Antonio De Santa Cruz

Antonio de Santa Cruz
(fl c1700). Spanish vihuelist, guitarist and composer. He wrote the elegantly illustrated Libro donde se veran pazacalles de los ocho tonos i de los trasportados (E-Mn M.2209), copied for ‘Don Juan de Miranda’, possibly the court painter Juan Carreño de Miranda (1614–85; see Esses).

The music, which is prefaced by advice on how to play cleanly and a chart of the Italian alfabeto chords, includes traditional Spanish dance types and 11 passacalles arranged by key according to the alfabeto system, and ends with a fantasía and passacalles in scordatura (using the same tuning that Francesco Corbetta adopted for his suite published in 1648) and a torneo, or battle piece. The watermark and certain notational idiosyncrasies (similar to those in E-Mn M.811) suggest a date between about 1690 and 1710. Santa Cruz’s title-page states that the book is for ‘biguela hordinaria’, but it is clear that his instrument had five courses and the same tuning as the contemporary guitar. Chords rarely have more than three notes and nearly all passages are plucked – a style preferred also by Francisco Guerau in his Poema harmónico (Madrid, 1694). The music shuns the bell-like campanelas favoured by Gaspar Sanz and Santiago de Murcia, resembling more that of Guerau, which probably made use of bordones (bass strings). Ornamentation is prevalent, with notated trills, slow and quick slurs and vibrato. Tonalities are indicated by both the alfabeto and the Catalan numerical systems, a feature associated also with Francesc Valls and Sanz, and one which suggests that Santa Cruz, like them, may have been from north-east Spain.