with the

signatures of two Toledans, Alonso de Le6n and Diego de Lunar. He was the second of five who made formal applications, the first having been Bartolome de Quebedo, chapelmaster for the princess of Portugal; the others who subsequently entered their names were comparatively un- distinguished persons, one a chapelmaster at Ciudad Rodrigo, another a clergyman of undesignated rank and no previous experience from Segovia, and the last a novice from Zamora who had not received even minor orders. The trial was held

during the week of December 4, i553, but Morales had died some- time between September 4 and October 7.

On the latter date the Mailaga chapter met under the presidency of the archdeacon, who began the meeting by commending the choir for their excellent recent services. Be- cause it was a general meeting, the chapter invited the cathedral digni- taries of lesser rank to attend, these including all the singers who held cathedral prebends. After hearing themselves commended, the singers heard no word of commendation for their deceased choirmaster. Instead the archdeacon read a formal announcement declaring the chapelmastership open, because Morales- not the "esteemed," the "venerable," the "excellent," but simply, Morales

162Toledo A. C., -545-1547, fol. 243': "Comision Torrentes. Este dia los dichos sefiores liamados por cedula ante diem encarga- ron mucho al Sr Don Francisco de Silva canonigo que escriba a Andres de Torrentes que venga a esta Sta Yglesia a servir el officio de maestro de Capilla" (November 19, 1547).

163 Toledo A. C., I548-i55i, fol. 2o6r: Torrentes submitted a memorial requesting new beds for the seises; he also requested a change of clothing every six months (March 5, 1551). He continuously exerted himself for the physical welfare of the choirboys. No record of Morales's having so troubled himself remains.

164Toledo A. C., 1552-1555, fol. I2,r: "El sefior don Bernardino de Alcaraz maesescuela dixo que si Morales se quisiere oponer que se oponga pero no se trate de parte del Cabildo nada."

165 Ibid.: "El sefior don Francisco de Silva dixo que vea el Cabildo si cumple a su

autoridad que venga Morales a esta santa iglesia y que pues esta puesto el edicto que se guarde."




-was dead. The property belonging to the cathedral which he had occupied, the archdeacon announced, was now to be sold to the highest bidder. The first bidder was Canon Molina, who offered 5,000 maravedis "and 20 live chickens" for the property.166 Three days later another cathedral official offered the same amount of money, but "60 live chickens." On October 15 still another canon offered 6,000 maravedis and "60 live chickens." This last offer proved the highest bid and was accepted on October 25.

The chapelmastership was not dis- posed of quite so quickly. On De- cember 6, since an insufficient number of competitors had applied, the chapter received royal permission to extend the entry date for the competition another two months. In the meantime notices of the vacancy were to be distributed "in many cities and at the Universities of Salamanca and Alcalk de Henares."'67 Finally on February 7, 1554, the competition was declared closed, and the chapter appointed two of its own number, Canons Corita and Qumel, to set the examination. Six days later the chapter met to vote on the five candidates who had been heard during the competition-Francisco Guerrero, singer in the Seville Cathe- dral; Luis de Cogar, chapelmaster at Granada; another Coqar, probably a relative; Gonzalo Cafio of Jaen with no significant experience; and Juan Navarro.'68 Guerrero, who received eighteen votes, was declared elected.

He did not take possession, however, the Seville cathedral authorities having in the meantime decided he was too valuable a man to lose.'69 When after a further period of delay the the Malaga authorities discovered their offer had served no further purpose than to enhance Guerrero's salary and prestige at Seville, they turned aside and chose at last a chapelmaster for whom the position was not too small, Juan de (epa, inducted on December 24, 1554, fourteen months after Morales's death had been announced.

The last allusion to Morales in the Malaga capitular acts is found on fol. i98v of the Actos Capitulares, Vol. IX (1550-1554), dated April 2,

1554: "The chapter met [names of the eleven canons present are given] and before them appeared Canon Gonzalez Quintero, who produced a royal decree naming Francisco Guer- rero, priest of the Seville diocese, to the prebend of chapelmaster in this cathedral, the said prebend having become vacant at the death of Cris- t6bal de Morales, whom God par- don."

Unlike Toledo and Avila, the other two Spanish cathedrals in which Morales served as chapelmaster, Milaga preserves today no compositions by its most eminent maestro de capilla. Guerrero's Magnificats, a volume of his Masses, and another containing vesper music for the whole church year, are preserved at Malaga.170 Even though he refused

66ss Mlaga A. C., 1550-1554, fol. I67': "cinco mill mfs y veinte gallinas vivas en cada un afo .

167 Ibid., fol. 77r : "los Racioneros y capellanes mandaron que . . . se enbien edicto a muchas cibdades y a las vniversidades de Salamanca y "alcala .. "

16s Ibid., fol. 193r. Juan Navarro received no votes; later, however, his reputation exceeded that of any other competitor except Guerrero.

169 Guerrero, Viage de Hierusalen, tells in his prologue (unnumbered) that the Seville chapter advanced him to a parity with Fernandez de Castilleja, who had already occupied the post a quarter century.

170 In addition to Guerrero's Canticum B. M. quod Magnificat nuncupatur (1563), Missarum lib. II (1582), and Lib. vesperarum

(I584), Malaga Cathedral possesses other handsome folios, such as Philippe Rogier's Missae (i598) and Joseph Torres's Missarum liber (1703).




the post, he was thus more honored at Mailaga than Morales, who held it.

The only sacred music by Morales anywhere else preserved that can reasonably be connected with Mailaga is a Requiem Mass in a large i6th- century choirbook now owned by the Santiago parish church at Valla- dolid. The Requiem is found in a volume with seventeen of Morales's motets, some of them nowhere else to be encountered, and the Cafa Mass, to be found elsewhere only in the Biblioteca Medinaceli at Madrid.171 The Requiem at Valla- dolid actually does not carry Mora- les's name, but since the volume has been trimmed, it may have been lost. The ascription to Morales rests on evidence supplied by Bermudo in his Declaracidn

(i555), Bk. V,

Ch. 32: 172

The diminished fifth is usually considered a prohibited interval. . . . It does occur, however, in Gombert's works [though not on strong beats]. There is still another composer who in my opinion has shown how to use it [even on strong beats], namely, the excellent Crist6bal de Morales. In a Requiem Mass which he wrote for the Conde de Uruefia, in the introit verse with the text Te decet at the words "votum in Hierusalem" one finds the following passage:

in Hl - ~ru- sa - Pm

In this passage the diminished fifth between bass and tenor is prepared in two ways....

171 Bibl. Medinaceli Ms. 607, pp. 248-260. This particular codex, until December, 1952, not listed in any catalogue, is the richest source of Morales's music in Spain. It is the unique source for the Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La Mass, mentioned by Cerone, but previously undiscoverable in any Spanish or Italian archive.

Because of the skill with which the interval is prepared, this diminished fifth can be taken with perfect ease by the most ordinary singers. I particularly admire this passage because of its delicacy and smooth- ness.

Since the five chords Bermudo quoted duplicate those at the same words in the Requiem Mass on fol. 127'-I4Ir of the Valladolid copy,173 the entire Mass may confidently be identified as the one Morales wrote for the Conde de Uruefia, fourth of his name.

The Conde de Uruefia was principal lay benefactor of the Milaga Cathedral during Morales's term there as chapelmaster.174 The count's name occurs frequently in the capitular acts, and always with the most surprising testimonials of the high regard in which he was held by bishop and canons alike. A typical entry showing the exaggerated deference Bishop Manrique accorded his wishes, even in matters primarily ecclesiastical, may be quoted: "His Reverence the Bishop ordered that since the Count of Uruefia has sent notice he is particularly devoted to the feast of the Conception of the Virgin, special preparations for that day, which is December 8, must be made well in advance." 17 This entry like others of the same sort shows the count's word was a fiat at Mailaga. A distinguished patron of learning, he had in 1549 founded the University of Osuna,176 and it was from the presses of the "university" printer, Juan de Le6n ("impressor dela universidad del illustrissimo sefior Don Juan Tellez Giron, Conde

172Declaracidn, fol. 139r [actually 140r].

173 The Valladolid copy has f and c in the bass and alto respectively at the fifth chord.

174 A "concordia con el Conde de Vrefia" was signed by the cathedral chapter on May 9, 1552 (A. C., 1550-1554, fol. 96v).

175 A. C., 1550-1554, fol. 148r. 176 The Count also assembled a sumptuous

private library.



CRISTOBAL DE MORALES (CA. 1500-53) 39 de Uruefia"), that both first and second editions of the Declaracid6n de instrumentos were issued.

The count's father had accom- panied Ferdinand "the Catholic" during the wars against Granada,'77 and had particularly distinguished himself at the capture of V6lez Milaga and then of Milaga (1487). Morales's only known composition whose words touch any event in Spanish history is the romance "De Antequera sale el moro" 178 the words

telling how a Moorish messenger carried letters begging help for beleaguered Antequera (captured in 1410 by Ferdinand I). Since the count believed his ancestors gained distinction as early as the capture of Antequera, and took especial pride in their military record in the cam- paigns around Antequera during the Granada wars, Morales's setting of "De Antequera sale el moro" may reasonably be thought of as a chapelmaster's personal tribute to a distinguished cathedral benefactor.179

University of California, Los Angeles 177 Hernando del Pulgar (Cr6nica de los

Senores Reyes Cat6licos [Valencia: Imp. de Benito Monfort, 178o]0, pp. 272, col. i; 289, col. i; and 296, col. i), mentions the military exploits of the count's ancestors, Juan Gir6n, Alfonso Tllez Gir6n, and Juan Tllez Gir6n.

178 Miguel de Fuenllana intabulated this romance (fol. 145) in his Orphenica lyra (Seville, 1554). Its most recent publication was in Jesuis Bal y Gay's Romances y villancicos del Siglo XVI (Mexico, 1939); the complete text of the romance at pp. 42-3 is worth noticing.

179 The fourth Count of Uruefia was a cousin or uncle of the Duke of Arcos, whom Morales served as private chapelmaster in 1549-50. See Miguel Manchefio y Olivares, Apuntes para una historia de Arcos de la Frontera (Arcos de la Frontera, 1896), pp. 290-91. It is probable the Count had something to do with securing Morales's nomina- tion to the Matlaga chapelmastership, though documentation is not presently available.




APPENDIX

De Antequera Sale el Moro

MORALES

De An-te - qe - ra sa-le el mo - r, De An~-te-Ique-ra se

, 2 Iii [ iiiqh.i I •

A d

rI a I I

V J-

? Car-tas de men1 s1 a - - ge-riu

I I '[a [ I I I



CRISTOBAL DE MORALES (CA. I 500-53) 41

:AL

:-At

...

AL - ------ ? " ~ t~' ~i.

" dcifon

A% A -_J

l i

, .xt... .cis~

.I Y 'W l :

A,`

WALI -m:

Illustration I Beginning of Morales's Missa L'Homme arm$ (5 v.) from Missarum liber primus (Lyons, 1546), fol. 85v.

Sibley Music Library copy.




*rr---- --- rr~rrrr~ rrr - ~ ~-?lr;-- --------~---.UC"'':"'

CHRI STO P H ORI

MORALIS HYSPA

LEN SIS M I S SARVM\V ILIBER SE CVNDVS >

--- --- ---- -

- ------ -

,iA!. ..

Illustration 2

Title-page of Morales's Missarum liber secunduzs (Rome, 1544). Vatican Library copy.



Date post:	16-Jan-2017
Category:	Documents
Upload:	robert-stevenson
View:	236 times
Download:	9 times

Cristóbal de Morales (ca. 1500-53): A Fourth-Centenary Biography

Documents