Music in the New World

Across the vast landscapes of the early modern Americas, music rose like a cathedral built in sound — a meeting place where local voices and European traditions intertwined in ways as layered and extravagant as any stone facade. The cathedrals of Mexico City, Puebla, Lima, and countless mission towns were not just centers of faith, but also crucibles of musical invention. Here, Spanish polyphony and Italianate opera met the languages, rhythms, and stories of New Spain, New Granada, and the Viceroyalty of Peru, producing sacred works and villancicos that still carry the pulse of that world across centuries.

In these great colonial cities, chapels and choirs thrived under the gilded domes of the Baroque age. Composers like Antonio Juanas in Mexico City or Mateo Tollis de la Roca crafted works that fused the grandeur of European counterpoint with local color and devotion. The layered ornament of these scores — voices…