Cathedral Music Chapel

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Historic sites · Year: 1485

The Music Chapel of the Cathedral of Santa Ana in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria can be considered one of the most important cultural institutions that have existed in the Canary Islands. Its intense activity over 350 years has left us a fundamental musical archive for understanding the history and development of so-called “serious music” in our archipelago. With more than 2,000 works, this collection of musical documents can be considered one of the most important not only in Spain but throughout the Hispanic world. 

From the outset, the cathedral chapter aimed to establish a musical chapel that not only attended to liturgical needs but also carried out training in singing techniques and the handling of musical instruments. The first master of choirboys was the racionero Juan Ruiz and one of its first organists was Juan de Troya, a controversial man of dubious morals who had several disputes with the Inquisition. 

During the second half of the 16th century, with a group of good voices aged between seven and eight years, along with a group of ministriles (wind instrumentalists), the chapel reached a certain level of competence. Bartolomé Cairasco de Figueroa, Ambrosio López, Luis de Morales, and Gregorio Trujillo, all canons with musical aptitudes, were granted scholarships to go abroad for training. Upon their return, they brought not only what they had learned but also copies of scores reflecting the musical tastes of the time. It is a pity that no documents from that period survive today, possibly due to the terrible assault and subsequent burning of the city perpetrated in 1599 by the Dutchman Van der Does. 

From the 17th century onwards, the chapel was reborn and began to incorporate the new and emerging techniques required by the Baroque. The inspiration for this change was the Sevillian organist Juan Bautista Pérez de Medina and somewhat later, in 1631, the Portuguese Manuel de Tavares, who was responsible for introducing the new repertoires of polychoral music that were beginning to be developed throughout Europe. 

In the transition from the 17th to the 18th century, the institution had as master Diego Durón (1653-1731), a leading polyphonist and polychoralist who left us a large production of works, among which stand out some clearly inspired by Canarian folklore ( Cuatro tratanas de la plaza , El alcalde de Tejeda , Los muchachos de Canaria ).  

No less important is the contribution of his successor, the Valencian master Joaquín García (ca. 1710-1779), who carried out magnificent musical work closely linked to the eighteenth-century style laden with Italian accents. García is considered one of the most relevant figures of Baroque music in Spain.

Also noteworthy are the Canarian musicians Mateo Guerra (1735-1791), Antonio Oliva (ca. 1758-1793), and José Rodríguez Martín (1754-1814), all trained in the chapel and some under the influence of Francisco Torrens, a musician from Málaga who arrived in Las Palmas in 1780 and was the true introducer of Classicism in these parts.

The division of the Canary Islands bishopric in 1819 significantly reduced the cathedral revenues of Las Palmas, which caused a crisis that ultimately proved decisive. The Music Chapel of the Cathedral of Las Palmas disappeared in 1828. From that moment on, cultured music would take other paths: on the one hand, through the salons of wealthy merchants’ private homes; on the other, through the halls of the new bourgeois recreational societies. One era closed; another opened.

28.100838, -15.414712