Malleable Normativity: Town Design, Town Government and Musical Practice in the Jesuit Missions of South America

LEONARDO J. WAISMAN

Frankfurt

Conferencia; Conferencia; 2014

Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte / Max-Planck-Institut für empirische Ästhetik

The Spanish Empire was marked by a profusion of norms and rules that tried to contain the variety of geographical, political and cultural situations and processes it encompassed. Hundreds of cédulas, decrees and laws of different levels of origin and application, with occasional contradictions, accumulated throughout its history of nearly four-hundred-years with sporadic attempts at systemization. But their very multiplicity attests to the difficulty of applying and enforcing any rule equally on such variegated populations and circumstances. Thus, negotiation became a necessity. By mere unauthorized local adaptation, by lobbying for special permissions, and only rarely by obtaining changes in the general laws, the rules were bent and twisted so that, in a different shape, it could be said that they were applied and obeyed. In the present paper focuses on such processes as they are manifest in what we now would call cultural aspects of the Jesuit reductions in the provinces of Paraguay and Perú: missions of the Guaraní, the Chiquito, and the Mojo. The modifications of the standard plan for town design and the raised prestige and political power of the office of chapelmaster are two signal aspects examined. A brief panorama of the reducciones and their musical practices (with recorded examples) serves as an introduction.