Miguel López

Miguel López was born in Villarroya de la Sierra, in Aragon, on 1 February 1669, and died in Zaragoza on 7 June 1723. A composer and organist, he is a representative figure of Spanish religious music during the transition from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, and his output survives almost in its entirety in a single manuscript.

His training began around 1678, when he entered the Montserrat Escolania as a boy chorister. In 1684 he became a Benedictine novice in the same monastery and, in 1686, he professed as a full member of the community. Between 1689 and 1696 he served as organist at the monastery of San Martín in Madrid, while studying theology at the University of Salamanca. He later directed the Montserrat chapel on two occasions, from 1699 to 1705 and from 1715 to 1718, and was organist at the monastery of San Benito in Valladolid between 1705 and 1715. In 1722 he was appointed administrator of the abbey's house in Alcañiz.

Most of what is known of his output is preserved in the Miscellanea musicae, a volume of 580 folios written in his own hand, which gathers pieces for liturgical use composed throughout his career, many of them dated between 1696 and 1720. His Latin works follow the polychoral writing customary in Spanish ecclesiastical music of the seventeenth century, with a austere, understated style that alternates between imitative passages and antiphonal effects. Devotional villancicos written for religious festivals, and his organ versets, which are polyphonic and largely didactic in character, complete the corpus.

López was also a scholarly author. With some reservations, he is credited with the authorship of four satirical pamphlets published in 1718-1719 in defence of Valls during the controversy over the Missa aretina. His two-volume musical treatise, the Exagoga ad musicem, has been lost. Today he is remembered above all for the documentary value of his manuscript and for modern editions of his organ versets and masses.