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Music on the Margin--Urban Musical Life in Eighteenth-Century Jaca (Spain).

Article Excerpt
By Miguel Angel Marin. (De Musica, 7.) Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 2002. [405 p. ISBN 3935004497. DM 59.] Music examples, illustrations, facsimiles, bibliography, index.

Jaca? Chances are you've never heard of it. And if Jaca's population of less than 13,000 in the 1981 census makes this agricultural town in the Spanish province of Huesca sound unpromising, imagine the mere 3,311 who were there to be counted in 1787. And what of its tamed composers, feted musical institutions, flourishing music print industry, and lively opera theater? Well, there weren't any. Yet as the tide of this pioneering excursion into "urban musicology" suggests, it is precisely Jaca's marginal status that makes it interesting, both in its own right, and as a case study. For this is a project in which the focus is context as much as text. It is a study that examines the ways in which musicmakers, audiences, and the citizenry interacted and engaged with the repertory. And it is in this way that Jaca and its musical institutions reveal themselves as fascinating in their own right, and important for what they teach us about other similar towns. Although the author (rather ingenuously) states that Jaca is...