Francisca Apumayta – Forgotten Composer of the Colonial Andes

Hymns in Quechua
An indigenous Baroque composer to be discovered at the festival
Regensburg. The Tagen Alter Musik take us on a journey to the four corners of the world! Music from the most distant regions reaches Ratisbon (Regensburg), where one discovers a Baroque-era composer who belonged to an indigenous Andean family of nobles and musicians, and who succeeded in creating music in South America even in the colonial period.
The Apumayta family is in evidence throughout almost the entire 18th century in Cusco, the “navel of the world” of the ancient Inca Empire, in present-day Peru, but also in the territories corresponding to today’s Bolivia and Colombia.
The ensemble Comet Musicke, based in France, is directed by Francisco Mañalich, a tenor and gambist born in Chile. He devises innovative programmes, “musical biographies in concert”, and projects combining research with various artistic forms. He sometimes even sings and plays at the same time, while directing the ensemble with simple movements of his head.
The concert opened in the Dominicans’ church with a Gregorian chant. Three women performed the chant Veni sponsa Christi in the middle of the nave. Explanatory texts, accompanied by a little improvisation, allowed the audience to discover the South American Baroque music of Francisca Apumayta.
Francisca’s father was maestro de capilla (chapel master) in several places. He taught his two children counterpoint and the singing of psalms. His daughter became a composer, a music teacher and a lay sister at the convent of the Poor Clares of Cochabamba.
The concert brought to life a veritable kaleidoscope of South American music. It ranged from hymns in the Quechua language, performed with great spirit by the singers accompanied by cornett, violin, cello and viol, to liturgical compositions, notably the two masses “of the maestra Apumayta”, particularly solemn in character, rich in sonority and of remarkable virtuosity.
At certain moments these compositions seem unusual, even hardly conforming to European musical logic. They nevertheless remain ever innovative and extremely interesting.
The concert thus connected different spheres: European traditions and the culture of the indigenous peoples as well as that of the Spaniards; Cusco and the more isolated city of Cochabamba; secular life and monastic life; and, finally, the freshness of a young generation of remarkably well-trained singers and instrumentalists at the service of early music.

With this programme, Comet Musicke presents the portrait of a composer, of her family and of their historical context.
Our musical journey unfolds along several parallel dimensions. On the one hand, it follows the evolution of colonial society at the heart of the Andes between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; on the other, it tells the story of a family of musicians belonging to the indigenous nobility, who played an important role in two major centres of the musical life of the former Viceroyalty of Peru.
Our journey begins in the famous city of Cusco, in present-day Peru. In the ancient Inca Empire, Cusco was regarded as the “navel of the world” and was the capital of a territory stretching from present-day Colombia to the centre of present-day Chile, covering more than 2.5 million square kilometres.
This city, seat of the most sacred and most ancient temples, and capital of the Inca sovereigns, fell under Spanish domination in the sixteenth century. Despite the profound political and social transformations that followed the Conquest, the indigenous population managed to preserve a certain status, particularly when it belonged to the ancient Inca nobility.
Within the framework of the Spanish colonial system, several great native families succeeded in preserving certain functions within their traditional structures as well as within the colonial administration. In the field of music in particular, it was not uncommon for people of indigenous origin occupying a high social rank to hold leading positions, for example as organist or chapel master.
It is in this context that the narrative devoted to the Apumayta family unfolds. With this programme, Comet Musicke presents in concert the figures of Agustín, Diego and Francisca Apumayta, all professional musicians and central characters of this story.
Until recently they were practically unknown, as was the music of Francisca Apumayta, rediscovered thanks to the research of Daniela Maltrain, a doctoral student at the Université Paris-La Sorbonne.
The Apumayta family can be traced in the historical sources from the seventeenth century until the end of the eighteenth century. Research carried out in various archives in Bolivia has made it possible to find traces of its identity and of its activity as a family of professional musicians, both in Cusco and in Cochabamba (Bolivia), where the second part of its story takes place.
Agustín Apumayta was an indigenous nobleman who combined political responsibilities with the office of organist in the Catholic parish of the Hospital de Naturales of colonial Cusco. The reasons why he undertook the journey of nearly a thousand kilometres across the Andes – probably skirting the shores of Lake Titicaca – to settle in Cochabamba are unknown.
This city, situated to the north-east of the prosperous mining centre of Potosí, lies in a valley whose fertility was already praised in Inca times. Agustín Apumayta served there until the end of his life as maestro de capilla (chapel master). It was there that his children Diego and Francisca grew up; it was there that he taught them counterpoint, the monochord and the singing of psalms.
Diego succeeded him as chapel master, while Francisca became a composer and music teacher in a very particular setting: the convent of the Poor Clares of Cochabamba. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Francisca Apumayta was probably a lay sister there. It is to this convent that we owe the preservation of her music; the works in this programme also appear to have been composed there. They were copied and reconstructed from the research carried out for the aforementioned doctoral thesis.
Remarkably, these manuscripts are the only documents known to date that can be attributed with certainty to Francisca. The isolation of the convent may have contributed to preserving this unique set of works, those of the only indigenous composer of colonial South America whose music we know of to this day.
Comet Musicke seeks to retrace the musical journey of the Apumayta family and the network of relations that connected these three members of the Andean nobility to the Baroque music of Latin America. Agustín was the teacher and mentor of his son Diego as well as of his daughter Francisca, passing on to them the indispensable foundations of the musician’s craft.
The fact of being a woman did not prevent Francisca from exercising her talents and her knowledge as a composer. To do so, however, she had to place herself under the protection of the only institution that could offer her this possibility at the time: the convent. This is also confirmed by the fact that her works circulated not only in the different houses of her order, but also beyond, as attested by the copy of one of her compositions preserved in Sucre (Bolivia).
Did her father or her brother contribute to the dissemination of her works through their position as chapel masters? This seems most likely. This family does indeed appear to have played an important role in the creation and dissemination of European Baroque music, as well as of the mestizo musical forms blending indigenous and European traditions in the Andean colonies at the end of the eighteenth century.
Representative both of the indigenous world and of the mestizo world, the Apumayta family embodies a fascinating meeting point between different spheres: the culture of the Andean peoples and that of the Spaniards, Cusco and Cochabamba, secular life and monastic life.
Through a veritable musical kaleidoscope of the era, Comet Musicke reconstructs the sound world in which this family moved. One finds there works by the chapel master Juan de Araujo and by Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco, composers whose music resounded in the cathedrals of Lima and of La Plata (present-day Sucre), as well as other compositions coming from Cusco, which undoubtedly influenced the Apumayta family.
From the ancient hymn in the Quechua language Hanacpachap cussicuinin, symbol of the cultural fusion peculiar to this region, to the liturgical compositions preserved in the convent of the Poor Clares of Cochabamba (Concinat plebs fidelium, Almas prevenid), the sound world surrounding these historical figures constitutes the framework in which the works of Francisca Apumayta take their place. Her contrapuntal compositions, long remained little known, thus find their rightful place at the heart of this cultural syncretism and of this musical journey.
Author: Daniela Maltrain