Ignacio de Jerusalem (1707-1769)
- Cantata 'Al Combate' (1760)
Performers: Elda Peralta (mezzo-soprano); Eleanor Ranney-Mendoza
(soprano); Sandro Naglia (tenor); Alexander Edgemon (counter-tenor);
Vince Wallace (bass); Choir and Orchestra Chicago Arts; Javier José
Mendoza (conductor)
Map: Johann Baptist Homann (1663-1724) - Regni Mexicani Novae Hispaniae Ludoviciana, N. Angliae. (1720)
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Mexican composer and violinist of Italian birth. His father, Matteo
Martino Gerusalemme, was a violinist at the Jesuit church in Lecce. In
1742, while active as a theatre musician in Cádiz, Ignazio was persuaded
to leave for Mexico City by Josef Cárdenas, the administrator of the
Real Hospital de Naturales. Jerusalem and his companions, who included
singers, dancers and instrumentalists, began arriving at Mexico City at
the end of 1743. Jerusalem became director of the Coliseo, where he
established a reputation as a gifted composer. In June 1746 he entered
the service of Mexico City Cathedral, composing villancicos and teaching
at the Colegio de Infantes. Jerusalem found himself at loggerheads with
Domingo Dutra, an indifferent musician who had been the cathedral’s
interim maestro de capilla since 1739, when Zumaya left. Dutra had
proved inept as both composer and choir director, and in 1749 the
chapter moved to force him into retirement. In April 1750 Jerusalem
applied for the post and after a rigorous examination was appointed
maestro de capilla on 3 November 1750. The capilla flourished under his
guidance. According to Juan de Viera, writing in 1777, Jerusalem
directed the orchestra and choir in musical performances nearly every
day, and ‘the Music Chapel [was] the most select, skilful and
knowledgeable of the chapels in America’. Viera overheard a group of
Europeans saying that ‘such magnificence is not to be found in Toledo or
Seville’, and that ‘they seemed to be more like a choir of angels than
of humans’. Soon after Jerusalem’s appointment as maestro de capilla his
health failed, and he also had to confront a threat to his economic
security in the early 1750s, when he complained that musicians from
other parishes and churches were usurping fees that previously he had
received for funerals, processions and other special occasions.
Jerusalem’s Matins service for Maundy Thursday 1753 scored a success
that was still remembered decades later, but during the next couple of
years he faced three major crises. The first was at the Coliseo. As he
ascended in the cathedral hierarchy Jerusalem shed his obligations to
the Coliseo, until he finally resigned altogether. Simultaneously he was
brought before the cathedral chapter on yet another charge. His wife
Antonia had gone to live with her brother and was asking that the
chapter pay him some of her husband’s wages. Jerusalem defended himself,
saying that much of the debt owed to the Coliseo had been incurred by
his wife; he pleaded with the chapter not to withhold his wages and
entreated them to help with professional expenses, observing that he
personally had been paying the poet and copyist for his major
compositions. The third scandal of this period concerned Tollis de la
Roca’s appointment at the cathedral, to which Jerusalem strongly
objected. Jerusalem went to great lengths to ensure the establishment of
Tollis’s second-class status in the cathedral hierarchy. In spite of a
life marked by turmoil and questionable decisions, Jerusalem made a
series of clear-headed musical reforms that influenced Mexican music for
the rest of the century. He advocated the sole use of modern notation
and the abandonment of white notation still employed in New World
cathedrals. He insisted on a measure of literary reform, expressing
particular displeasure in 1753 with the obtuse poetry of Francisco de
Selma, who had been supplying texts in the New World for 33 years after
leaving his native Segovia. The last ten years of Jerusalem’s life were
extremely productive and tranquil. On his death the cathedral chapter
acknowledged Jerusalem’s faithful service and compiled an inventory of
the music he had composed. His works continued to be used in Mexico City
for many years.
