Journeys to the New World: Hispanic Sacred Music from the 16th & 17th Centuries

Latin American Baroque is the repertoire of sacred and festive art music written and performed in the cathedrals, missions, and courts of colonial Spanish and Portuguese America during the Baroque era. It blends European contrapuntal craft, basso continuo, and ceremonial grandeur with local languages, dance rhythms, and timbral practices. Typical forms include masses, motets, litanies, and villancicos (often for Christmas and major feasts), set in Latin as well as Spanish and sometimes indigenous languages such as Nahuatl, Quechua, or Guaraní. Instrumentation combines European forces—violins, cornetts, sackbuts, bajón (dulcian), harp, organ, and guitars—with local percussion and distinctive rhythmic cells (notably the sesquiáltera 3:2). The result is music that can be both solemn and architectonic for liturgy, and exuberant and dance-inflected for feast-day devotions.