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JOSÉ DE LOAYSA Y AGURTO
(Flourished at Mexico City 1647-1695)
I SABEL P OPE [C ONANT ] happily discovered among manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid (Manuscritos de América: 251, Tomo III, 23. Signatura 3048, fols. 176-179) an itemized list of all the musicians hired by Mexico City Cathedral in 1647. Signed May 20 of that year, this list begins with the chapelmaster, L do [licenciado] Luys Coronado, earning a yearly 500 pesos. His deputy L do Melchor de los Reyes earned half that amount. The salaries of the named nineteen choir members ranged from 300 down to 50 pesos annually. The five staff instrumentalists earned 150, 200, or 250 pesos. Joseph de Loaysa comes sixteenth in the list of nineteen cathedral choristers, with an annual salary of 100 pesos. This document, published in Nuestra Música , VI /21 (1 er Trimestre, 1951), pages 22-23, forces us to place Loaysa y Agurto's birthdate not much later than 1625. At the very least, he was therefore in his mid-sixties when in 1688 Antonio de Salazar replaced him as cathedral chapelmaster.
Sometime between 1647 and 1655 Loaysa took a cut of 10 pesos in his annual pay. For almost a year after Francisco López Capillas became maestro de capilla April 21, 1654, he and his other subordinates who had suffered cuts kept besieging the Mexico City cathedral chapter for salary raises. When on April 30, 1655, Joseph de Loaysa y Agurto added his petition for an annual 30 pesos above the 90 that he had been just previously receiving, the chapter acceded but also announced that henceforth absolutely not a single other musician's request would be entertained, because of "la mucha necessidad de la fabrica" ("the [cathedral] foundation's severe economic plight"). 1
After López Capillas's death January 18, 1674, 2 the chapter waited several years before naming Loaysa y Agurto maestro de capilla. In 1676 when providing the music for the August 15 villancicos by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648/1651-1695) he remained merely "B.r Ioseph de Agurto, y Loaysa, Maestro de los villancicos de dicha Santa Iglesia." 3 The title page of the December 8 villancicos published in 1676 calls him "B.r Ioseph de Agurto, y Loaysa, Maestro Compositor de dicha Santa Iglesia." 4 ...