Guerrero, Francisco

Guerrero, Francisco, notable Spanish composer;b. Seville, Oct. 4?, 1528; d. there, Nov. 8, 1599. He studied with his brother, Pedro, and also taught himself to play the organ, cornet, harp, and vihuela. He was a contralto at Seville Cathedral (1542-46), during which time he studied with Morales (c. 1545). From 1546 to 1549 he was maestro de capilla at Jaen Cathedral. In 1549 he accepted a preband as a singer at Seville Cathedral. In 1551 and 1554 he was offered the post of maestro de capilla at Malaga Cathedral, but declined on both occasions; however, he accepted the post of associate to the maestro de capilla at Seville Cathedral in 1551. He was active in Yuste (1557 or 1558), Toledo (1561), Lisbon (1566), and Cordoba (1567) before touring Spain in the royal entourage in 1570-71. In 1574 he was made maestro de capilla at Seville Cathedral. In 1581-82 he was in Rome, and in 1588 in Venice. He then made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (1588-89), which he re-counted in his book El viaje de Jerusalem que hizo Francisco Gerrero (publ. posthumously, 1611). In 1589 he returned to Venice, and later that year he settled in Seville, where he died of the plague. Guerrero was greatly esteemed by his contemporaries. He was a significant composer of Spanish sacred music, being surpassed only by Victoria among the masters of his era. He composed 18 Masses and had some 150 other sacred works publ. in his lifetime. He also wrote numerous secular songs. Some of his secular works were included in anthologies. M. Querol Gavalda ed. his Opera omnia in Monumentos de la Música Española, XVI and XIX (1949-57; unfinished). L Merino ed. The Masses of F. G. (diss., Univ. of Calif., Los Angeles, 1972).

Works

VOCAL Sacrae cantioms, vulgo moteta nuncupata for 4 and 5 Voices (Seville, 1555); Psalmorum, liber primus: accedit Missa defunctorum for 4 Voices (Rome, 1559; not extant); Canticum beatae Marine, quod Magnificat nuncupatur, per octomusicae modos variatum for 4 and 5 Voices (Louvain, 1563); Liber primus missarum for 4 and 5 Voices (Paris, 1566); Motetta for 4 to 6 Voices (Venice, 1570); Missarum liber secundus for 4 to 6 Voices (Rome, 1582); Liber vesperarum for 4 to 6 and 8 Voices (Rome, 1584); Passio D. N. Jesu Christi secundum Matthaeum et Joannem [more hispano] for 5 Voices (Rome, 1585); (61) Canciones y villanescas espirituals for 3 to 5 Voices (Venice, 1589; with 18 contrafacta); Motecta, liber secundus for 4 to 6 and 8 Voices (Venice, 1589).

Bibliography

I R. Mitjana y Gordon, F. G. (1528-1599): Estudio critico-biogrdfico (Madrid, 1922).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire