Tomás Micieces el menor
Tomás Micieces el menor
Genres: spanish, 17th century
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About Tomás Micieces el menor
Tomás Micieces el menor (Toledo, 4 December 1655 – Salamanca, 16 May 1718) was a Spanish maestro de capilla and composer whose career spanned several of the most significant musical institutions of late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century Spain. Although modern writers distinguish him as el menor, he himself almost never used the designation, which has long caused confusion with his father, the influential maestro de capilla Tomás Micieces el mayor. The difficulty is compounded by the unstable orthography of the surname, variously transmitted as Micieces, Miziezes, Micieres, Misieses, and other variants. Raised in the rich musical environments of Toledo Cathedral, the Descalzas Reales in Madrid, and later Pamplona, Micieces received his earliest and most lasting musical formation from his father. His subsequent education was almost certainly shaped by two of the leading figures of the Royal Chapel, Cristóbal Galán and Carlos Patiño, whose stylistic influence is discernible in several of his surviving works. A dismissal recorded in Pamplona Cathedral in 1672 for a boy named Tomás de Micieces may refer to him, though this cannot be proved. He is securely documented in Madrid by 1679. A letter of 31 December 1680 from Pedro de Ardanaz to Miguel de Irízar identifies Micieces “el mozo”, now ordained, as maestro de capilla of the collegiate church of El Castellar de Santisteban del Puerto (Jaén). He appears to have returned to Madrid soon afterwards, probably drawn back to his family. From May 1685, after satisfying the customary limpieza de sangre requirements, he assumed the magisterio of El Burgo de Osma, where in 1690 he attended the marriage of his sister to the deputy organist Pedro de San Martín. In 1692, following the resignation of Manuel de Egüés , Micieces travelled to Zaragoza to be examined for the vacant position at La Seo. He was admitted by the Cabildo and remained there during the month of June for the Corpus celebrations, a period marked by his attempts to impose discipline on a notoriously unruly group of musicians. He briefly returned to Osma to settle his affairs and collect the remainder of his salary, then moved to Zaragoza permanently. Once established, he was asked to assist with the musical education of the Infantes del Pilar, as the ageing maestro of El Pilar, Diego de Cáseda, was no longer able to fulfil this responsibility. It is possible that Micieces played a role in the early discussions surrounding the creation of a seminary for musicians and choirboys at La Seo, proposed in March 1694. Pena y Anglés once suggested that Micieces left Zaragoza to take a post at the Descalzas Reales, but this is contradicted by the chapter acts of La Seo, which record his formal resignation on 22 October 1694, following his successful application for the maestro de capillaship at Salamanca Cathedral. There he succeeded Francisco de Zubieta, who had resigned after failing to obtain the Chair of Music at the University of Salamanca — a position traditionally linked to the cathedral magisterio. Before Micieces’ appointment, the council received letters from several aspirants, including Matías García Venayas and Simón Martínez, though only three candidates were ultimately considered: Vicente Pantoja (Oviedo), Vicente Ambiela (Daroca), and Micieces himself. He was elected on 23 July 1694, though his formal appointment was not issued until 12 November. In 1695, with the incumbent professor Diego Verdugo long absent in Madrid on the pretext of royal service, Micieces assumed the university Chair of Music on an interim basis. He would not obtain it in full right until Verdugo’s retirement in 1700. Thereafter he held both posts — maestro de capilla of the cathedral and professor of music at the university — until his death on 7 May 1718. Micieces’s surviving works, chiefly preserved in manuscript in the Cathedral of Salamanca, reveal an openness to modern idioms: the use of violins, early adoption of the term aria, and, in a villancico composed either in Zaragoza or for La Seo (villancico a San Pedro Arbués), the introduction of recitative. Although tradition claims he intervened in the celebrated Valls controversy, no such Opinión by him has been located; an opinion attributed to him does survive in Francisco Hortador’s Apologética defensa y diálogo musical, which was unrelated to the dispute. Francisco Valls, in his Mapa armónico, lists “Micieces” (without specifying father or son) among the outstanding composers of Christmas carols, alongside Patiño, Galán, Durón, Torres, Ambiela, and others. Beyond Salamanca, several of his villancicos and liturgical works are preserved in Zaragoza (La Seo), although most of his oeuvre remains unpublished and awaits comprehensive modern study. Together with his father, he stands as one of the most significant — if still insufficiently explored — chapelmasters of the later Spanish Baroque.
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