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 This workshop is designed for amateur early musicians on wind and string instruments, and voices. Recorder and viola da gamba are preferred; early loud band instruments are welcome if players are also able to play recorder. Continuo players will be considered and are welcome to apply. Musicians are expected to play at an upper intermediate to advanced level. The workshop application will be available until December 31, 2023. Due to an expected high volume of applicants, workshop acceptance will be announced January 15. Travel subsidies may be available for a few select students in financial need. Players are expected to bring their own instruments, though some exceptions are possible with prior arrangement. Pitch is A=440.

Mary Springfels: The Villancico was an enormously popular song form in Renaissance Spain.  Even though its roots were in popular culture (a villano was a peasant), the villancico was used for both pure entertainment, and also in festive religious events. Villancicos found their way into the repertoires of musicians in the Spanish New World; composers who took up careers in Mexico and other Hispanic colonies added to the repertoire.  We’ll explore pieces by Gaspar Fernandes, Juan Gutierres Padilla and others. The Chaconna and Sarabanda, were among dance forms popular in Europe which seem to have originated in the New World. We will look at some of the earliest examples of these dances, along with others that were played danced in the Spanish Colonies.

 Dan Meyers:  In both the Old World and the New, the Spanish of the 16th and 17th centuries employed a variety of wind instruments in their church services, and by 1600 the cathedrals in both Mexico City and Puebla both had dozens of wind players as part of their musical staff, performing both together with singers and on their own in various configurations. We know that many of these wind players were Indigenous, since the Aztecs had also placed a high priority on wind and percussive music as part of their religious ceremonies, and their skills apparently transferred well to European winds. Thanks to a surviving 1589 inventory of music in the Mexico City Cathedral library, we also know which composers' music was popular (Guerrero, Victoria, Lassus, Rogier, and Crequillon among others), and even some specific motets, masses, and villancicos that were definitely performed as part of the Cathedral's services. We'll be exploring this repertoire as 21st-century wind players, with a focus on how to "play the text" on wind instruments in a purely instrumental performance--even when you're not sure what the text may have been!  I also look forward to exploring, in the classroom and on stage, the ways in which European, Indigenous, and African percussion traditions came together in Central and South America, and various ideas for using percussion in modern performances of Colonial Spanish repertoire.

 Loren Ludwig: These classes/coachings will explore some of the fascinating polyphony and dance music by both European and New World composers present in great quantities in New World manuscripts and Cathedral libraries. Viols are known to have been present in New Spain from the early decades of the 16th century, where they were used for religious and community music making. Alongside wind instruments and (of course) singers, strings were a regular feature of sixteenth-century Cathedral music in the Iberian world and its colonies. We will play a selection of this fascinating and beautiful music and explore questions of performance practice, instrumental technique, and ensemble music making for strings.

Friday, March 1

• 5:30 pm: Opening reception
• 7:30 pm – end: Casual evening jams

Saturday, March 2

• 9 am - 10:30 am: Period 1 Class
• 11 am – 12:30 pm: Period 2 Class
• 2:30 – 4 pm: Period 3 Class
• 6 pm – 7 pm: Pre-Concert Lecture
• 7:30 pm: Faculty Concert – Fox Fine Arts Recital Hall

Sunday, March 3

• 9 am – 10:30 am: Period 1 Class
• 11 am – 12:30 pm: Period 2 Class
• 2:30 pm – 4 pm: Period 3 Class
• 7:30 pm – end: Casual evening jams

Monday

• 9 am – 11 am: Final group play

The Workshop will take place on the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso in the Fox Fine Arts Building. Food and housing is not included with this workshop. The nearest hotel (on campus) is recommended: Hilton Garden Inn El Paso/University. 111 W University Ave, El Paso, TX 79902.