Diagonal: An Ibero-American Music Review

Colonial Christmas villancicos preserved at the cathedral of Santiago, Chile, employ a series of musical conventions to signify the nativity scene and the characters that interact on it to adore the Christ Child. The way in which the Chilean villancicos deploy those conventions confirms a link between musical resources rooted in theatrical practices, the didactic function of the vernacular pieces, and scriptural and literary sources. Insofar as these villancicos functionally operate as sonifications of an imagined staging, they provide a coherent context for the appearance of elements alien with respect to the biblical narrative. Furthermore, the villancicos betray patterns of trans-continental colonial cultural mobility related to the dissemination of the Galant style and Hispanic dances from the teatro breve tradition that are localized and resignified in Santiago.