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ALEXANDER-SERGEI RAMÍREZ ·  GUITARRA CLÁSICA DEL PERÚ - Ximénez · Anónimo

PEDRO XIMÉNEZ DE ABRILL Y TIRADO

The 23 minuets for classical guitar recorded on this CD were composed by the Kapellmeister of the Cathedral of Sucre, Pedro Ximénez de Abrill y Tirado (Arequipa, Peru 1780 – Sucre, Bolivia 1857) and were published in 1844 in Paris, most likely under the aegis of former Bolivian President Andres de Santa Cruz, then living in exile in Europe. These 23 pieces, chosen by the artist from among the 100 minuets published in France by Parent & Cie., are the only compositions by the incredibly prolific and versatile Ximénez de Abrill known to have been published anywhere.

Ximénez de Abrill worked as a musician and composer in the cathedral in his native Arequipa early on in his career, and also lived and worked in Lima prior to moving to Bolivia in 1833. He was hired as chapel master of the cathedral in Sucre by the President of the Peru-Bolivian Confederation (1828-1838) Andrés de Santa Cruz. He also taught music at two schools for boys and girls in Sucre.

The balance of Ximénez de Abrill’s oeuvre has been, since the year 2004, part of the large collection of Colonial and Republican era manuscript musical scores preserved in the Bolivian National Archives and Library in Sucre, which was officially designated part of the “Memory of the World” by UNESCO in 2013. These Ximénez de Abrill scores, along with a smaller collection in the Cathedral Archives in Sucre, occupy more than a lineal meter of shelf space.

They include a wide variety of sacred compositions -- masses, hymns, psalms, salves, litanies and passions -- plus secular pieces such as symphonies for small orchestra, duets, trios, quartets and quintets, plus divertimentos, waltzes, sonatas, rondos, marches, patriotic songs, pasodobles, tonadillas, cavatinas, yaravíes and villancicos, or Christmas songs.

The circumstances of the discovery of the Ximénez de Abrill manuscript scores, and of the subsequent purchase of the collection by the Bolivian National Archives and Library in Sucre in 2004 and 2005, are a tale in and of themselves. Beginning in December of 2004, the author of this introductory note, a historian working in Sucre, was offered four different lots of original Ximénez de Abrill scores, all of which were purchased with personal funds and subsequently transferred to the safe keeping of the National Archives, which reimbursed him for the exact amount spent on the four different lots.

In the course of this effort to rescue an important part of Bolivia’s cultural patrimony, some of the details of the collection’s provenance came to light. It appears that the seller of this amazing lot of scores, a man of Bolivian origin but resident in Argentina who had previously tried unsuccessfully to market them in the cities of La Paz, Cochabamba and Potosí, had inherited the documents in the year 2000, along with other papers stored in a large trunk, from four elderly deceased cousins who had lived in the small city of Valle Grande, in the Department (state) of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

How the scores came to reside in Valle Grande almost 150 years after the death of the composer in Sucre in 1857 is a mystery, but it is presumed that the four former owners of the truck in which they were found were somehow descended from Ximénez de Abrill. Although a small number of the scores are stained and slightly deteriorated by humidity, they are still legible, and the great majority of the documents –on handmade rag paper-- are in such pristine condition that they seem new.

The Ximénez de Abrill Collection in the Bolivian National Archives has now been organized and catalogued, and an analytical guide to the entire body of scores, prepared by the Bolivian musicologist Carlos Seoane, was published in Sucre in the year 20121. The catalog includes a biographical essay and general introduction to the scope and value of the collection. In addition, the author of this note published in 2006 a general description of the collection and information about its composer.2

Very little of Ximénez de Abrill’s work has been performed in public in our times, although it is clear that it was performed as part of the very lively cultural life of the Bolivian capital in the 19th century. It is, therefore, highly significant that the classical guitarist Alexander-Sergei Ramirez, himself of Peruvian origin on his father’s side, has chosen the 23 minuets and the other anonymous pieces on this CD to introduce Pedro Ximénez de Abrill Tirado to a wider international audience. It is also to be hoped that this exposure will stimulate interest in the rest of the chapel master’s oeuvre, preserved in Sucre for all of humanity.


William Lofstrom, PhD
Sucre, Bolivia
March 2014

1 Carlos Seoane Urioste, Catálogo analítico de las obras de la colección Pedro Ximénez de Abrill Tirado del Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia, Sucre, 2012.

2 William Lofstrom, “Rescate de una valiosa obra musical de Chuquisaca”, Revista Cultural de la Fundación Cultural del Banco Central de Bolivia, May-June 2006.