Murcia, Santiago de

(b ?Madrid, c1682; d ?Mexico, c1740). Spanish composer, theorist

and guitarist. He was almost certainly the son of Gabriel de Murcia
(nephew of the composer Juan Hidalgo) and Juliana de León, both
of whom belonged to a long line of instrument makers and
composers. There is evidence to suggest that Murcia studied with
Francisco Guerau, music master at the royal choir school from
1693 and at the royal chapel, 1696–1700. During the first decade
of the 18th century he became guitar teacher to Queen María Luisa
Gabriela, the young wife of Felipe V, who also employed Antonio
de Murcia (probably Santiago’s brother) as her personal guitar
maker.
Murcia enjoyed the protection of several influential patrons,
including a staunch supporter of Felipe V, Jácome Francisco
Andriani, to whom Murcia dedicated his Resumen de acompañar la
parte con la guitarra; the title-page and preface indicate that Murcia
was under Andriani’s protection and residing in his house. Another
Madrid official linked with Murcia was the king’s notary, Joseph
Álvarez de Saavedra; Murcia dedicated to him his collection of
Passacalles y obras. Several pieces in Murcia’s guitar books
suggest that he may have collaborated with dramatists and theatre
composers such as Francisco de Castro, Pedro Lanini and Antonio
Zamora, and that he was personally acquainted with other guitar
composers, including François Le Cocq. Murcia’s name disappears
from court documents after 1717; he probably journeyed first to
France, Belgium or Holland and arrived in Mexico some time
between 1718 and 1731. It appears from an ambiguous burial
record that Álvarez de Saavedra died in Puebla and was buried in
the parish of Analco in 1737; possibly Murcia was living there as
well.
Murcia is remembered for his treatise Resumen de acompañar la
parte con la guitarra (engraved in Antwerp in 1714 and published in
Madrid in 1717; see Hall, 1980; Russell, 1980; Hall, The Guitar,
1983; Arriaga, 1984) and for two manuscript anthologies of guitar
music. The Resumen is the most comprehensive basso continuo
treatise for the Baroque guitar. It explains how to realize a figured
bass and touches on suspensions, cadences, clefs and implied clef
transposition, modes and metres (both of the ‘modern foreign style’
and of the ‘old Spanish style’). There follows an extensive
collection of French dances; they bear no attributions, but are
harmonized settings of danses à deux, danses de bal and
contredanses from the press of Raoul-Auger Feuillet, Paris,
arranged in chronological order of publication. The Resumen
includes also 26 minuets, a series of variations on popular Spanish
chord progressions and three virtuoso suites. The treatise’s
considerable influence on Murcia’s Spanish colleagues and
successors is evident from several manuscript copies and from
extended excerpts from it quoted in later treatises.
The two anthologies are the Saldívar Codex no.4 (owned by the
Saldívar family in Mexico City; see Lorimer, 1987; facs. and ed.
C.H. Russell (Urbana, IL, 1995)) and the Passacalles y obras de
guitarra por todos los tonos naturales y acidentales (GB-Lbl
Add.31640; see Mackmeeken, 1979; ed. in Russell, 1980;
Pennington, 1981; Hall, The Guitar, 1983). These are elegant,
luxurious manuscripts dating from 1732 and originally grouped
together as a single two-volume work. They contain some of the
best music written for the Baroque guitar, and are valuable also for
their left-hand fingerings, which were not usually shown in Baroque
guitar tablatures. They represent the culmination of an era that
favoured the treble-strung five-course guitar and used tablature as
opposed to staff notation. Murcia was among the last to use re-
entrant tunings, with the lowest string placed in the middle. The
Saldívar Codex includes variations on Spanish dance tunes dating
from the late 16th to the early 18th centuries, such as the jácara,
mariona, gallarda, villano and españoleta, and it is the earliest
musical source for the fandango, jota and seguidilla, which were to
become an indispensable part of Spain’s cultural landscape in the
19th century. Also of great interest are the cumbés and
zarambeques, the earliest known examples of notated instrumental
music of African American origin. The volume includes also a
handful of French dances (some of them by André Campra or
Louis Guillaume Pécour), 13 minuets and a three-movement
sonata with a slow movement reminiscent of Corelli and a finale in
full sonata form, with thematic differentiation and an extensive
development section – a remarkable demonstration that in 1732, at
the latest, Murcia was in the vanguard of developments leading to
the Classical period.
The Passacalles y obras opens with a series of ambitious
passacalles grouped in pairs (the first in quadruple, the second in
triple metre) and arranged in key order according to the Italian
alfabeto system. These are difficult and varied works, carefully
composed and well constructed despite their improvisatory
character. They are followed by an italianate Preludio and Allegro,
a battle piece and 11 suites consisting of from six to 12
movements, including the standard allemande, courante,
sarabande and gigue. Many of the suites are unified by recurring
motifs, and some borrow sections from the works of contemporary
guitar composers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
M. Mackmeeken: Introduction to Santiago de Murcia: Passacalles
y obras (facs., Monaco, 1979)
M. Hall: Introduction to Santiago de Murcia: Resumen de
acompañar la parte con la guitarra (1714) (facs., Monaco,
1980)
C.H. Russell: Santiago de Murcia, Spanish Theorist and Guitarist
in the Early Eighteenth Century (diss., U. of North Carolina,
1980) [incl. edn of Resumen and Passacalles]
R. Stevenson: ‘Santiago de Murcia: a Review Article’, Inter-
American Music Review, iii (1980–81), 89–101
N.D. Pennington: The Spanish Baroque Guitar, with a
Transcription of De Murcia’s “Passacalles y obras” (Ann Arbor,
1981)
C.H. Russell: ‘Santiago de Murcia: the French Connection in
Baroque Spain’, Lute Society of America Inc.: Journal, xv
(1982), 40–51
C.H. Russell and A.K.T. Russell: ‘El arte de recomposición en la
música para guitarra barroca’, RdMc, v (1982), 5–23
M. Hall: The Guitar Anthologies of Santiago de Murcia (diss., Open
U., Milton Keynes, 1983) [incl. edn of Resumen and
Passacalles]
M. Hall: ‘Santiago de Murcia and François Le Cocq’, Lute Society
of America Inc.: Journal, xvi (1983), 3–7; see also ibid., xvii–
xviii (1984–5), 139–41
C.H. Russell: ‘François Le Cocq’s Influence on Santiago de
Murcia: Problems with Dates, Sources, and Recomposition’,
Lute Society of America Inc.: Journal, xvi (1983), 7–11; see
also ibid., xvii–xviii (1984–5), 141–2
G. Arriaga: Introduction to Santiago de Murcia: Resumen de
acompañar la parte con la guitarra (1714) (facs., Madrid,
1984)
C. Bordas Ibáñez: ‘Instrumentos españoles de los siglos XVII y
XVIII en el Museo del Pueblo español de Madrid’, RdMc, vii
(1984), 301–33
A. Martín Moreno: Historia de la música español, iv: Siglo XVIII
(Madrid, 1985)
E.O.B. de Saldívar: ‘El Códice Saldívar: una nueva fuente de
música para guitarra’, España en la música de occidente:
Salamanca 1985, ii, 87–92
M. Lorimer: Preface to Santiago de Murcia: Saldívar Codex No.4
(facs., Santa Barbara, CA, 1987)
M. Esses: Dance and Instrumental “Diferencias” in Spain during
the 17th and Early 18th Centuries (Stuyvesant, NY, 1992)
C.H. Russell: Santiago de Murcia’s “Códice Saldívar No4”
(Champaign, Illinois, 1995) [incl. facs. and edn of complete
Códice Saldívar]
N. Treadwell: ‘The Guitar Passacalles of Santiago de Murcia
(c1685–1740)’, Musicology Australia, xv (1992), 67–76
CRAIG H. RUSSELL