This volume presents the study and annotated edition of 230 poems in Spanish about the Virgin Mary, taken from musical polyphonic works in manuscripts at the Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia (ABNB) in Sucre (formerly La Plata, capital of the Audiencia of Charcas). These poems have been selected by the editor from some 13 hundred music folders or items (dating from 1680 to 1820) that came to the ABNB from La Plata Cathedral and from the Biblioteca of the Oratorio de San Felipe Neri (Julia Elena Fortún collection). Eichmann announces a future edition of poems about other topics.
This important book originated in the doctoral dissertation by Eichmann, who also has other relevant publications about poetry and music in colonial Bolivia. In the present volume he systematically studies texts sung in villancicos and similar genres and describes the process (that he calls “retroescritura”) used to reconstruct the...
