Música, nobleza y vida cotidiana en la Hispanoamérica del siglo XVIII: hacia un replanteamiento

This article revises a conviction strongly established in the traditional historiography of colonial music, according to which eighteenth-century Spanish American nobility, mostly integrated by Creole bureaucrats, miners, and merchants of low intellectual profile, neither had artistic interests nor promoted the performance of chamber music in the domestic milieu, by contrast with what happened with its European counterpart. This assumed lack of interest, a result of equating the supposed lack of sources with the absence of practice, is based on the assumption that music making did not represent any social value for the imaginary of the privileged estate. By means of the examination of unpublished sources and a review of previous publications related to the daily life and the material culture of these urban elites, this work contributes evidence that points toward a diametrically opposed phenomenon that allows us to reconsider the role and significance that music making had for this social group.