Christina Kim: From Decline to Discovery: A Choirbook as a Transatlantic Testament to Institutional Endurance

The Project

It’s not every day that a massive, historically important book goes missing in the stacks of a major university library. And yet, in 2021, Stanford rare-book curator, Benjamin Albritton, stumbled on an early eighteenth-century chant manuscript consisting of 138 vellum folios and measuring no less than 78 by 55 cm (that is, 30 by 21 inches), that had been lost in the university stacks for over a century.

Let us take a quick look inside—we will call it Stanford 734—where we can find the most noticeable and the earliest inscribed date of 1691. Above it is written Santiago, then an abbreviation; Albritton postulated that the second part of this inscription is the signature for “Tlatelolco,” suggesting that the book comes from the Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Santiago Tlatelolco in Mexico City or its joint religious home, Convento de Santiago Tlatelolco.

Established in 1536 by the pioneering Franciscans who were among the first missionaries to arrive in the New World, the Colegio de Santiago Tlatelolco represents a milestone in educational, continental, and religious history—it was the first college instituted in the Americas.

My dissertation, titled “Singing Plainchant for the Dead in Colonial Mexico,” scrutinizes the musical function, colonial structures, educational institutions, religious histories, and cultural practices hidden in the musical contents of and contexts for this book. Chapter three positions Stanford 734 as a crucial artifact in the history of Colegio de Santiago Tlatelolco. Despite various setbacks, the college underwent a reorganization in the 1660s that focused primarily on educating friars and instituted new statutes based on those of the Colegio San Buenaventura in Seville. This connection with Seville is bolstered by another choirbook housed at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City, originating from the Convento Santa María de Jesús, only one kilometer from the Colegio de San Buenaventura in Seville.

Findings and Reflections

With heartfelt gratitude to the Europe Center for the Graduate Student Grant and the Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) Funding, I explored this connection further through archival research in Seville just days before presenting a section of my third chapter at the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference in Granada, Spain. My research there not only enriched my work but also taught me unexpected and valuable lessons. 

 The choirbook at the Franz Mayer Museum shares numerous musical traits with Stanford 734, suggesting that they might have been copied from the same book or shared manuscript ancestry. This similarity led me to believe that comparable features would appear in the choirbooks at the Seville Cathedral. With this conviction, I completed my presentation paper and headed to the cathedral library.

After days in the library at the Cathedral of Seville (Institución Colombina) and thoroughly examining a dozen choir books, I how to accept that my hypothesis was incorrect. The choirbooks at the cathedral were not related to Stanford 734.

In comparison to many other archives, this library has strict prohibitions against photographs. This, combined with the absence of Wi-Fi, demanded creative note-taking strategies, especially for notating music. Additionally, physical access to the materials was limited for the sake of conservation; most choir books were accessible only via microfilm. I was, of course, initially disheartened by my unexpected findings, but soon realized that this discovery was even more enlightening than expected. Despite the unified efforts of the Council of Trent, the Sevillian Franciscan materials diverge from the cathedral’s collection.

This realization meant last-minute revisions to my conference presentation, which I managed at a nearby study café—another discovery made possible through financial help. Ultimately, my findings sparked vibrant and productive conversations with brilliant scholars at the conference.

In addition to this challenging discovery, I also spent time at the Archivo General de Indias for archival research and am now in the process of transcribing the documents.

I also visited the Convento Santa María de Jesús and the Iglesia de San Buenaventura. Although neither location had accessible archives, I attended Masses at both. Being at the convent, having studied its choirbook, and standing in the church whose college inspired generations of friar education, was a truly meaningful experience.

Next Steps

While Stanford 734 and the thirteen choirbooks at the cathedral may not be identical, they provided valuable insights into the development and preservation of these works. I hope to uncover more Franciscan choirbooks for the dead from Seville and other parts of Ibero-America. The fourth chapter of my dissertation will present a comparative analysis of choirbooks for the dead from Mexico and Seville alongside Stanford 734.

I will miss the cool, tranquil haven of the Institución Colombina—a welcome escape from the intense summer heat and bustling crowds of Seville.