Information about the Spanish Double Harp in New Spain and Nineteenth-century Mexico

Abstract

The Spanish double harp was widely used as the instrument that played the basso continuo in the Iberian Peninsula during the seventeenth and until the mid-eighteenth centuries. Recently discovered documents substantiate that this type of harp was also part of music making in the New World. The present article focuses on the case of New Spain, where documentary sources reveal its use in the Puebla and Valladolid (Michoacán) cathedral chapels during the first third of the eighteenth century. Likewise, these testimonies demonstrate that the chromatic instrument was constructed in the Viceroyalty of Mexico and that during this period there was a strong interest in hiring musicians who knew how to play it. Information about its presence in the popular sphere-perhaps exceptionally– during the nineteenth century is also provided.