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Pages devoted to my favorite music, realized for MIDI with the JEUX SoundFont. These files assume you have loaded the latest version of the JEUX SoundFont in user bank 42 — if not, the results will be very strange indeed!

- John W. McCoy

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Spanish Organ Music

Juan Bautista José Cabanilles (1644–1712)

The music of this undisputed master of the Spanish Baroque is nearly beyond description. Above all, it presents formidable difficulties in performance. Not infrequently, each hand has to play two parts that chase each other in canon. Typically, the voices are in different meters unrelated to the bar lines, and sometimes in different keys. When a sequence threatens to go too high or too low, Cabanilles makes it leap to a new octave in the middle of a phrase. Accidentals are treated casually, it seems, or is this done purposefully, to draw out the chromatic possibilities of the old church modes? Unlike his contemporaries elsewhere in Europe, Cabanilles did not abandon the harmonic and formal vocabulary of the Renaissance in favor of the new tonal system. However, he exploited the traditional modes in surprising ways. Some of his harmonic experiments are decidedly peculiar; others anticipate much later developments. Parts may enter in unexpected relationships, canons may be at the unison or at various other intervals. "Fugues" usually turn out to be strict canons at the 5th or 4th. The disregard of bar lines may be almost total; in one of the pieces included here, the music is clearly in 6 for pages at a time, while the time signature is in 4. Many pieces are written for "divided stops", so that a different registration is obtained for the notes above middle C. Most of the time, the requirements of the music itself point to a particular combination that brings out the solo line in these pieces, and that frequently turns out to mean that the left hand needs to be at 4' or even 2' pitch. Some authorities credit Cabanilles with the invention of "continuous music", because of the way he gradually transforms his themes, without breaking his pieces into distinct sections. His sense of architecture and motivic development are surely remarkable, and these pieces deserve a wider hearing.

Cabanilles was widely known in his time for his "battle" pieces, which use allusions to military trumpet calls and exploit the amazing reeds of the Spanish Baroque organ. Some of these pieces are playful and cheerful, others are powerful and dramatic. At least one of the "battle" pieces attributed to Cabanilles has also been attribued to Kerll; this is the well-known "Imperial Battle". While we do not feel qualified to decide between these two attributions, the 1933 edition of H. Anglès follows a 17th Century manuscript at the Biblioteca de Cataluña that seems authoritative in this respect.

Among the problems of interpretation, special mention must be made of the phenomenon of musica ficta. Although many of his contemporaries were already in the habit of noting every accidental, or at least most of them, Cabanilles followed the older practice of leaving many of these details to the performer. This is a problem for modern performers especially in pieces written in the second tone (more or less equivalent to G minor). The rules of musica ficta included a general preference for certain intervals, such as a 6th that resolves stepwise to an octave, to be performed in such a way that one voice moves by a semitone while the other voice moves by a whole tone. But the choice of which note of the 6th needs to be raised or lowered is left to the performer. For vocal works, where the individual performers had to agree in advance which voice would apply each required accidental, this would be done in rehearsal. Sometimes conflicts would arise, where the application of the rules would lead to the creation of other, worse clashes. Thus, some discretion is always needed. For the present works, it became obvious very quickly that the organ music of Cabanilles requires a number of changes of this sort.

There is also some internal evidence for musica ficta in a few pieces: this has to do with the architecture of the Spanish Baroque organ. Traditionally, there was a strong preference for "divided" or "half" stops. The keyboard was divided at middle C, so that a particular stop might apply only to the left half of the keyboard, from middle C down, or else to the right half, all the notes above middle C. A great number of the pieces we have from Cabanilles have the left and right hands disposed exactly in this fashion, the voices of the left hand extending to middle C and no higher, and the voices of the right hand remaining always above middle C. When we find such a piece, we know that the two hands should be given different registrations. There are a few such pieces, however, where the right hand sometimes is given a note written as middle C. In those cases, since middle C is unavailable, we play the c# above middle C instead, and it turns out that that solution always sounds right!

Most of the pieces are Tientos, a flexible term that is similar to the Italian notion of a toccata. But Cabanilles also wrote a few pieces called "Tocatas", which show a more Italian approach to thematic development and style. The Tiento has a distinct flavor. Within the Tiento form, Cabanilles also created a distinct category, Tientos de falsas, exploiting unconventional ("false") harmonies and progressions. Some of these seem to anticipate more modern styles by a couple centuries! Another unique genre is the Tiento de contras, in which the big "contra" pipes of the rudimentary pedal department are used as a drone to accompany extended tiento material as it modulates through several keys.

The Spanish Baroque had its own conventions for rhythmic modifications. While the French "notes inégales" do not seem to have caught on in Spain (although we spotted one piece where they make excellent sense), there was a unique tradition for triple meters, such that the first beat would be elongated, and the second and third beats shortened. When we apply this to some of the Tientos, the effect can be quite interesting.

In the rest of Europe, it is widely recognized that dotted rhythms in early music often need to be modified in performance, and that 2-against-3 rhythms were often not intended to be played as written. In the works of Cabanilles, however, we have found few examples that seem to benefit from this sort of modification, and occasionally we find sections where there are clear indications that the two hands are indeed intended to play 2 against 3.

When we look at the scores of these pieces, we see all sorts of peculiarities that might be regarded as formal defects. How can we explain fugues where the voices enter at intervals of 11 beats, or of different numbers of beats in different episodes? In the Tientos, Cabanilles was not bound by the formalities of his time. His other music shows us that he was perfectly capable of working within any form that interested him, but his musical vision extended far beyond the conventions of his time.

We have completed the realization of the first three volumes of the organ works of Cabanilles published by Higinio Anglès (1927-1956, 4 volumes published by the Biblioteca de Cataluña, Barcelona). The fourth volume will be realized as time permits. Please let us know if you can help us obtain other volumes of this important series.

Download the ZIP file, 80 diverse pieces by Cabanilles realized for the Jeux SoundFont.

Link to list of the pieces realized so far, MP3 files will gradually be added to the list.

Try out a few of the pieces individually:

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