Juan Bautista Ralliere’s Cánticos espirituales and the Making of a Transnational Soundscape in Nineteenth-Century New Mexico
Dr. Javier Marín-López
Tuesday, November 04, 2025 | 03:30 pm
Frank Waters Room | Zimmerman Library
About:
Compiled by the French priest Juan Bautista Rallière, pastor of Tomé, Cánticos espirituales is regarded as the most influential nineteenth-century Spanish-language hymnal of the U.S. Southwest. With at least fourteen editions published between 1884 and 1956, this remarkable collection of over 300 songs drew upon melodies from French, Italian, Spanish, Mexican, and New Mexican sources. This lecture offers a critical overview of its contents and examines the hymnal’s extensive use of contrafacta—new sacred texts set to familiar tunes—as a strategy for shaping a transnational Catholic soundscape in nineteenth-century New Mexico. Based on printed editions, manuscript sources, field recordings, and oral histories preserved at UNM’s Center for Southwest Research, Dr. Marín-López situates Cánticos espirituales within a broader transatlantic network of melodic appropriation, adaptation, and devotional renewal that bridged Europe and the Americas.
Dr. Javier Marín-López is Professor of Musicology at the University of Jaén (Spain) and a Research Associate at the Latin American & Iberian Institute, University of New Mexico. He holds a Ph.D. (with distinction) from the University of Granada. His research explores the rich and complex intersections of Latin American, U.S. Southwest, and Spanish musical cultures from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, with a special focus on transatlantic exchanges within European and global contexts. In 2023–24, he was honored as a Richard E. Greenleaf Visiting Library Scholar through the LAII, and in 2025 he received a grant through the John Donald Robb Musical Trust’s Underwriting Program.
Notes:
This event is free and open to the public.
