La música entre escritura y oralidad: La guitarra barroca, el guitarrón chileno y el canto a lo divino

Abstract

Escribanos de Santiago collection at the National Historical Archive. As a result a significant number of guitars and related instruments from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century were identified. The second part presents a new hypothesis about the origin of the Chilean "guitarrón" and the traditional vocal practice known as "canto a lo divino". Both probably stemmed from the colonial practice of accompanying sacred music with the guitar while using psalm intonation formulae to sing the liturgical texts. This hypothesis is supported by the data presented in the first part combined with previously unknown data about music and liturgical practices in colonial Chile along with ethnographic data published previously by other scholars. The final purpose is to establish convincing links between the colonial music mainly of written tradition and the present practice of the "canto a lo divino" which belongs mainly to the oral tradition.