Rodrigo de Ceballos.(Review)

Obras completas de Rodrigo de Ceballos. Edited by Robert J. Snow. Granada: Junta de Andalucia, Consejeria de Cultura, Centro de Documentacion Musical de Andalucia, 1995-97. [Vol. 1: Motetes a cuatro voces. Pref. in Span., Eng., p. xi-xvii; introd., p. xix-- xxix; score, p. 1--231. ISBN 84-87826-28-8. Vol. 2: Motetes a cinco voces. Prefatory note in Span., Eng., 2 p.; score, p. 1--242. ISBN 84-86944-47-3. Vol. 3: Misas. Prefatory note in Span., Eng., 2 p.; score, p. 1-171. ISBN 84-36944-69-4. Vol. 4: Lamentaciones, salmos, himnos. Prefatory note in Span., Eng., p. xi-xvii; score, p. 1-217. ISBN 84-86944-70-8. ISBN 84-87826-26-1 (set). DM 132.]

Rodrigo de Ceballos (ca. 1530-1581), a friend and colleague of Francisco Guerrerro (1528--1599) and recognized by musicologist Jose Lopez-Calo as one of the greatest Spanish polyphonists of the sixteenth century, left a large and impressive body of music that has remained mostly unknown until now with the recent publication of Robert J. Snow's edition of the composer's complete works. This edition was projected to comprise five volumes of music plus a sixth dedicated to a critical study of Ceballos's life, the sources, and the music and its liturgical context. But at the time of his death in 1998, Snow had completed only the first four volumes. The fifth volume was planned to present the composer's eight settings of the Magnificat, four items from Compline, and the few known secular songs.

Although Snow centered his scholarship in the United States, he worked cooperatively and regularly with his colleagues in Spain. The publication here under review reflects this collaboration--some of the sources come from Andalucia; the Centro de Documentacion Musical de Andalucia in Granada published the volumes; Lopez-Calo translated all of the prefatory material into Spanish; and the first volume opens with a preface by Lopez-Calo, translated into English.

Snow's Ceballos edition contributes to the growing body of works now available to scholars and performers from the repertory of the lberian siglo de oro. Older editions of this music prepared by such Spaniards as Felipe Pedrell, Juan B. de Elustiza, and Higini Angles are now expanded and superseded by new editions by Spanish scholars that include, in addition to Lopez-Calo, Dionisio Preciado, Maria del Carmen Gomez Muntane, Jose Maria Llorens, and Pedro Calahorra Martinez, as well as the non-Spanish scholars Bruno Turner, Tess Knighton, Jane Morlet Hardie, Michael Noone, Greta Olson, and Grayson Wagstaff, among others. These editions run the gamut from scholarly to performing, and through recent collaborative projects with performing groups and recording companies (such as Wagstaff with Paul McCreesh and Archiv Produktion and Noone with Richard Cheetham), some of this important music is coming to the attention of a much wider audience.

Recent published scholarship on Ceballos is not extensive. Snow's The Extant Music of Rodrigo de Ceballos and Its Sources (Detroit Studies in Music Bibliography, 44 [Detroit: Information Coordinators, 1980]), originally presented as part of the festivities honoring Dragan Plamenac at the University of Illinois in 1976, presents a summary and critique of all preceding research on the composer and includes a small number of facsimiles from the manuscript sources of Ceballos's extant music, together with transcriptions of four four-voice motets. Since the publication of this volume, we have only Lopez-Calo's thematic catalog of sacred vocal music held by the Cathedral of Granada (Catalogo del Archivo de Musica de la Capilla Real de Granada ([Garanda: Centro cle Documentacion Musical de Andalucia, 1993-94]) and his recent article on Ceballos in the Diccionario de in musica espanola e hispanoamericana (ed. Emilio Casares Rodicio et al., 10 vols. projected [Madrid: Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, 1999--]) Apparently Lopez-Calo wrote the article before Snow's death, for it cites five volumes of Snow's projected complete edition. Lopez-Calo does not address Ceballos's music but concentrates on the composer's life, drawing largely from documentary sources already discussed by Robert Stevenson and Andres de Llorden. The article on Ceballos by Stevenson in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 1980) certainly predates Snow's 1980 study. The all-too-brief Ceballos article in this dictionary's second edition (ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell) on the Web ([http://www.grovemusic.com], accessed 8 Jan. 2001) is a revised version of an entry prepared by Snow before his death. Although there is a works list, the reader is referred to Snow's 1980 book for a list of sources, and the publication date of Snow's edition (probably the planned version) is given incorrectly as 1995-99. The brief bibliography does refer to Lopez Calo's recent article in the Spanish music dictionary. Other editions of Ceballos's works include four four-voice motets in Antologia musical, siglo de oro de la musica liturgica de Espana: Polifonia vocal, siglos XV y XVI (ed. ...