Introduction

The “life and works” study has, by nature, to be as comprehensive as possible and, ideally, to mesh biographical context with musical analysis. Francisco Asenjo Barbieri claimed he was the first to write a biography of Juan de Anchieta, and expressed his surprise that such an omission should have existed in the history of Spanish music. The concept of the “national schools,” each with a distinctive musical style, was commonly debated in the early musicological discourse of the latter part of the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth, although it is recognized to be fraught with ideological and aesthetic problems. Music historians, notably Stevenson, have generally followed Coster on the relationship between Anchieta and M. Loyola without reference to the Jesuit historiographical debate, which necessitates re-examination of several of the “facts” of Anchieta’s life.