"Juan Navarro’s Quatuor Passiones (1604): Music for Holy Week in Post-Tridentine Mexico"
In 1604, Juan Navarro, a Franciscan priest ministering to indigenous communities in Mexico, composed the first book of original music both written and printed in the Americas. Remarkably, it was also the last music book printed in Mexico for more than a century. Navarro's Quatuor Passiones Christi Domini (Four Passions of Our Lord Christ) contains newly composed plainchant settings of the Passion narratives from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, along with the Lamentations and Prayer of Jeremiah--texts and music intended for Holy Week, the most solemn period of the Church year. Marked by heightened emotion and ritual intensity, Holy Week annually disrupts the regular rhythms of the liturgical calendar and blurs the boundaries between clerical and lay devotional practices. Following the Council of Trent (1545-1563) – and especially in the wake of the Third Mexican Provincial Council of 1585 – Holy Week came under increased scrutiny for perceived abuses and excessive variation in its liturgical observance. This presentation situates Navarro's largely overlooked Quatuor Passiones as both a witness to and an agent of post-Tridentine liturgical reform beyond the Christian centers of Western Europe, with particular attention to its impact in mission churches serving indigenous communities in colonial New Spain.
