The Renaissance was the Golden Age of Andalusian music, driven by the growing economic power derived from the discovery of America and the conquest of the Kingdom of Granada by the Catholic Monarchs, which make possible the establishment of the various cathedrals and their musical chapels , reaching record heights in the field of European music. Standard instruments in the cathedral chapels were the wind, although the strings, especially harps and violas da braccio also regularly participated in the accompanying or in alternating voices.
Pedro Fernández de Castilleja , considered master teachers from Spain , composed motets, and will master chazonetas Francisco Guerrero and Cristóbal de Morales. A long life allowed him to remain in the service of the cathedral from 1505 to 1568 in which he retires. His student, Cristobal de Morales will, in Seville also Francisco Guerrero, one of the three major English polyphony of the XVI.
Cristobal de Morales
The Seville Cristobal de Morales (c. 1500 to 1553) was the most famous composer of his time and the first figure of the Andalusian polyphonic religious art of the Seville school.
The first news we have of it dates back to 1526, as choirmaster at the cathedral of Avila and Plasencia.Luego in 1535, in the Sistine Chapel in Rome with Paul III, already a priest, Such was the fame acquired in Rome was commissioned the composition of the cantata Jubilate Deo omnis terra occasion of the peace treaty between Charles V and Francis I of France.
His works include 21 masses, 75 motets, magnificats 2, among other compositions of equal importance. Even today the Pontifical Chapel Lent is singing one of their great anthems, "Lamentabatur Jacob, 1564. He died in Malaga in 1553, while preparing to return to the place to stop in Toledo, perhaps by impairment of malaria.
Guerrero Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599) was regarded as the highest representative of the Seville school in this golden age. It was the greatest master of sacred polyphony Andalusian School. He was a pupil of his brother Pedro, Pedro Fernández de Castilleja and Cristobal de Morales himself. It began as a choirboy in the cathedral of Seville and took the place of choirmaster at the cathedral of Jaen, a city where he remained until 1549, when he returned to Seville again as singer of the veinteneros . Later he was named teacher of children, with the promise by the Cathedral Chapter of the master's estate when he died Castilleja. The final title in 1574 would get it . Apart from music, was a member of the Inquisition.
Guerrero was a tireless traveler, he visited, for reasons of various kinds, Charles V and Philip II, and even traveled to Rome and Venice in order to print their works. But his most famous being the one made to Jerusalem in 1588, the result of which he wrote an autobiographical book titled " The journey from Jerusalem, which was Francisco Guerrero, prebendary and choirmaster at the Holy Church of Seville " published in Sevilla in 1596.
Guerrero's works were printed in Paris, Louvain, Rome and Venice, as well as in his native country, rare exception among the sixteenth-century English polyphony. A noble serenity and great artistic expression, these works place him among the great exponents of the polyphonic school English, there was no cathedral or temple on the mainland where his works were not executed until well into the seventeenth century.