1 See, for example, the essays in Iain Fenlon and Tess Knighton (eds.), Early Music Printing and Publishing in the Iberian World (Kassel, 2006).

2 French Jesuits also travelled to these lands, and music went with them. Simon de la Loubère, a French envoy who accompanied a Jesuit delegation to Thailand in 1687, recounted that ‘[t]he King of Siam, without shewing himself, heard several Airs of our Opera on the Violin, and it was told us that he did not think them of a movement grave enough’. Simon de La Loubère, A New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam by Monsieur De La Loubere, Envoy Extraordinary from the French King, to the King of Siam, in the Years 1687 and 1688, trans. A. P. Gen. R. S. S. (London, 1693), p. 68. Given the monopoly on opera that Jean-Baptiste Lully held in France until his death in 1687, it is exceedingly likely that some of the European music played to Phra Narai, King of Siam, was by this composer. But it remains unknown whether these ‘Airs’ were performed from memory or from printed or manuscript scores.

3 ‘Os negros caõtaõ [sic] toda a missa pequena de Morales e o motete de Saõto André a simco e huã Pamge limgua de Guerreyro.’ Letter from Paulo Dias de Novais, ‘Desta vila de Saõ Paulo aos 23 dagosto de [1]578’, in Monumenta missionaria africana: Africa ocidental, ed. António Brásio, 15 vols. (Lisbon, 1952–88), iv, p. 302. The performance of the works by Morales is discussed in Robert Murrell Stevenson and Alejandro Enrique Planchart, ‘Morales, Cristóbal de’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, 2nd edn. (London, 2001) (hereafter New Grove II), xvii, p. 87, but the erroneous date of 1583 is given.

4 ‘Godei più volte in quella Città con occasioni di Feste assai belle Musiche, particolarmente in quella di S. Ignatio, che si celebrò à sette Chori con suavissime Sinfonie nella Casa Professa de' Padri della Compagnia, ove si trova il Corpo di San Francesco Xaverio; e dicendo, che mi pareva di stare in Roma, mi fù risposto, che non m'ingannava, perche la compositione era del famoso Carissimi portata in quelle Parti. Non può credersi quanto rieschino nella Musica quei Canarini, come ci si esercitino, e con quanta facilità.

Non v'è Aldea, ò Villaggio di Christiani, che non habbia nella Chiesa Organo, Arpa, e Viola, & un buon Coro de Musici cantandovisi nelle Feste, e ne' Sabbati, Vesperi, Messe, e Litanie, e con molto concorso, e devotione. Vergogna di molti Luoghi grossi, e d'alcune Città d'Italia, e di tutta l'Europa, ove non si celebra nè pure una Festa con solennità, ò pompa veruna.

Sono in Goa trè Seminarii, ne' quali, oltre la Musica, s'attende pure alle lettere sotto la Disciplina de' PP. Franciscani, Agostiniani, e Gesuiti, quali alcune volte l'anno disendono publiche Conclusioni, & io per animarli, v'assistei [sic], & argomentai più volte.’ Giuseppe di S. Maria, Seconda speditione all'Indie Orientali (Venice, 1683), bk. 3, p. 105. The letter was written in 1663 but was published twenty years later. An English translation is in Victor Anand Coelho, ‘Connecting Histories: Portuguese Music in Renaissance Goa’, in C. Borges, SJ and Helmut Feldmann (eds.), Goa and Portugal: Their Cultural Links (Xavier Centre of Historical Research Series, 7; New Delhi, 1997), p. 144. For additional studies of Portuguese music in colonial Goa, see also Ian Woodfield, English Musicians in the Age of Exploration (Stuvysant, NY, 1995), pp. 219–29; Victor Anand Coelho, ‘Kapsberger's “Apotheosis” of Francis Xavier (1622) and the Conquering of India’, in R. Dellamora and D. Fischlin (eds.), The Work of Opera: Genre, Nationhood, and Sexual Difference (New York, 1997), pp. 27–47; and ‘Music in New Worlds’, in John Butt and Tim Carter (eds.), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 88–110.

5 Jesús López Gay, SJ, ‘La primera biblioteca de los Jesuítas en el Japón (1556): Su contenido y su influencia’, Monumenta Nipponica, 15/3–4 (1959–60), p. 355; Documenta Indica III (1553–1557), ed. Joseph Wicki, SJ (Rome, 1954), pp. 204–5.

6 See Robert William Harold Castleton, ‘The Life and Works of Domingo de Salazar, O.P. (1512–1594)’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1974), pp. 288, 306. See also William John Summers, ‘Music in the Cathedral: Some Historical Vignettes’, in Ruperto C. Santos, STL (ed.), Manila Cathedral: Basilica of the Immaculate Conception (Manila, 1997), p. 153. The bookseller who provided the music books (at a cost of 1,100 reales) has been identified as Blas de Robles. See María Gembero Ustárroz, ‘Circulación de libros de música entre España y América (1492–1650): Notas para su estudio’, in Fenlon and Knighton (eds.), Early Music Printing, p. 154.

7 Antonio García-Abásolo, ‘The Private Environment of the Spaniards in the Philippines’, Philippine Studies, 44 (1996), p. 365.

8 See William John Summers, ‘Listening for Historic Manila: Music and Rejoicing in an International City’, Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, 2 (1998), p. 203, and Robert Murrell Stevenson, ‘Guerrero, Francisco’, New Grove II, x, p. 502.

9 I am grateful to Iain Fenlon for his suggestion of this hypothesis. Joan Brudieu, whose collection entitled De los madrigales was published in Barcelona in 1585, seems a possible candidate.

10 The library belonged to a Spanish gentleman who was possibly named Trebiña or Treviño. See Irving A. Leonard, ‘One Man's Library, Manila, 1583’, Hispanic Review, 15 (1947), pp. 84–100 at 84–5, 90, 99; id., Books of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and of Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century New World (Berkeley, 1992), p. 234; Summers, ‘Listening for Historic Manila’, p. 207.

11 ‘Inventarium Generale Omnium Librorum huius Bibliothecae Conventus Divi Pauli Manilensis Ord. Eremitaru[m] S. P. N. August. in ha[e]c Provintia SS Nominis IESU Philippinarum’, 1754–62, LLIU, Philippine MSS II. The treatise by Lorente is listed under caxon 6, estante 2.

12 A surprising absence, based on our knowledge of popular music treatises in Latin America, is Pablo Nassarre's Escuela música of 1723–4. This work is likely to have been present in Manila, although no tangible evidence has yet emerged.

13 One individual who transmitted works in this way was a Franciscan missionary from Valencia named Franciso Péris de la Concepción. Arriving in Manila via Mexico in 1671, he spent seventeen years in mainland China and Macau, and another thirteen in Manila. A biography written shortly after his death reveals that while he was in Mexico, en route to Asia, he ‘searched out teachers and requested from them papers [that is, copies of treatises], not only for singing, but also the art and rules for the composition of many hymns and Psalms in musical metre’. In Sinica Franciscana, ed. Anastasius van den Wyngaert et al. (Claras Aquas: Collegium s. Bonaventurae, 1929–61), vii, p. 1024. Although we do not know the identities of the treatises and compositions he copied, it seems that they would have provided theoretical foundations for his use of music in evangelisation. In Manila, this missionary composed motets for four voices, but these works are unfortunately lost. See D. R. M. Irving, Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

14 In 1727, a Franciscan named José de la Virgen wrote a treatise in the Bicolano dialect entitled Arte del Canto Gregoriano, according to Eusebio Gómez Platero, Catálogo biográfico de los religiosos franciscanos de la provincia de San Gregorio Magno de Filipinas desde 1577 en que llegaron los primeros á Manila hasta los de nuestros días (Manila, 1880), p. 473. In 1888, the Filipino priest José María Zamora published a Breve explicación de los principios elementales de la música en idioma Tagalog, as we see listed by Trinidad Hermenegildo Pardo de Tavera in Biblioteca filipina: ó sea, Catálogo razonado de todos los impresos, tanto insulares como extranjeros, relativos á la historia, la etnografía, la lingüística, la botánica, la fauna, la flora, la geología, la hidrografía, la geografía, la legislación, etc., de las islas Filipinas, de Joló y Marianas (Washington, DC, 1903), p. 437, no. 2839.

15 There is no evidence for a divergent theory of Western music formulated in the colonial Philippines.

16 ‘È tanto l'obligo che hò a V[ostra] R[everenza] non solamente per la gran carità, che VR usò meco in Roma, ma anche per l'insegnanza che VR tutto il giorno mi dà in queste ultime parti de mondo co’ suoi libri, non meno stimati qui, che in Europa, che sarebbe grande ingratitudine il non scrivere a VR . . . Qui in Manila stò studiando il quarto anno de Theologia, e veggo con l'occhi molte maraviglie, che VR racconta ne suoi libri; de quali uno, cioe la Musurgia, io sono stato il primo che l'hò portato nell'Indie, e non dubbito che sarà di molto utile ai Padri delle missioni, dove s'insegna la musica publicamente; Il P. Ignatio Monti Germano Rettore di Silàn desidera leggerlo, e fra poco glielo mandarò.’ Giovanni Montèl [Montiel], Letter to Athanasius Kircher, 15 July 1654, Archivio della Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Rome, APUG 567, fol. 155^r. (Kircher's correspondence can be viewed online at <http://archimede.imss.fi.it/kircher/index.html>.)

17 But Montiel would have been dead by the time Kircher received this letter. In late 1655, the young Jesuit had been sent on a mission to the Muslim court of Simuay, in the south of the archipelago, possibly with the aim of impressing the Sultan Kudurat with his skills in astronomy and mathematics. Following brief and disastrous negotiations, Montiel and his companion were assassinated just two days after their arrival. See J. S. Arcilla, SJ, ‘Montiel, Juan de’, Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús: Biográfico-temático, ed. Charles E. O'Neill and Joaquín María Domínguez (Rome and Madrid, 2001), iii, p. 2733. There is also an account of this embassy in Horacio de la Costa, The Jesuits in the Philippines, 1581–1768 (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), pp. 448–9.

18 John Fletcher, ‘Athanasius Kircher and the Distribution of his Books’, The Library, 5th ser. 23/2 (1968), pp. 112–13.

19 John Fletcher, ‘Athanasius Kircher and his “Musurgia universalis” (1650)’, Musicology [Australia], 7 (1982), pp. 76, 79.

20 Albert d'Orville, SJ, letter to Kircher, dated Lisbon, 18 Oct. 1656, Archivio della Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Rome, APUG 658, fol. 73^r. See also Catherine Jami, ‘Tomé Pereira (1645–1708), Clockmaker, Musician and Interpreter at the Kangxi Court: Portuguese Interests and the Transmission of Science’, in Luís Saraiva and Catherine Jami (eds.), The Jesuits, the Padroado and East Asian Science (1552–1773) (Singapore and Hackensack, NJ, 2008), p. 191.

21 Hubert Germain Verhaeren, Catalogue de la Bibliothèque du Pé-t'ang / Mission catholique des lazaristes à Pékin (Paris, 1969). This catalogue includes the titles of many mathematical treatises, some of which discuss music to a small degree (in terms of intervallic proportions and harmonic ratios). I do not extend the scope of this present study to consider mathematical treatises.

22 Ibid., cols. 564–5, nos. 1921–3.

23 Ibid., col. 980, no. 3364.

24 Ibid., col. 1026, no. 3542.

25 Ibid., col. 169, no. 624.

26 Ibid., col. 456, no. 1568.

27 Ibid., col. 950, no. 3251. Pedrini wrote from Beijing on 4 Mar. 1711 requesting his brethren in Rome to send printed works by Corelli and some works by ‘Bononcino’ – presumably Giovanni Bononcini fils (1670–1747) (‘le opere di Arcangelo Corelli di buona stampa con alcune di Bononcino’). See Peter C. Allsop and Joyce Lindorff, ‘Teodorico Pedrini: The Music and Letters of an 18th-Century Missionary in China’, Vincentian Heritage, 27/2 (2008), 43–59. The works by Corelli conserved in the Beitang Library may have arrived as a result of this request, but there is no evidence of the arrival of works by Bononcini.

28 Verhaeren, Catalogue de la Bibliothèque du Pé-t'ang, cols. 988–9, no. 3397. The sonatas of Pedrini were most likely composed in situ, and the bound volume appears to have been produced as a presentation copy for the Kangxi Emperor. See Joyce Lindorff, ‘Missionaries, Keyboards and Musical Exchange in the Ming and Qing Courts’, Early Music, 32 (2004), pp. 409–10.

29 Verhaeren, Catalogue de la Bibliothèque du Pé-t'ang, col. 972, no. 3331. On the use of Ledesma's Modo per insegnar in evangelisation, see T. Frank Kennedy, SJ, ‘Some Unusual Genres of Sacred Music in the Early Modern Period: The Catechism as a Musical Event in the Late Renaissance – Jesuits and “Our Way of Proceeding”’, in Kathleen M. Comerford and Hilmar M. Pabel (eds.), Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O'Malley, S.J. (Toronto, Buffalo and London, 2001), pp. 268–70.

30 Verhaeren, Catalogue de la Bibliothèque du Pé-t'ang, col. 924, no. 3147.

31 Jean-Christophe Frisch and François Picard have proposed that the works in this collection may have been used as the basis for setting Chinese texts – such as those composed by Matteo Ricci soon after his arrival at the imperial court in 1601, Xiqin quyi bazhang (Eight songs for a Western string instrument) – to European music, simply by using the technique of paraphrase.

32 Noël Golvers, ‘The Library Catalogue of Diogo Valente's Book Collection in Macao (1633): A Philological and Bibliographical Analysis’, Bulletin of Portuguese-Japanese Studies, 13 (2006), pp. 17, 38–41.

33 We should remember, of course, that music printing was nothing new for Asia: Chinese music notation had been printed since at least the thirteenth century, long before the first woodblock printing of European plainchant in 1473 and Ottaviano Petrucci's printing of his collection Harmonice musices odhecaton with movable type in 1501. The technology for printing on paper with ink was in fact discovered in China during the reign of Empress Wu in the seventh century; it developed there over succeeding centuries. See T. H. Barrett, The Woman who Discovered Printing (New Haven and London, 2008). We should also acknowledge that many techniques for making paper had their origins in China.

34 Robert Murrell Stevenson, Music in Aztec & Inca Territory (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968), pp. 172–3.

35 It is interesting to note that while printing in the Portuguese colonial empire was restricted to eastern settlements for several centuries (Nagasaki always remained under Japanese political control, but was nevertheless one of the most important commercial centres of the Portuguese trade routes), there was no printing in Brazil until 1808. See José Marques de Melo, História social da imprensa: Fatores socioculturais que retardaram a implantação da imprensa no Brasil (Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2003).

36 Xylographic and typographic methods were used, and Chinese craftsmen present in the city proved to excel in this art. They easily eclipsed the skills of Spanish printers and undercut their prices. Most works published by the presses in Manila were related to religious matters, and were printed in European and Asian languages. Chinese characters and Filipino baybayin (the precolonial script that was derived from Sanskrit) were printed from woodblocks and typefaces that were produced specially. Chinese and Filipino printers, engravers and artists all contributed to these publications. Although song texts, poetry and dramatic works (with significant musical components) were printed in many languages, no music in staff notation emerged from Manila's presses until the mid-nineteenth century.

37 Manuale ad sacramenta Ecclesiæ ministranda. D. Ludouici Cerqueira Japonensis episcopi ad usum sui cleri ordinatum, ed. Luiz de Cerqueira (Nangasaquij [Nagasaki]: In Collegio Iaponico Societatis Iesu, 1605). Waterhouse claims that there are ten recorded copies of this publication, but adds that not all of them may be extant. David B. Waterhouse, ‘Southern Barbarian Music in Japan’, in Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco (ed.), Portugal and the World: The Encounter of Cultures in Music (Lisbon, 1997), p. 366. At least two copies appear to be held in the United Kingdom: one in the British Library (C.52.c.12), the other in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Arch. B e.22).

38 Michael Cooper et al. (eds.), The Southern Barbarians: The First Europeans in Japan (Tokyo and Palo Alto, Calif., 1971), p. 88. For a full description of Manuale's contents, see Sir Ernest Mason Satow, The Jesuit Mission Press in Japan, 1591–1610 ([London], 1888), pp. 47–50.

39 Eta Harich-Schneider, A History of Japanese Music (London, 1973), pp. 473–4.

40 Ibid., p. 473.

41 Although all priests in Japan were originally Europeans (mostly Portuguese and Italian), some fourteen Japanese clerics were ordained between 1601 and 1614. See J. F. Moran, The Japanese and the Jesuits: Alessandro Valignano in Sixteenth-Century Japan (London and New York, 1993), p. 161. Throughout Japan, converts studied the musical arts of Europe in the Jesuit seminaries, where they were instructed in the performance of European plainchant and polyphony, and the making and playing of European musical instruments. However, an edict prohibiting the practice of Christianity throughout Japan was issued in 1614, and certain cultural acts associated with the work of Roman Catholic missionaries (such as the study and performance of European music) were systematically suppressed.

42 Waterhouse, ‘Southern Barbarian Music in Japan’, p. 366.

43 See Tatsuo Minagawa, ‘Madrid Version of Manuale ad Sacramenta’, Ongakugaku: Journal of the Musicological Society of Japan, 52/2 (2006), pp. 109–21. This article is an addendum to his earlier book Yōgaku toraikō: Kirishitan ongaku no eikōto zasetsu (Tokyo, 2004).

44 For a well-known account of this story, see Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, SJ, Description géographicque, historique, chronologique, politique, et physique de l'empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinoise, 4 vols. (Paris, 1735), iii, 266.

45 These manuscripts were recently discovered in Beijing by Wang Bing. See Jami, ‘Tomé Pereira (1645–1708)’, 194, citing Wang Bing, ‘Lülü zuanyao' zhi yanjiu’, Gugong bowuyuan yuankan, 102 (2002), pp. 69–71.

46 Jami, ‘Tomé Pereira (1645–1708)’, p. 195.

47 See Allsop and Lindorff, ‘Teodorico Pedrini’.

48 Jami, ‘Tomé Pereira (1645–1708)’, p. 194.

49 See Gerlinde Gild-Bohne, ‘The Introduction of European Musical Theory during the Early Qing Dynasty: The Achievements of Thomas Pereira and Theodorico Pedrini’, in Roman Malek, SVD (ed.), Western Learning and Christianity in China: The Contribution and Impact of Johann Adam Schall von Bell, S.J. (1592–1666), ii (Nettetal, 1998), pp. 1192–8.

50 Gerlinde Gild-Bohne, Das Lü Lü Zheng Yi Xubian: Ein Jesuitentraktat über die europäische Notation in China 1713 (Göttingen, 1991), pp. 116–18. Interestingly, it appears that another Jesuit in China, Ferdinand Verbiest, began to translate small portions of Kircher's Musurgia into Chinese towards the end of his life. In a letter of 1 Aug. 1685, Verbiest writes that the absence of Pereira had caused him to embark on this task. See Noël Golvers, The Astronomia Europaea of Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J. (Dillingen, 1687) (Nettetal, 1993), p. 311. The relevant text of the letter can be found in H. Josson, SJ, and L. Willaert, SJ (eds.), Correspondance de Ferdinand Verbiest de la Compagnie de Jésus (1623–1688) directeur de l'observatoire de Pékin (Brussels, 1938), p. 491.

51 Joyce Z. Lindorff and Peter Allsop, ‘From the Qing Court to the Vatican: Teodorico Pedrini's Half Century of Letters’, unpublished paper presented at the ‘Study Day: Inter-cultural contact in the early modern period’, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 18 June 2005, part of which is now published in the article cited in n. 27.

52 ‘Observaciones diversarum artium’, late seventeenth century, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 7111, pp. 481–596.

53 ‘Observaciones diversarum artium’, p. 585.

54 ‘Ego Manilæ vidi operarium Sinensem extendere fere unciam argenti: vulgo petaca in filum longum ulnis hispaniæ. 900 – seu palmos 3600. quorum quatuor complent dictam ulnam[;] erant tamen filla ita tenuissima, ut longitudo unius palmi facillime rumperetur =’. ‘Observaciones diversarum artium’, p. 583. In modern measurements, the total length of this extruded silver string would be around 720 metres, and would be drawn from 28.35 grams of silver.

55 ‘Vidi Manilæ Philippinarum .1. Augusti anno. 1663. Sebastianum Bicos celebrem pictorem hoc instrumentum eleganter satis pulsare, digitis pollice, & indice chordas ferientibus, dum manus sinistrae digiti tactus velociter percurrebant = imitabatur harpam cum plenioribus consonantijs.’ ‘Observaciones diversarum artium’, p. 596.

56 This text was published by Francesco Maurolico in his Opuscula mathematica (Venice, 1575), pp. 145–60.

57 The local reference (following a quotation from Kircher) reads as follows: ‘Nos illud hîc depingimus eius magnitudinis, sicut nunc habemus totum est calybeum. pars. AB. applicatur dentibus aliquantisper apertis, & respiratio interius attrahitur melothetice dum indice plectam .CD. a parte .D. etiam harmonice indice percutitur, et movetur ictibus, ut fieri solet in chordis sonaturis = Apud Lusitanos Indiæ orientalis dicitur: Bìrimbào = Manilæ inter pueros Hispanos vocatur[:] Tròmpo = ibidem inter Pampangos, & per participationem inter Tagalos appellatur: Colîng. & a pueris eorumdem: Subî[n]g. = ac manus sinistræ primis tribus digitis tenetur arcus latus. EF, cum pulsatur =’ (‘We have depicted [it] here in its actual size. It is all made of steel. [He goes on to describe the playing technique.] Amongst the Portuguese of the East Indies it is called Bìrimbào. In Manila amongst Spanish children it is called Trompo. Amongst the Kapampangans, and by association with the Tagalogs, it is called Coling. And by the children of these same: Subi[n]g’). ‘Observaciones diversarum artium’, p. 591.

58 ‘Quædam Musica, quæ a feminis Tagalensibus philippinarum proprijs cantilenis sui idiomatis Solet decantantibus adaptari =’. ‘Observaciones diversarum artium’, loose leaf between pp. 498 and 499.

59 Sir George Staunton, An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China: Including Cursory Observations Made, and Information Obtained, in Travelling through that Ancient Empire, and a Small Part of Chinese Tartary, 2 vols. (London, 1797), ii, p. 163.

60 ‘Ecclesia v.^o hominum multitudine redundanti magna cum solemnitate vesperas inceperunt tres chori. Clericus quidam Japonensis opinione maior musicus organa percurrere cepit: et Missas composuit, antiphonas en que que [sic] ad carmina honoris commoda erant modulatus est non pausa.’ MS, Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Philipp. 6-II, fols. 292^v–293^r.

61 Two candidates for the identity of this unnamed Japanese musician immediately present themselves: either Luis Shiozuka (1576–1637), a Japanese Christian who had received his musical training at the Jesuit seminary of Arima, Japan, and who was living in exile in Manila; or fray Guillermo de Silva y Cárdenas, OSA (d. 1647), an organist of the Augustinian convent of Manila who had been born in Japan, but whose ethnicity is not made clear in Augustianian records. See Irving, Colonial Counterpoint.