'Para que la cante mi señora'. Aristocracy and musical circulation between Madrid and Lisbon after the War of the Spanish Succession

Abstract

The taste for music, the construction of patronage and the use of aristocratic ways for the dissemination of the musical and theatrical heritage has generated a large spectrum of channels for the creation of a noble koiné which made possible the development of a cosmopolitan culture of elites during the Early Modern Age. Through the figure of Catalina María de Silva, Countess Consort of Lemos, and her life between Italy and Spain during the transition to the 18th Century, it will be exemplified a cultural process from a transnational perspective. Thus, the analysis of her fluid correspondence with João de Almeida Portugal, Third Count of Assumar, shows the closeness of the Countess with the composer José de Torres and how, after the War of the Spanish Succession, not only would resist the social ties between the courts of Madrid and Lisbon, but the dynamics of theatrical and chamber music accentuated.