The musical heritage as a resource
Among the main Spanish music archivists of the 19th century, determined to write a history of the national music in accordance with the positivist and historicist currents of that time, Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, was, without doubt, who had a modern and clear vision of the importance of our music heritage. His activity as researcher –as well as bibliophile and collector- led him to frequent important collections and sometimes establish a friendship to their managers: archivists, curators, librarians and even some Kapellmeister. It is quite remarkable that one of his last wishes was to donate his rich collection and archive to the Spanish National Library, an example who would be followed by other scholars, collectors and musicologists like Felipe Pedrell did with his legacy to the Library of Catalonia.
Since then, resorting to musical sources is considered a prerequisite for any musicologist, historian or musician interested in the study, contextualization and recognition of the repertoires of the past, either recent or distant. To locate and inform about them has been the task of the researchers as well as their managers. Throughout the 20th century, but especially in its last third, various catalogues and inventories of music archives and heritage libraries have been produced and published as tools to research, recover and disseminate their own collections. We could also say the same of the museums housing collections and pieces which organologic interest make us be able to consider this musical instruments as true documents for the study and performing of historical music as well as that of the oral tradition.
In this sense, the Centre for the Documentation of the Performing Arts and Music (CDAEM), aided by current technologies, offers the Map of the Spanish Musical Heritage to researchers, performers, producers and those interested in it. Based on our databases, especially the Recursos de la Música en España (Musical resources in Spain) and the BIME-Bibliografia Musical Española (BIME-Spanish Musical Bibliography), we have produced a directory that helps locating collections and documents the user will require at any moment. We would like to thank both Antonio Ezquerro Esteban and Jon Bagüés Erriondo for their essential cooperation in earlier projects, such as those carried out by RISM-España and the more recent one by the AMA-Grupo Español (within the Spanish Association of Musical Documentation, AEDOM) which helped us in our work.
We hope that the musical heritage will be another resource of our cultural tradition, a testimony that the musical creation and practice have been accumulating in our institutions as a rich sediment on which building an educated and civilized society. We believe that the Map of Spanish Musical Heritage is contributing to this task and fulfills one of our objectives as a documentation center.
Antonio Álvarez Cañibano
Director of the Centre for Documentation of Music and Dance
November 2014
[Presentation of the 1st edition]