Conference Agenda

Though the sarabande and the chaconne were stylized sections of courtly suites by Baroque composers such as Scarlatti and Bach, their origins are far removed from any European court, stemming instead from New Spain. In a book about the Spanish colony in 1579, a Dominican friar, Francisco Diego Durán, described the sarabande as a lascivious dance and identified it with the indigenous population. However, at least one surviving song — a villancico for Christmas — links it with enslaved Africans, suggesting that both populations were involved in the creation of the genre. In this program, Ensemble Origo aims to contextualize these origins, showing how a song that mentions the dance was likely performed following Christmas services. The next two sections of the concert trace the printing history of both genres (which were related at one time) from simple guitar strumming patterns that sometimes accompanied voices to the stylized instrumental works adopted by hundreds of European composers in the centuries that followed. The program aims to bring what is known of the genres’ lost—or suppressed—histories to light, thus rethinking Eurocentric notions of these distinctive musical genres, their history, and their trajectory.

In this exploration of the origins of the related genres of the sarabande and chaconne, we aim to reverse the conspicuous erasure of Mesoamericans and Africans from the early history of Western notated music. In the first part of the program, we perform repertoire related to constructions of racial identity, “color prejudice” that abounded in early modern texts as part of the colonization process, and interfaith and cultural contacts during the global early modern period. Importantly, though, several of the villancicos we perform demonstrate the use of complex, African-inspired rhythm and provide the best strains of evidence that we have of African connections to the sarabande and the chaconne. Their performance thus reveals the crucial presence of Africans and Mesoamericans in this music as well as their hitherto overlooked centrality to the history of these genres. Given the distinct history of racial constructs, however, they are also settings of texts containing racial stereotypes and coarse, sometimes very offensive language, which of course we do not endorse, but which we also cannot avoid if we are to bring to light the enormous contribution of Africans. We contextualize these works and reiterate our goals of decolonization in remarks during our performance. Ensemble Origo is an early music ensemble directed by Connecticut-based musicologist and conductor Eric Rice. Its aim is to present vibrant performances of early music (from the Middle Ages through the baroque) that reflect the context in which the repertory was originally produced and heard; “Origo” is Latin for “earliest beginning,” “lineage,” or “origin.” The ensemble draws on a roster of musicians from Connecticut, Boston, and New York.