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MusicalScholarship:
Parkert o Thayer ROBERT STEVENSON Although St. Augustine was founded in 1565, Jamestown in 1607, and Santa Fe in 1610, American music histories written up to now have never begun with Florida, Virginia, or New Mexico. Instead, writers from Ritter, Mathews, and Elson in the nineteenth century to Howard and Chase in the twentieth have uniformly started with Boston and its vicinity-and with good reason. Even today, many facets of early musical life in Spanish Florida remain to be researched at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville. Not until publication in 1975 of A Guide to Caribbean Music History was the attention of music historians first drawn to the musical proclivities of the founder of St. Augustine, Pedro Men6ndez de Av-il6s (1519-74). On 10 February 1566 the adelantado of Florida left Havana with seven ships. Being extremely fond of music, he took not only two clarines but also a pair of fife-and-drum players, three trumpeters, a harpist, players of the bowed viol and psaltery, and a dwarf who was a great dancer and singer. While the Florida Indian cacique who had taken the name of Carlos entertained Menendez de Aviles at a banquet, the Spanish trumpeters played, the dwarf danced, and a quartet or sextet of the adelantado's men who had excellent voices and kept good time sang to the delight of all present. The cacique thereupon ordered the Indian girls who were singing nearby to stop, because they knew little and the Spaniards knew a lot. When out of politeness the Spanish musicians themselves stopped, the cacique asked them to continue playing their instruments and singing until parting time, which order the adelantado confirmed. 1 1Spanish original in Eugenio Ruidiaz y Caravia, La Florida, su conquista y colonizaci6n por Pedro Menendez de Avilds (Madrid: Hijos de J. A. Garcia, 1894), I, 155-63. Pertinent passages in Spanish quoted in R. Stevenson, A Guide to Caribbean Music History (Lima, 1975), p. 55: "Cuando la comida se traia tocaron las trompetas que estaban de la parte de fuera, y en cuanto comi6 el Adelantado, tocaron los instrumentos muy bien e bailaba el enano: empezaron a cantar 4 o 6 gentiles hombres que alli estaban, que tenian muy buenas voces, con muy buena orden, que por ser el Adelantado muy amigo de miisica, 191
