LVII Tiento y discurso de medio registro de dos baxones de otcavo tono (Facultad Organica, 1626)

In June of this year, I uploaded Tiento LVII from Francisco Correa de Arauxo's “Facultad Organica“ here in the forum. Since it seems to have been mysteriously deleted during my absence, I am posting it again today.

The “Libro de tientos y discursos de musica practica, y theoretica de organo, intitulado Facultad Organica” (1626) is the only surviving work by Francisco Correa de Arauxo (1584–1654) and is considered the most important collection of Iberian organ music from the first half of the 17th century.

Correa seems to have been a self-confident, even combative person, repeatedly involved in legal disputes: When he was appointed organist of the collegiate church of San Salvador in Seville at 15, a legal dispute with his defeated competitor followed, not resolved in his favour until five years later. Upon his ordination as a priest in 1608, another conflict arose because the cathedral chapter refused to reissue a lost document certifying his organist position, resolved only after the archbishop threatened to excommunicate the chapter. Further harassment and quarrels, including brief imprisonment, kept him searching for posts until he became organist at the cathedral in Jaén in 1636. Poor instrument condition and disrupted church music there prompted his move to the Cathedral of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción y de San Frutos in Segovia in 1640, where he remained until his death.

The extensive preface of the Facultad Organica shows Correa as self-confident, critical of organists who value dexterity over spiritual understanding, and proud of the intellectuality and originality of his own work, as demonstrated in the Tiento presented here.