Cathedral of Toledo - Music of The Cathedral

Music of The Cathedral

As the Renaissance advanced through all of Europe and with it religious music from the monasteries, devotional music became a key part of the Eucharistic liturgy. To further enhance the spectacular grandeur of the cathedral a visually impressive ritual was provided in which music has the mission of embracing the architectural work and amplifying the glorification of God. Since 1440, polyphonic vocal pieces spread rapidly throughout Castile and Aragon. Instrumental music was produced by the organ, which soon found a place in the cathedrals and the churches of the Archpriests.

In the cathedral of Toledo, the most important organ is the so-called "Organ of the Emperor" in the transept of the cathedral. Next are the so-called "General", the organ made by Fray Joseph de Echevarría, and the organ made by José Verdalonga (1796–1797), located in the choir. Cardinal Cisneros, with the reform of the chapel of the Corpus Christi for the Mozarabic rite, which had its own music, introduced another organ in the chapel. Others are also found in the rest of the important chapels: that of the New Monarchs (which has two), of the Alcázar, of the Virgin of the Sacristy, and of Saint Peter.

The organ was not the only important musical instrument. With the passing of the years, wind instruments (flageolets, flutes and sackbuts), harps and other string instruments, like the so-called viola, which served as an accompaniment to the vocal music, were introduced. With the creation of the Chapel of Music, throughout the 16th and the 17th centuries the oboe and the double bass were being incorporated into the celebration of the Mass, before the flageolet and the sackbut.

The "Six-Piece", or Children's Choir, of the cathedral was created as a vocal group by Cardinal Silíceo who, on 22 July 1557, founded for its members the College of Our Lady of the Infantes, even though the existence of moços (boys) who sang in the liturgical services was already mentioned in the 12th century. They were and are the Choir of the Cathedral and of the Chapel of Music. In its constitution of the 16th century, its red clothing was already established, which the students still wear with a white surplice. In the College lived, generally, the Maestro de Capilla and other professors with the boys; who supervised their development, which included, for a time, their incorporation into the Royal University of Toledo. The constitutional charter of the College, drafted by Silíceo on 9 May 1557, specifically instructed in its sixth point:

...we order that another master be found to instruct the said altarboys to sing plainchant and organ chant and counterpoint, of whom the same information is found, is twenty-one years old, conforming to the Statute, a Priest, and of good repute and name and well learned in the faculty of Music, who will teach the altarboys a lesson of how to sing on all the festival days and Sundays one hour before eating, and another after having eaten, and another at the end of the day, and on the other school days, each day a lesson after having dined.

Among the maestros de capilla, Cristóbal de Morales, who composed Emendemus in melius and Peccatem me Quotidie was preeminent; he had worked in the Sistine Chapel of Rome and composed twenty-one masses and more than seventy motets. Other maestros de capilla were Matías Durango de los Arcos, Alonso Lobo, Juan de Bonet and Paredes, Andrés de Torrentes, Ginés de Boluda and Francisco Juncá y Carol.

The influence of the music of the cathedral of Toledo was decisive in Spanish religious music—not only in Mozarabic chant, but also in training maestros who later moved to other dioceses such as Seville or Jaén, and in the six-pieces which formed choirs in other cathedrals; even introducing variations of Gregorian chant in the form of what is known as Cantus Eugenianus, Cantus Melodicus or Vulgo Melodía, through the efforts of the song masters of the cathedral (up to 18 masters have been accounted), figures who disappeared with the Concordat of 1851 and most of whose compositions are kept in the cathedral library.