The rescue of José de Nebra, star composer of the 18th century in Spain: an ICS research recovers his 'Responsorios de Navidad'.

Despite being the most important composer of his generation, José de Nebra (1702-1768) has become one of the musical figures forgotten by the general public in Spain. Enthused by his musical quality and the uniqueness of his pieces, the musicologist Albert Recasens, researcher of the group 'Vínculos, Creatividad y Cultura' of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra, undertook the task of recovering with his music ensemble La Grande Chapelle a collection of his most special works: the Christmas Responsories.

As a result of this work , they are published in an album that will be presented, from the Church of San Jerónimo el Real in Madrid, in the program Sinfonía de la mañana, of Radio Nacional de España, conducted by Martín Llade. It will be broadcasted on June 13, at 8 o'clock in the morning. The research that has made this rescue possible has been supported by the Centro de programs of study Europa Hispánica (CEEH) and the Tatiana Foundation.

Hispanic Resistance

Recasens explains that, although Nebra's music had a wide circulation in his time, the composer developed his degree program in an environment strongly marked by Italian taste, dominant in the court of Fernando VI, where he arrived very young from Calatayud (Zaragoza). At that time, Italian composers such as Francesco Corselli, Niccolo Conforto, Giovanni Battista Mele and Domenico Scartlatti were favored. This did not prevent him from joining the Royal Chapel as an organist at the age of 22, where he became vice-master in 1751.

"Nebra embodies a kind of creative resistance: a musician deeply rooted in the Hispanic tradition who managed to integrate his heritage into Italian modernity, maintaining a very recognizable style of his own," says the researcher. However, he was relegated with the passage of time: "As happened with many Spanish authors of the Baroque, he was forgotten by a later historiography, which focused on Bach, Handel, Vivaldi..., and left in the shadows everything that did not fit into that more central European narrative". For this reason, he claims that "recovering his music is not only an artistic gesture but also a way of reconstructing a forgotten part of our culturalreport ".

The choice of the responsories among his prolific oeuvre responds to the fact that it is "one of the most ambitious and beautiful works of the Spanish sacred repertoire of the 18th century". La Grande Chapelle had already recorded the seventh of these responsories, Beata viscera. For years, it had been trying to convince managers and programmers to premiere a concert and record the collection. Along the way he found an ally, the musicologist Eva Sandoval, now director of Radio Clásica, who dedicated her Master's Degree thesis to this collection and who helped him to bring this desire to fruition. Recasens has been in charge of the design of the musical project , the direction and the edition of the libretto. Sandoval, for his part, has written the program notes.

The project has required an arduous documentary work, since the three versions of this collection, composed in 1750, 1752, 1756 and 1760, have been studied. Nebra was adapting the work to different institutional contexts -the monastery of the Encarnación, the Royal Chapel...-, which sample the liturgical vitality of his music", explains the researcher. In this sense, he highlights that "the most relevant finding has been, perhaps, to confirm that the 1752 version, the one we recorded, was most probably the one heard on Christmas Eve of that same year in the presence of Ferdinand VI and Barbara de Braganza in the Church of San Jeronimo el Real, as documented in the Gaceta de Madrid. Rarely do we have such a precise connection between music, file and historical event".

However, as Recasens points out, the most important challenge has been at the musical level: "The greatest challenge has been to reconstruct the spirit of such a singular celebration as the Christmas matins in the Court environment, and to restore the liturgical, symbolic and aesthetic dimension of these responsories. It is not only a matter of editing scores, but of understanding the ritual context for which they were conceived". This is precisely the goal of the PICH project internship interpretativeinternship in Hispanic cathedrals (1563-1833): liturgy, musical styles and performance conditions) directed by Recasens at the ICS.

The fact of presenting the disc in San Jerónimo el Real, the place where the work premiered in the 18th century, entails a "great symbolic value". The researcher explains that "not only is it one of the most emblematic churches in Madrid, but also, in the 18th century, it was the church of the Buen Retiro Palace, the official residency program of the court during the construction of the current Royal Palace". In this sense, he recalls that the modern premiere of this piece was the concert performed by La Grande Chapelle on December 13, 2023: "To reinterpret this music in its historical place, more than two and a half centuries later, was a unique experience. To present the album now is a real experience. It is the best act of restitution we can make of Nebra's magnificent sacred work".