Some Transformative Aspects of Music in Évora Cathedral (Portugal) in the Baroque: The Musical Production of Pedro Vaz Rego in the First Decades of the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

Évora Cathedral was an important Portuguese musical centre between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries where numerous composers occupied the posts in its musical service producing repertory to be used there. While for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries not much repertory has survived, for the last decades of the seventeenth and eighteenth century a substantial number of sources provide a glimpse of the musical activity in the Cathedral, notably the composer Pedro Vaz Rego. Through the analysis of his works, focusing the characteristics of an old style predominantly polyphonic and a modern style concertato, some particularities of this composer were identified. In the analysed works it is noticed that Rego was simultaneously author of works in a more conservative style and works that point toward what was produced in the Portuguese musical institutions, notably the Patriarcal of Lisbon where the Italian style was installed, influencing each other, placing the composer in a period of transition regarding the Évora context.