Miguel de Ambiela

Miguel de Ambiela was a Spanish composer born in La Puebla de Albortón, near Zaragoza, around 1666, and died in Toledo in March 1733. His career unfolded almost entirely in the Crown of Aragon and in Castile, in churches and convents where he served as maestro de capilla, the post responsible for liturgical music.

His musical studies began in Daroca around the age of fifteen, where he held the post of maestro de capilla at the collegiate church in 1685–1686. He then served in Lérida, Jaca and at El Pilar in Zaragoza, and later at the convent of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid between 1707 and 1710. From March 1710 until his death he worked at Toledo Cathedral, where he is apparently the last maestro de capilla to have bequeathed an important repertoire of choir books.

This legacy includes eight masses for four voices based on his own motets, the eight motets and three hymns. In 1717 he published in Toledo the Disceptación músical y discurso problemático, in defence of the use of the unprepared dissonance employed by Francisco Valls. His music, in Latin and in the vernacular, survives in several Spanish collections, and his villancico for the Assumption, Suban las voces al cielo, shows a notable command of word-painting.