¡A la fiesta!

¡A la fiesta! is a world premiere recording of Christmas villancicos by Joseph de San Juan (1687–1735), one of the most celebrated Spanish composers of his day and a long-neglected figure. Born in Olot as the Catalan Joseph Joanetas Serra y Santaló, he rose to maestro de capilla of Madrid’s Descalzas Reales, and the pieces here come from archives in Guatemala, Paris and Madrid. The villancico is a sacred song in the vernacular, typically built from a musically elaborate estribillo and strophic coplas. Raúl Angulo Díaz’s liner notes show how the form borrowed from Spanish popular theatre, the sainete and the jácara among them. Shepherds banter and dance for the infant Jesus, and visitors from Portugal, Italy and elsewhere arrive in comic, musically stereotyped guise. By the 1730s, Italian influence had even brought recitatives and arias into the mix, as in Un pastorcillo italiano.

Two instrumental recercadas by Francisco Hernández y Llana, possibly Joseph de San Juan’s pupil, and the anonymous-attributed Soberana María complete the programme. Jorge Losana leads Cantoría, the vocal ensemble that won the 2025 Ojo Crítico prize for classical music, with a Baroque chamber ensemble of strings, oboe, plucked instruments, organ and percussion. Recorded at the Red Hall of the National Forum of Music in Wrocław, the album is a warm, theatrical Christmas celebration from eighteenth-century Spain.

Cantoría
Jorge Losana, conductor and tenor