Juan Salvador Bautista de Arellano

Juan Salvador Bautista de Arellano was a Spanish writer, born in Seville, of whom little more is known than his membership of the Trinitarian Order in that city. His documented activity falls between 1628 and 1633, a period in which he composed several works of a pseudo-historical character on local and religious themes.

Among these writings is a musical treatise entitled El psalterio de David: exortación, y virtudes de la música, y canto, para todo género de gentes, published in Jerez de la Frontera in 1632. The work blends legend and history. Its first part traces music from classical Antiquity and biblical times through to the Middle Ages; the second examines its religious uses, but also its military, social, educational and recreational ones.

Arellano interweaves ancient fables with anecdotes from his own time and draws imaginative analogies between music and religion. His importance lies in the fact that the book gathers, as a compendium, the kind of material employed in the so-called loor de música, the eulogy that precedes so many Spanish musical treatises and collections of the period.