Spanish and French Mission Music in Colonial North America

Abstract

Despite the many negative aspects of European colonization endured by indigenous peoples throughout North America, music served as a powerful and positive force. This study demonstrates that musical life in the Franciscan and Jesuit missions throughout Spanish North America was fully developed, was a most important part of the evangelization process, and involved music similar to that performed in other mission areas in Spanish America. Musical life in New France and Louisiana is summarized here to show that the French operated a parallel system of musical evangelization and that the establishment of French settlements in North America corresponded in certain ways to Spanish practices.

Serra and Sacred Song at the Founding of California's First Missions

“…42 Philipp Segesser von Brunegg describes nearly the same tradition as practiced in Sonora and Arizona in the first half of the eighteenth century, clarifying that the end of the day was marked by the singing of the Salve Regina, the rosary, the litany, and the alabado. 43 Texas, too, was part of this universal practice in the Hispano-American world. John Koegel informs us that the priest at Nuestra Señora del Rosario de los Cujanes (located near Goliad on the Gulf of Mexico in Texas) would call the converts together on Saturdays and lead them in reciting the rosary and singing the alabado.…”

“…John Koegel informs us that the priest at Nuestra Señora del Rosario de los Cujanes (located near Goliad on the Gulf of Mexico in Texas) would call the converts together on Saturdays and lead them in reciting the rosary and singing the alabado. 44 Its popu larity in that region has been long lived. Anna Blanche McGill, writing in 1938, affirms that the alabado and alabanza were still sung throughout Texas and the American Southwest.…”