August 15, 2012

conference cultural

MUSIC AND SPIRITUALITY IN FITERO MONASTERY

Cistercian musical aesthetics

D. Carlos Villanueva
University of Santiago de Compostela

Just as hundreds of programs of study have been written about the Cistercian reform in its varied relationship with the world of Art, Politics, Economics, Theology, or monastic Architecture, the approaches to the successful musical reform undertaken by the white monks from its foundations are scarce in our language . This was due, in part, to the fact that the Gregorian reform of the Benedictines of Solesmes and the great theoretical apparatus that it generated, not to mention the unconditional support of the Church of Rome to its reformist thesis , made what today we consider as a reform -that of the Cistercians- derive to a secondary path, effective and crowned with the discipline and the coherence that distinguished the ethical and aesthetic change of the new order of Clairvaux.

Many Spanish critics, generally coming from the Benedictine ranks of Silos (Germán Prado or Casiano Rojo, among others), limited themselves to saying of St. Bernard's reform that it "truncates the melodies and ornaments with the pretext of simplifying the neumas", or that it "amputates the melodies to adjust them to the tessitura of the decacord psaltery", as if it were a simple pruning, which decontextualizes reality.

In the case of the Cistercian aesthetics that we are analyzing, however, we can in no way speak of a musical regression of the Cistercians with their reform, but rather of a pragmatic approach to the liturgy, of an element of greater uniformity within the centralized plan of the Order, which was opening franchises with the same aesthetic design of proven effectiveness as a "brand". 

plenary session of the Executive Council At a time of extreme discrepancies in versions transmitted orally, with considerable variations both in the background and in the way of singing Gregorian, and in the 12th century with the irruption of the polluting polyphony, the Cistercians rationalized the sung message, avoiding the ornamental excesses more typical of oriental soloists, moving away from fabordons or tropated solutions, precisely to counteract the Cluniac reform: historicized, dramatized, ornamental and full of excesses.

Along with the great transformation of the choir books and the sobriety of expression, which today is seen as an aesthetic refinement (a sort of minimalism), the Cistercians attended to music in other dimensions: for example in the application of instruments for the study of plainchant (the psalterium decem chordarum), in the use of musical diagrams and diagrams for the teachings of the faith (the Trinitarian triangles and circles) that we have seen in the suggestive drawings of Abbot Joachim of Fiore, who, in all his programs of study and reflections, used music as a referent, not only as an image of the language of the angelic choir of monks before God, but as an abstraction and theoretical reflection in the Pythagorean or Platonic line. His teachings were quickly transmitted, and it is easy to see them reflected in the great historical covers in which the elders of the Apocalypse play trinitarian instruments; such is the case of the Portico of the Glory of Santiago, where Master Mateo collected some of the Cistercian teachings patented by the wise Abbot of Fiore.

This was the object of a transaction for the harmonium that is currently preserved in the parish church. The chronicle of a feast organized in 1622 refers to one of the realejos, when the images of the Virgen de la Barda de Fitero and the Virgen del Monte de Cervera del Río Alhama were exchanged for a few days. At least in two occasions it is alluded to the mass that was interpreted halfway between both localities at the time of proceeding to exchange with "organ singing". Regarding the choir loft, we know that it was used in the first two decades of the twentieth century in some religious functions, specifically in the darkness of Holy Week.