Performa ’11 – Encontros de Investigação em Performance 1...

Performa ’11 – Encontros de Investigação em Performance Universidade de Aveiro, Maio de 2011

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Performance of Saint Teresa of Avila in Spanish contemporary classical music

Susan Campos Fonseca

SIBE Women's Studies in Music Research Group1 [email protected]

Abstract I propose a paper presentation dedicated to the performance of Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), her person, life and work, in Spanish contemporary classical music as result of a poiesis of Christian mysticism and body politics. Both processes can be studied departing from the music based on the writings of the nun, and her representations as cultural, political and mystical icon. This research work requires a theoretical and practical knowledge, not only of historical musicology, musical analysis and theory, but also of ethnomusicology and performance studies. However, that this is a preliminary study, really a kind of “Directions for further research”, and such does not have a specific argument. There exists an extensive bibliography dedicated to the person and work of Saint Teresa of Avila, but a comparative study related to the reception of her person and work in musical creation has not been carried out. In the same way, the presence of musical and speculative practice in the work of the nun have been documented, but not her representation and resignification in later musical creation, or the possible relation of this phenomenon with the institutionalisation of this woman as cultural Hispanic icon.

Key words: Performance, St. Teresa of Avila, body, mysticism, music.

1. Current and proposed research Since 2006 I have been investigating the presence, reception and resignification

of poetry, forms, genres, and musical conventions of the Spanish Golden Age in

the musical creation of the 20th and 21st centuries (Campos 2009, 2010, 2011).

But inside the Project Hispanic Heritage Performance as Projected on the

Female Body (case studies), the first result of my research has been the lecture

1 Sociedad de Etnomusicología-SIBE (Spain), Women's Studies in Music Research Group, official web site: http://www.sibetrans.com/grupos.php /Group web site: http://musicologiafeminista.ning.com/


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“Between Left-led Republic and Falangism? Spanish women composers, a

critical equation”, presented in the Conference Encuentros/Encounters 2011

devoted to Music and Dictatorship during the Franco Regime, 1936-1975

(February 16-18) celebrated in the Center for Ideas and Society of the University

of California Riverside (UCR), under the direction of Dr. Walter A. Clark, and

published in Diagonal. Journal of the Center for Iberian and Latin American Music

(CILAM), of UCR.

My purpose with this research is to explore the politics of memory, and

embody/powerment as a critical equation between Memory and History,

Woman`s body and Nation, sense of the past and identity, because the status of

“ethnological” discourse of "historical" musicology includes women as creator in

the trilogy “nation, race, sex”. I refer to the theory of "contretemps" of the French

woman philosopher and historian Dr. Genèvieve Fraisse. According to her

theory, "women are for themselves and otherwise, ends and means. Currency

exchange, or still better, a medium of exchange in political history as well as in

historical theory." Fraisse proposed the need to "develop women`s historicity with

data that resist all thought about emancipation and subversion, the kind of

thought in which the woman remains an object, even when she becomes a

subject of history and of her own history." (Fraisse 2005)2

This theory proposed by Dr. Fraisse, shows why the facts form part of the cultural

and historical "imaginary", in this case, built around Saint Teresa of Avila, facing

a critical equation as a social performance. However, that this is a preliminary

study, really a kind of “Directions for further research”, and such does not have a

specific argument. Rather, I purpose is to suggest some possible arguments,

without entering into any of them. The purpose of my lecture for this panel, is to

introduce the project Hispanic Heritage Performance as Projected on the Female

Body(case studies), and must be understood as a work in progress departing

from an interdisciplinary methodological context, to include historical,

2 Read on the original: "las mujeres son para son mismas y para otra cosa, son un fin y un medio. Moneda de cambio o, mejor aún, medio de cambio en la historia política tanto como en la teoría histórica". (…) "elaborar su historicidad con este dato que resiste a todo pensamiento de emancipación y de subversión, este pensamiento de la mujer que permanece como objeto, incluso cuando se convierte en sujeto de la historia y de su historia." (Fraisse 2005) The translation is mine).


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philosophical, iconographical and literary research, as well as analytical and

theoretical music research. Thus, my work, focusing on contemporary classical

music3 comes in line with the studies of my colleagues Dr. Josemi Lorenzo

Arribas and Dr. Mauricio Molina, both historians, musicians and medievalists.

I propose to study the reception of the person, life and work of Saint Teresa of

Avila (1515-1582), but my complete research project also includes Sor Juana

Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695), the current state-of-the-art, antecedents and

consequences in Western music. Both processes can be studied departing from

the music based on the writings of these nuns, and their representations as

cultural, political and mystical icons. For this reason, this research work requires

knowledge of performance studies. However, my contribution in PERFORMA

2011 is to introduce our Project, and its objetives, such as: 1. To study the musical representation of different narratives, the use of

musical resources, and their efficiency in the representation of poietic

conceptualizations of the body and religious thought as sense of Hispanic

identity.

2. To examine in which measure these representations have influence on the

musical development of the sacred as performance according to a

previous iconographic articulation.

3. To analyse the resignification of musical conventions as Landscape, its

consequences, dialogue and contradictions, in relation to specific

traditions and cases.

4. To investigate the correspondence between different levels of musical

structuring of memory and body politics which have been used as

reference, and to reveal their ideological and aesthetic foundation.

And in my case, at the first level of this work in progress:

5. To locate the scores which have been created taking as a reference the

person and work of Saint Teresa of Avila in the chronological field of

contemporary classical music, for example in the music of Spanish

3 Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.


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composer as Beatriz Arzamendi (1961), Consuelo Díez (1958), Leonardo

Balada (1933) or Gonzalo de Olavide (1934-2005).

There exists an extensive bibliography dedicated to the person and work of Saint

Teresa of Avila, for example, the studies of Margaretta Salinger (1949), Carole

Slade (1995), even a comparison with Sor Juana (Ogden 1984), or the portal

“Santa Teresa de Jesús” on the Biblioteca virtual Miguel de Cervantes (see

Online resources), but a study related to the reception of her person and work in

musical creation has not been carried out. In the same way, the presence of

musical and speculative practice in the work of both nuns have been

documented, but not their representation and resignification in later musical

creation, or the possible relation of this phenomenon with the institutionalisation

of both women (adding Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz) as cultural Hispanic icons

(Mexican/Latin American in the second case).

The same way, though there exists relevant bibliography on the relation between

mysticism and body politics, especially in women’s studies, for example in the

works of Caroline Bynum (1990, 1991), Jodi Bilinkoff (1989), and Sarah Coakley

(2000, 2002), but these have had a limited impact on Spanish official musicology,

regarding this period of investigation, with the exception of Dr. Lorenzo and Dr.

Molina’s works about women and music in Iberian Middle Ages, 4th – 16th

centuries. Saint Teresa of Avila is post Tridentine, but Lorenzo and Molina not

treat “The Council of Trent” and the following period. These factors come

together in this work in progress, which will seek to understand the appropriation

of her personality and presence in musical creation as an extraordinary source

for the study of complex social performances in Spanish contemporary classical

music as part of Western music, still an experimental field of research.

2. St. Teresa’s body as performance (an introduction in-conclusion) “Mas busca la vida ante todo su cuerpo, el despliegue del cuerpo que ya alcanzó, el cuerpo

indispensable. Y busca otro cuerpo desconocido” (Zambrano: 2004, pag. 17). The influence of

Saint Teresa of Avila in European spirituality is a research problem in itself

(Lavrin 2002). My goal is to introduce an enquiry: how is the body of this woman,


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first female doctor of the Catholic church4, performed in Spanish contemporary

classical music? But this goal involves understanding her historical person and

work as a complex performance, institutionalized during the Franco regime as

feminine and spiritual model (Richmond 2003), a factor that makes more difficult

the study of the musical performance of her writings, in this case, between 1952

and 2011.

In these practices, I can identify a constant, a kind of common narrative, with

added different aesthetics and compositional structures. However, before going

on to describe the initial appearance, only sketched here to illustrate this

narrative/performance, I refer to specific works: The Kitchen. Homage to Saint

Therese by Marina Abramovic (performance and photograph, 2010); Ecstasy of

St. Teresa (sculpture, 2010) by Alessandra Pohlmann and Cristobal Lehyt, and

Extasis de Santa Teresa (photography, 2009) by Victoria Diehl.

4 Saint Teresa of Ávila was prominent Spanish mystic, Roman Catholic saint, Carmelite nun, writer of the Counter Reformation, and theologian of contemplative life through mental prayer, reformer of the Carmelite Order and considered, along with John of the Cross, a founder of the Discalced Carmelites. In this regard, I note that, contrary to her beatification may suggest, one of the least tolerated by Rome of Felipe II`s confessionalism was the imposition on the Spanish monarchy to the reform of religious orders. Which culminated in greater control by the Monarch through the General Orders. Parallel to this reform, appeared in Spain in the 16th century, a religious movement as descalcez or recolección, which is aimed at espitirual radicalism, and a return to the primitive observance of the Order (Jimenez 2008), St. Teresa was an active part of this political and spiritual radicalism.


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Fig. 1: The Kitchen. Homage to Saint Therese (2010) by Marina Abramovic.

Fig. 2: Ecstasy of St. Teresa (2010) by Alessandra Pohlmann/Cristobal Lehyt and Extasis de Santa Teresa (2009) by Victoria Diehl.

These works mediate for an idea: St. Teresa as body of Christ. Remember for

example the film Teresa el cuerpo de Cristo (2007), by Ray Loriga and the

Spanish actress Paz Vega as Teresa of Avila, performance of the canonical work

of the painter and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, made between 1647 and 1651,


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by order of Cardinal Cornaro, to be placed where his tomb would be in the church

of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.

The body as border is clearly represented here, the sexual and mystical element

coincides with the sacrificial act contingently to everyday life, figurative and

abstract, traditional and innovative consciousness. This condition can be

understood as liminal embody/powerment, as indicated by Diamela Eltit: “Double

hostage, the woman's body trapped in the category of the feminine, the female

has been the subject of the most compelling speeches in each one of the

historical times, which have reserved the last and only word to decide what is

inextricable: the body.”(Eltit 2007)5 This inextricablity condition can be identified

in the musical works of Spanish composers, organized in the following table: Nº YEAR COMPOSER TITLE ENSEMBLE

1 2011 Beatriz Arzamendi

(1961)

Alma, buscarte has en Mí Organ and 12

voices

2 2001 Amparo Otero (-),

arr. Miguel Gálvez (-)

Vivo sin vivir en mí : oratorio

basado en textos poéticos de Santa

Teresa

[1. Obertura -- 2. Vivo sin vivir en

mí -- 3. Véante mis ojos -- 4. Nada

te turbe -- 5. Sobre aquellas

palabras "Dilectus meus mihi" -- 6.

Coloquio amoroso -- 7. Ya vienen

el alba -- 8. ¡Oh hermosura que

excedéis! -- 9. En la festividad de

los Santos Reyes -- 10. Vuestra

soy, para vos nací -- 11. Pues nos

dais vestido nuevo -- 12. Dichoso el

corazón enamorado. Vivo sin vivir

en mí -- 13. No sé, Niño hermoso,

qué he visto en ti]

Voice and

ensemble

3 2000 Consuelo Díez

(1958)

Nada te turbe Reciter and

string

orchestra

5 Read in the original: “Doble rehén el cuerpo de la mujer atrapado en la categoría de lo femenino, ese femenino que ha sido el objeto más imperioso de los discursos que, en cada uno de los tiempos históricos, se han reservado la última y la única palabra para decidir aquello que resulta inextricable: el cuerpo.” (Eltit 2007). The translation is mine.


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4 1992 José Manuel Adrán

(-)

Véante mis ojos Voice and

organ

5 1985

[published

in 1989]

Manuel García

Morante (1937)

Exclamaciones (1569) Voice and

piano

6 [published

in 1989]

Juan Francisco Briz

Briz (1950-1996)

Ocho tocatas para órgano y

recitador sobre poesías de San

Juan de la Cruz, Félix Lope de

Vega, Santa Teresa de Jesús

Reciter and

organ

7 [published

in 1983]

Emilio López de Saa

Páramo (1926)

Véante mis ojos Voice and

piano

8 [1982,

revised in

1983]

Gonzalo de Olavide

(1934-2005)

Estigma Chorus and

orchestra

9 1981 Jesús Mª Muneta

Martínez de Moretín

(1939)

Búscate en mí, Op. 41 Chorus

10 [1970,

published

in 1972]

Leonardo Balada

(1933)

Las Moradas : transparencia

musical de la obra de Santa Teresa

de Jesús

Mixed chorus

and chamber

ensamble

11 [1952,

published

in 2004]

Juan María Thomas

Sabater (1896-1966)

Vihuela Teresiana

[in Villancicos españoles para un

Nacimiento Barroco]

Chorus

Table 1. List of Spanish musical works based on St. Teresa of Avila`s texts (1952 to 2011).

Sylvia Tan in Religion as Art (2009) edited by Steven Loza, indicated several

points on this matter: 1) “Art as experience of the sacred”; 2) “Art mediates

sacred experience through the work of symbol”; 3) “[A]rtworks […] have the

potential to mediate the sacred with everyday life experience because they work

symbolically[…] This figure “[St. Teresa in this case] brings the tradition into

everyday life”; 4) “The artistic encounter of the sacred also inspires a renewed

concept of self in relation to the sacred.” (see Tan, in Loza 2009:128-129)

As can be seen in Table 1, the performance of St. Teresa of Avila is based on

specific texts (St. Teresa 2006, 1996) that refer to a type of embody/mediation

with the sacred. Similarly to Virgin representations, as in the case of Tan study of


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the Guadalupan cult, the nun performed a type of mystical embodiment which

refers to an identity, a tradition. In any case it should be noted that contemporary

classical music does not have a continuous presence in everyday life, in contrast,

is a kind of exceptional experience. Also not all works located were written to

perform the same function: some play a devotional purpose within a specific type

of ecclesiastical commemoration (Thomas, Muneta, Adrán, Otero) and some are

created as concert pieces (Arzamendi, Díez, Balada, Olavide, for example).

However, in both cases are identifying a type of thinking connected to a mystical-

poietic phenomenon known as “silent music” (Rey 2010), in communion with

several literary and iconographical testimonies from the 16th and 17th centuries

of embodiment ecstasy, offering reelaborated allegorical complexes that expand

into the human body seen as a musical microcosm (Robledo 2007:1), in

resonance with the sacred. Consider the example of Bernini's St. Teresa

compared with an engraving of Johann Melchior Gutwein representing Saint

John of the Cross`s mystical ecstasy experience at death:

Fig. 3: Bernini's St Teresa and Gutwein’s St. John of the Cross6

6 Read in the original: “Sobre un dibujo de I. A. Bergmiller. Impreso en Apparatus Sacri Honoris Primo Carmelitarum Discalceatorum Parenti Seraphicae Virginis ac Matris Theresiae à Jesu Filio Primogenito S. Joanni à Cruce Post ejus solemnem in Vaticani Colle Apotheosin adornatus. Augsburg: Joannes Strötter, 1727. El autor se esconde bajo la expresión “A devotissimo filiorum


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This silent music as matris of quiet mysticism in the Spanish tradition (Rey 2010)

is a historical reality as body performance, present inclusive in the reflection of

post-war Spanish philosophers such as María Zambrano (Campos 2011). Put

together, the scores introduced for this study built a complex Landscape related

to this tradition, and my purpose is give an idea of the extent of this research

project. Unfortunately I can not deepen in this paper an analysis using specific

examples of the localized scores (I have already exceded the 3000-words); I

hope to reflect this in future activities and scientific publications.

Acknowledgement I am very gratefull with the Juan March Foundation (Spain), where I had access

to the musical works mentioned in this paper, and to Dr. Josemi Lorenzo Arribas,

Dr. Mauricio Molina and Dr. Elisabeth Le Guin (UCLA), their advice and

recommendations. Dr. Le Guin proposals about the possibility of a “carnal

musicology” (Le Guin 2005) as field of study have been an inspiration for this

research project.

References Bynum, Caroline W. (1990) "Material Continuity, Personal Survival, and the

Resurrection of the Body: A Scholastic. Discussion in Its Medieval and Modern

Contexts". History of Religions, 30 (1): 51-85.

Bynum, Caroline W. (1991) Fragmentation and Redemption. Essays on Gender

and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books.

Bilinkoff, Jodi (1989) The Avila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-

Century City. Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press.

Campos Fonseca, Susan (2011) “Between Left-led Republic and Falangism?

Spanish women composers, a critical equation”. Diagonal. Journal of the Center

for Iberian and Latin American Music (CILAM), University of California, Riverside

(in press).

suorum Collegio augustano”. En la página siguiente al grabado se imprime un elogio en dos partes que glosa en latín las virtudes del santo utilizando la terminología musical.” (Rey 2010).


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Campos Fonseca, Susan (2011) “La pregunta por un método filosófico posible

en sentido musical”. Antígona: Revista de la Fundación María Zambrano, 6,

Vélez-Málaga (in press).

Campos Fonseca, Susan (2010) “Imperativos de la memoria: En un lugar de la

Sangre de David Rosenmann-Taub (una introducción)” in Lolo, Begoña (ed)

Visiones del Quijote en la música del siglo XX. Madrid: Centro de Estudios

Cervantinos-MICINN. (523-534)

Coakley, Sarah (2000) Religion and the Body. Cambridge studies in religious

traditions, 8, Cambridge University Press.

Coakley, Sarah (2002) Powers and submissions: spirituality, philosophy and

gender. Challenges in contemporary theology, 19, Blackwell publishers-Oxford.

Eltit, Diamela (2007) “Cargas y descargas”. E-Misférica 4.2. After truth, New York:

Hemispheric Institute. URL:

http://hemisphericinstitute.org/journal/4.2/eng/en42_pg_eltit.html (Accessed

22/03/2011).

Fraisse, Geneviève (2005) "Los contratiempos de la emancipación de las

mujeres". Pasajes, 19. URL:

http://www.revistasculturales.com/a/imprimir/533/los-contratiempos-de-la

emancipacion-de-las-mujeres.html (Accessed 22/03/2011).

Lavrin, Asunción & Loreto L., Rosalva (2002) Monjas y beatas : la escritura

femenina en la espiritualidad barroca novohispana : siglos XVII y XVIII. Puebla

(México): Archivo General de la Nacion/Universidad de las Américas. URL:

http://www.lluisvives.com/servlet/SirveObras/mex/00360622088082640932268/in

dex.htm (Accessed 22/03/2011).

Le Guin, Elisabeth (2005) Boccherini's Body: an Essay in Carnal Musicology,

University of California Press.

Lorenzo Arribas, Josemi (1998) Una relación disonante: las mujeres y la música

en la edad media hispana, siglos IV-XVI, Alcalá de Henares: Ayuntamiento de

Alcalá de Henares, Centro Asesor de la Mujer.

Loza, Steven (ed.) (2009) Religion as Art: Guadalupe, Orishas, and Sufi.

Albuquerque: University of New Mexico.

Molina, Mauricio (2010) Frame Drums in the Medieval Iberian Peninsula.

Reichenberger Edition.


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Ogden, Estrella (1984) “Santa Teresa de Jesús y Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Dos

trayectorias del sueño”. Santa Teresa y la literatura mística hispánica. Actas del I

Congreso Internacional sobre Santa Teresa y la Mística Hispánica, Madrid: EDI-

6 : 673-679.

Rey, Pepe (2010) “La música callada de fray Juan de la Cruz: apunte sobre el

misticismo silencioso español” in El Libro de la 49ª Semana de Música Religiosa

de Cuenca. Cuenca, Patronato de la SMR: 104-131. URL:

http://www.veterodoxia.es/2010/08/musica-callada/ (Accessed 22/03/2011).

Richmond, Kathleen (2003) Women and Spanish Facism. The women`s section of

the Falange 1934-1959. New York: Routledge.

Robledo Estaire, Luis (2007) "El cuerpo y la cruz como instrumentos musicales:

iconografía y literatura a la sombra de San Agustín". Studia Aurea 5. URL:

http://www.studiaaurea.com/articulo.php?id=72 (Accessed 22/03/2011).

Salinger, Margaretta (1949) "Representations of Saint Teresa". The Metropolitan

Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, 8 (3): 97-108.

Slade, Carole (1995) St. Teresa of Avila: Author of a Heroic Life. Berkeley:

University of California Press.

Teresa de Jesús, Santa (2006) Obras completas de Santa Teresa de Jesús.

Burgos: Monte Carmelo, 14ª ed.

Zambrano, María (2004) Los Bienaventurados. Madrid: Siruela.

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Bilingual Edition (Eric W. Vogt (editor and translator), New Orleans: University

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Online resources

- Biblioteca de Autor Santa Teresa de Jesús (Cervantes virtual). URL:

http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/bib_autor/santateresa/pcuartonivel.jsp?co

nten=autor

- Biblioteca Española de Música y Teatro contemporáneos, Fundación Juan

March (Spain). URL: http://www.march.es/musica/


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Unpublished sources Campos Fonseca, Susan (2011) Cervantes en la música vocal iberoamericana:

imaginarios sonoros y poéticas (1947-2010). Doctoral Dissertation in History and

Science of Music, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (unpublished).

Campos Fonseca, Susan (2009) Némesis musical en María Zambrano (Estudio

de Notas de un Método). Master's degree in Spanish and Latin American

Philosophy, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (unpublished).

Jiménez, Esther (2008) “El movimiento descalzo en Flandes a principios del siglo

XVII: ¿la obediencia a Roma o la fidelidad a España?”, 7 fol. (unpublished).

Author´s biography Philosopher of culture and musical director. Her work, devoted to the philosophical history of music, music and literature, contemporary classical music and jazz in “the Americas” and Spain, have been published by prestigious international journals and collective books. She`s "100 Latinos" Award 2007 (Spain) and the Corda Award 2009 (New York). Coordinator, with Josemi Lorenzo, of the Special issue on Women's Studies, Gender, Feminism, and Music of Transcultural Music Review, 15 (2011), Campos is Director of the Women's Studies in Music Research Group of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SIBE) of Spain.

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