Reform and continuity of repertoires in the Cathedral of Cádiz: The responsories for the feast of the Immaculate Conception (1788-1863).

Abstract

During the 18th century, the Spanish Church experienced controversies and musical reformations, some of them aimed to control music that had been gradually incorporating innovations from the theatre. One of these reforms was the substitution of villancicos for responsories, a genre with a wide representation in the music archive of the Cathedral of Cádiz. Specifically, the responsories for the feast of the Immaculate Conception preserved in its archive form a considerable corpus, even higher than other Andalusian cathedrals. The authorship of most of them is due to Juan Domingo Vidal (1734-1808) and Nicolás Zabala (1772-1829). These responsories for the Immaculate will be used as a case study of the formal and stylistic fixation of the genre, its durability despite the reforms of the liturgical text, as well as a systematization approach for its study applicable to the responsories of other festivities.