Hernando Franco

Hernando Franco (* 1532 in Galizuela; † November 28, 1585 in Mexico City ) was a Spanish composer of the Renaissance period , who was mainly active in Guatemala and Mexico (then New Spain ).

Life

Franco came from a small town near Alcántara in the Spanish province of Extremadura . As a child he was a choirboy in the Cathedral of Segovia and was tutored by Gerónimo de Espinar, who was possibly also the teacher of Tomás Luis de Victoria . He was friends with Lázaro del Álamo, his predecessor as maestro de capilla in Mexico City.

Presumably Franco emigrated to New Spain in the 1550s, but the first evidence of his activity there dates back to 1571, when he is recorded as maestro de capilla of the Cathedral of Santiago de Guatemala.

Franco left this post in 1574 and went to Mexico. Here he received the post of maestro de capilla of the new cathedral in 1575 .

He retired from his post in 1582 and died in 1585. He is buried in the cathedral.

plant

Franco wrote 20 preserved motets , 16 settings of the Magnificat and a four-part setting of the Lamentations of Jeremias . Apparently he did not write mass settings , which is unusual for a cathedral bandmaster, but many of his works may have been lost. Some hymns in the native Nahuatl language , handed down under the name Hernando don Franco, are now believed to be works by an indigenous composer who may have adopted this name while proselytizing for Christianity . In this case, it would be the oldest surviving examples of notated music in the European tradition by indigenous people of America.

Franco is the first composer known by name in Guatemala; his two pieces in the archives of the cathedral of Guatemala, a Lumen ad revelationem and a Benedicamus Domino , come from the oldest surviving manuscripts in this region.

literature

• Franco, Hernando ; Guatemala . In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . 20 vols. Macmillan, London 1980, ISBN 1-56159-174-2 .
• Steven Barwick: The Franco Codex . Southern Illinois University Press, Illinois 1965.
• Dieter Lehnhoff: Creación musical en Guatemala . Editorial Galería Guatemala, Guatemala City 2005, ISBN 99-922704-7-0 , pp. 42–3.
• Gustave Reese: Music in the Renaissance . WW Norton & Co., New York 1954, ISBN 0-393-09530-4 .
• Aurelio Tello: Franco, Hernando . In: Emilio Casares Rodicio (ed.): Diccionario de la Música Española e Hispanoamericana . 10 vols. Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, Madrid 1999, vol. 5, ISBN 84-8048-303-2 , pp. 247-8.