20 December 2013
Conferences
THE ORGAN OF LARRAGA IN ITS HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT
The 18th century organ cases and the example of Larraga
D. Ricardo Fernández Gracia.
Chair of Navarrese Heritage and Art
In the lecture which we gave at degree scroll "Contribución de los talleres escultóricos navarros al órgano barroco: las espectaculares cajas de los siglos XVII y XVIII" (Contribution of the Navarrese sculptural workshops to the Baroque organ: the spectacular cases of the 17th and 18th centuries), we outlined the typologies and evolution of the cases preserved in Navarre corresponding to the Age of Enlightenment (report of the Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro, 2011, pp. 138-140).
The Larraga box, documented by Sagaseta y Taberna in his well-known monograph (1775), is very close in time and geographical space to those of Sesma (1771, with a courtly imprint) or Peralta (1783, the work of the Italian Santiago Marsili), the latter examples being in tune with academic and European Rococo. However, it belongs to what we can call an adaptation of that last phase of the Baroque, lighter and less heavy, by the local workshops of different localities in Navarre. It has certain similarities with the contemporaries from other workshops in different localities such as those of Huarte-Araquil (1766), the now disappeared Santa María de Sangüesa (1767), Villava (1777), Mendigorría (1782) and Cáseda (1785), all of them with pediments and movements in the Borrominesque style. On the other hand, they share with all the eighteenth-century examples their scenographic character, as well as the formal complexity in plan and elevations, with dynamism, ostentation, spectacularity and sumptuousness, in a clear fusion of the arts (architecture, sculpture and painting). Furthermore, the fact that their surfaces are covered in gold and colour gives them great richness, while their decoration is based on symbols of abundance, triumph and glory, with celestial figures playing wind and string instruments. All of this, together with the rhetoric of the preacher and the liturgical offices, is intended to generate an authentic caelum in terris , a miraculous and hallucinatory space, typical of the Baroque, an art and atmosphere that seeks to captivate through the senses, which are much more vulnerable than the intellect.
Its construction was the work of a son of the locality, Miguel Zufía, who was deeply involved in sculpture and regional altarpieces of the time. His artistic personality was undoubtedly twofold, since it is necessary to consider the existence of a father and a son with the same name, as the Miguel Zufía who, at the age of 82 in 1825, made the image of Nuestra Señora de la Soledad for Cascante, born around 1743, cannot be the same as the one who worked in the middle of the century. The first of the Zufía family made the monument for Caparroso in 1749, and in 1757 he made the submission of the main altarpiece of the Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love of the Virgen del Soto in the same town. In the latter project or in the altarpiece of the Ánimas de Cárcar (1761), he was able to participate extensively together with his son Miguel de Zufía, the younger, author of the Larraga box. The works documented from the mid-1960s onwards belong to the son. Among the latter, we should mention the side paintings in the parish church of Berbinzana (1765), the pulpits in the parish church of Peralta (1766), the side paintings in Cáseda (1774-1777) and some round images for Pitillas, Beire and Eslava.
Larraga Organ
A circumstance that has already been pointed out is that, as in Lerín, the authors of the instrument and the case were natives and neighbours of the respective towns. If in Lerín it was the organ builder José Mañeru y Ximénez and the carver Juan José Vélaz; in Larraga the organ builder Diego Gómez and the master Miguel Zufía, both from the locality, are listed. These are, without doubt, data that speak per se of the vitality of the workshops of both artistic specialities and perhaps of the hypothetical relationship between the two, pushing one towards the other.
The Larraga box is slender because the architecture of the church allows it. It stands out for several reasons and, like others of the time, it is characterised by its spectacular nature, dynamism and sumptuousness. Firstly, it is remarkable for the design with its forked lateral ends, which deprives it of the outline typical drawer that these instruments usually have. The gilt adventitious plates of good design, based on engravings of the period, incorporating wind instruments (trumpets, horns and bagpipes) and strings (violins), are exquisitely executed. The design of the attic with its broken lines is also striking, especially in the central wall where the semi-cylindrical turrets are topped by the sharp, straight-lined pediments so common at that time in the design of another subject of works such as the altarpieces. On the other hand, the contras, with their spectacular grey and black heads, without the polychromy of other instruments, gain in expressiveness, in harmony with the carved bracket of the instrument's central tower.
As far as polychromy is concerned, the general gilding of Sesma and other slightly earlier pieces has disappeared in favour of the combination with marbling and other colours, some clearly repainted, within the rococo aesthetic.
Larraga organ. Detail with the coat of arms of the town
group The iconographic programme is made up of the aforementioned adventitious plaques with carved instruments to which we have alluded, as well as the heraldic coat of arms of the town and the papal tiara, together with round sculptures that in their day would have carried musical instruments, in a clear allegorisation of musical art and the primacy of the organ over them all, by imitating them and being able to combine them, like a chamber orchestra or small orchestra, in their interpretations. There is no lack of angels with triumphant palms, an idea always inherent to the organ as a symbol of power and persuasion, and seated figures who have lost their wings and attributes that would speak of the instrument as a metaphor for angelic hierarchies, an idea widespread in the literature of the time. The whole is crowned by a figure of Fame, as on the covers of books, town halls and palaces.
At final, a baroque box is organised according to a theatrical composition, with its elevated, almost aerial location, occupying an intermediate space between the celestial vault and the earth, giving it the unstable appearance of a dynamic upward movement. This aerial atmosphere is enhanced by the multiple presence of the angels and the ascension of their towers. This impression is amplified by the decoration of the case, its statuary and its symbolic meaning, which make the organ an eminently expressive piece of architecture.
The organ and the instrument itself speak of the care taken by board of trustees of the parish of Larraga which, over the centuries, took care of its furnishings and worship, with the choice of singular masters who worked for the church and its altarpieces, especially in the Baroque period, when the organs formed part of that unitary and globalising conception of the arts and rhetoric within the church, associating themselves with the suggestive sung word. The role of the senses in the perception of the music emanating from the organ pipes was fully in tune with the liturgy of the time, which sought to excite those who attended its functions to greater piety through smells, sounds and whatever sight was capable of perceiving.