PEDRO XIMÉNEZ
DE ABRILL Y TIRADO
The 23 minuets for classical guitar recorded on
this CD were composed by the Kapellmeister of the
Cathedral of Sucre, Pedro Ximénez de Abrill
y Tirado (Arequipa, Peru 1780 – Sucre, Bolivia
1857) and were published in 1844 in Paris, most
likely under the aegis of former Bolivian President
Andres de Santa Cruz, then living in exile in Europe.
These 23 pieces, chosen by the artist from among
the 100 minuets published in France by Parent &
Cie., are the only compositions by the incredibly
prolific and versatile Ximénez de Abrill
known to have been published anywhere.
Ximénez de Abrill worked as a musician and
composer in the cathedral in his native Arequipa
early on in his career, and also lived and worked
in Lima prior to moving to Bolivia in 1833. He was
hired as chapel master of the cathedral in Sucre
by the President of the Peru-Bolivian Confederation
(1828-1838) Andrés de Santa Cruz. He also
taught music at two schools for boys and girls in
Sucre.
The balance of Ximénez de Abrill’s
oeuvre has been, since the year 2004, part of the
large collection of Colonial and Republican era
manuscript musical scores preserved in the Bolivian
National Archives and Library in Sucre, which was
officially designated part of the “Memory
of the World” by UNESCO in 2013. These Ximénez
de Abrill scores, along with a smaller collection
in the Cathedral Archives in Sucre, occupy more
than a lineal meter of shelf space.
They include a wide variety of sacred compositions
-- masses, hymns, psalms, salves, litanies and passions
-- plus secular pieces such as symphonies for small
orchestra, duets, trios, quartets and quintets,
plus divertimentos, waltzes, sonatas, rondos, marches,
patriotic songs, pasodobles, tonadillas, cavatinas,
yaravíes and villancicos, or Christmas songs.
The circumstances of the discovery of the Ximénez
de Abrill manuscript scores, and of the subsequent
purchase of the collection by the Bolivian National
Archives and Library in Sucre in 2004 and 2005,
are a tale in and of themselves. Beginning in December
of 2004, the author of this introductory note, a
historian working in Sucre, was offered four different
lots of original Ximénez de Abrill scores,
all of which were purchased with personal funds
and subsequently transferred to the safe keeping
of the National Archives, which reimbursed him for
the exact amount spent on the four different lots.
In the course of this effort to rescue an important
part of Bolivia’s cultural patrimony, some
of the details of the collection’s provenance
came to light. It appears that the seller of this
amazing lot of scores, a man of Bolivian origin
but resident in Argentina who had previously tried
unsuccessfully to market them in the cities of La
Paz, Cochabamba and Potosí, had inherited
the documents in the year 2000, along with other
papers stored in a large trunk, from four elderly
deceased cousins who had lived in the small city
of Valle Grande, in the Department (state) of Santa
Cruz de la Sierra.
How the scores came to reside in Valle Grande almost
150 years after the death of the composer in Sucre
in 1857 is a mystery, but it is presumed that the
four former owners of the truck in which they were
found were somehow descended from Ximénez
de Abrill. Although a small number of the scores
are stained and slightly deteriorated by humidity,
they are still legible, and the great majority of
the documents –on handmade rag paper-- are
in such pristine condition that they seem new.
The Ximénez de Abrill Collection in the Bolivian
National Archives has now been organized and catalogued,
and an analytical guide to the entire body of scores,
prepared by the Bolivian musicologist Carlos Seoane,
was published in Sucre in the year 20121. The catalog
includes a biographical essay and general introduction
to the scope and value of the collection. In addition,
the author of this note published in 2006 a general
description of the collection and information about
its composer.2
Very little of Ximénez de Abrill’s
work has been performed in public in our times,
although it is clear that it was performed as part
of the very lively cultural life of the Bolivian
capital in the 19th century. It is, therefore, highly
significant that the classical guitarist Alexander-Sergei
Ramirez, himself of Peruvian origin on his father’s
side, has chosen the 23 minuets and the other anonymous
pieces on this CD to introduce Pedro Ximénez
de Abrill Tirado to a wider international audience.
It is also to be hoped that this exposure will stimulate
interest in the rest of the chapel master’s
oeuvre, preserved in Sucre for all of humanity.
William Lofstrom, PhD
Sucre, Bolivia
March 2014
1 Carlos Seoane Urioste, Catálogo analítico
de las obras de la colección Pedro Ximénez
de Abrill Tirado del Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales
de Bolivia, Sucre, 2012.
2 William Lofstrom, “Rescate de una valiosa
obra musical de Chuquisaca”, Revista Cultural
de la Fundación Cultural del Banco Central
de Bolivia, May-June 2006. |