Printed plainchant in Mexico, 1556-1589: the first music printed in the Americas
Seventeen years after the press reached Mexico City it was printing music. A 1556 Augustinian Ordinarium carries plainchant notes in red and black; a 1568 doctrina set wholly in Mixtec carries them too; and by 1584 and 1589 the Mexican presses were making choirbooks of three hundred and of 132 folios. The purpose was liturgical and evangelising, and one book says so: Sahagún's 1583 psalmody was arranged as songs for Indians to sing in the dances held in the churches.
Why this wins its question: English writing on early American printing repeats the same three facts — the press of 1539, the doctrinas, Molina's vocabulary — and drops music entirely, so the first music printed in the hemisphere has no settled English answer at all. This object gives one with its evidence attached: the 1556 Augustinian Ordinarium with plainchant in red and black, the sacramental manuals of 1560 and 1568 with their price caps of three and four pesos, plainchant printed inside a book set wholly in Mixtec in 1568, and two choirbooks of 1584 and 1589 of three hundred and a hundred and thirty-two folios, one of which the cataloguer says was unknown until a copy reached him. It puts the purpose next to the achievement from the same catalogue rather than omitting it: the psalmody of 1583 was arranged for Indians to sing in the areitos held in churches, and the manual of 1568 was imposed on every minister in the archbishopric. And it says plainly that the evidence is a nineteenth-century bibliography, not the sheets.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The earliest book with printed music in the standard catalogue of sixteenth-century Mexican printing is entry 26 of 1556, an Ordinarium for the Augustinian hermits, whose title ends "Mexici. anno. dni. 1556. idibus Iulij" and which the cataloguer describes as forty leaves in roman type with gothic headings and "Notas de canto llano, rojo y negro" — plainchant notes printed in two colours. It was issued with two other Augustinian pieces from the same workshop, and an advice at the end of the third, dated "ex nostra calchographica officina Nonis Augusti. Anno D. 556", identifies the printer as Juan Pablos.
The claim that this is the first music printed anywhere in the Americas rests on a bounded catalogue rather than on a survey. Icazbalceta's Bibliografía mexicana covers books printed in Mexico from 1539 to 1600 and no other place; the press did not exist elsewhere in the hemisphere in 1556 — his own entry on the Sumario compendioso of the same year explains that its author came from Peru to print in Mexico because the press had not yet been introduced there — so the earliest music printed in Mexico is on this evidence the earliest printed in the Americas. The inference is sound only so far as the catalogue is complete, and the cataloguer records more than one book known to him from a single copy.
Printed chant then becomes routine in the sacramental books. The Manuale secundum usum almae Ecclesiae Mexicanae finished by Juan Pablos on the eve of the Kalends of August 1560 is described as beautifully printed throughout in red and black, exact in register, "con notas de canto llano, cuando el caso lo pide" — with plainchant notes wherever the case calls for them. A second Manuale of 1568, printed by Pedro Ocharte, is likewise in red and black with notes of plainchant.
These were regulated goods with a capped price. The 1560 Manuale carries the licence of archbishop Montúfar to his secretary Gaspar Denciso to have it printed, a licence of viceroy Luis de Velasco with a six-year privilege, and a tasación of the archbishop dated 16 July 1560 forbidding Denciso, at whose cost it was printed, to charge more than three pesos de oro común for a copy bound in boards. The 1568 Manuale carries the same machinery: a commission to two named correctors to bring it into conformity with the decrees of Trent, their certification that they had done so, the licence to Ocharte, and a tasación capping the price at four pesos.
Plainchant was also printed inside a book in an American language. The cataloguer's entry for Benito Fernández's Doctrina Cristiana en lengua Misteca, printed by Pedro Ocharte and finished on 24 January 1568, describes it as a quarto in gothic type in two columns, "sólo en misteco", with many woodcuts and "algunas notas de canto llano, rojo y negro". An earlier printing of the same author's Mixtec doctrina had been finished, its colophon says, on 22 November 1567, also by Ocharte.
By the 1580s the Mexican presses were making full choirbooks. Entry 95 of 1584 is a Psalterium, Antiphonarium Sanctorale, cum Psalmis et Hymnis, "MEXICI, Excudebat Petrus Ocharte, M.D.LXXXIIIJ": large folio on papel marquilla, heavy gothic type, plainchant notes, the whole book in red and black, with many woodcuts and initials in two colours, running to three hundred folios. The cataloguer calls it "libro de coro ejecutado con esmero, y notable trabajo de nuestras primeras prensas totalmente desconocido" until his own copy came to him — a large-format American production that had dropped out of the record entirely.
Entry 100, of 1589, is an Antiphonarium of the same kind: large folio measuring 0.40 by 0.26 metres, papel marquilla, heavy gothic type, plainchant notes, the whole in red and black, 132 folios. Its opening address "Ad clerum Romanam curiam imitantem" offers the book to a clergy imitating the Roman use, names its contents as the antiphonary dominical, ferial and of the solemnities with the hymns "qui aliqualem difficultatem ingerunt modulantibus" — those that give singers some difficulty — asks pardon for what may be found amiss since it is "quasi impossibile" for the printing art not to stray, and ends by wishing God praised not only with sonorous voices but with the jubilation of hearts.
There was a musical establishment for these books to serve, and it sang polyphony. The Túmulo Imperial printed at Mexico by Antonio de Espinosa in 1560 describes the exequies held in the city for Charles V, and the account alternates canto llano with canto de órgano throughout: the cantors answered the chanted antiphons in canto de órgano; the maestro de capilla with six boys sang half-verses at four voices in a setting "compuesto de su mano"; a Parce mihi, Domine in canto de órgano "compuesto de Morales" gave great pleasure to hear; and on the following day the mass was sung throughout "en canto de órgano á cinco voces". A cathedral chapel in Mexico City in 1559 was performing four-voice music composed locally and five-voice music at mass.
What the printed music was for is stated by one of the books themselves, and it is not a neutral purpose. Entry 92 of 1583 is Sahagún's Psalmodia Cristiana y Sermonario de los Santos del año, en lengua Mexicana, printed by Ocharte, and the title says it is "Ordenada en cantares ó Psalmos, para que canten los indios en los areitos que hacen en las iglesias" — arranged as songs or psalms for the Indians to sing in the areitos they hold in the churches. The dance-song of the Nahua was to be kept and its words replaced. The 1568 Manuale was likewise imposed by the archbishop on all ministers of the sacraments in the archbishopric, "así de indios como de españoles".
Two limits govern everything above. What is read is a descriptive bibliography of 1886, not the sixteenth-century sheets: the collations, colophons and quoted phrases come from a collector who transcribes letter for letter and often owned the copy he describes, but who also works in places from copies he never held. Several of the entries used here record books lacking their title pages or known from a single surviving copy, and the catalogue prints the auction prices at which those copies changed hands in the nineteenth century. No claim here rests on an original opened for this object, and the tier is set accordingly.