ABSTRACT
An exceptionally lengthy chronicle entitled Triunfos festivos (Madrid, 1656) 1 constitutes one of the more remarkable sources for the study of the villancico and other devotional musical works in public religious celebrations in 17th-century Habsburg Madrid. Told from an insider’s perspective, this document is a richly descriptive narrative of a large-scale series of liturgical and devotional festivities sponsored by the Real Congregación del Santo Christo de San Ginés (the Royal Confraternity of Christ of [the church of] San Ginés). Isidro Angulo y Velasco, the secretary of the brotherhood, served as recorder and author of the chronicle, and included in his account dozens of texts created for and performed in the course of the ‘festive triumphs’. 2 Triunfos festivos thus serves an important function as a repository of the devotional letras in addition to supplying valuable evidence regarding 17th-century attitudes towards the role and reception of ‘performed texts’, namely, villancicos and other metrical texts realized in musical settings, as well as the performed sermon. The chronicle helps to advance our understanding of the villancico on several fronts. In this chapter I discuss a number of pertinent observations offered by the Triunfos festivos chronicle regarding the villancico and its place in public ceremonial: the regulation of the villancico (especially notable in this particular set of festivities); the intended reception and role of musically realized texts; and the villancico’s status as a ‘performed text’ and its apparent relationship to other performed texts.
