Cover of a publication dedicated to the life and work of Higini Anglès

Maspujols (Tarragona) January 1, 1888 - Rome (Italy) December 8, 1969
Priest
Musicologist

He was born into a modest, Christian family dedicated to agriculture. His early years were spent in the rural environment of a small village in the Camp de Tarragona region, located southeast of Montsant. Its inhabitants, around five hundred at that time, were primarily engaged in the cultivation of olives, almonds, and grapes. Later in life, he would acknowledge that his travels through the villages of inland Catalonia during his childhood and youth decisively influenced the formation of his ideas about early Spanish music, undeniably influenced, according to him, by folk traditions (The Music of the Cantigas, vol. II, p. 5).

In 1899, at the age of eleven, Higinio Anglés's parents took their son to the Seminary of Tarragona to study for the priesthood as a boarding student, as was customary at the time. The Tarragona seminary had lost its university status in 1717, as had all the Catalan conciliar seminaries, which were absorbed by the University of Cervera, founded by King Philip V.

The Tarragona seminary, however, continued to teach the same subjects under the title of Literary Studies, without the authority to grant degrees. In 1886, the old residence that housed the seminarians was replaced by a modern, larger, and more functional building on San Pablo Street. The renovation that the move from one building to the other represented encouraged the idea of ​​regaining its university status.

By Decree of July 2, 1897, Pope Leo XIII granted the Tarragona Seminary the authority to award the corresponding degrees. Higinio Anglés entered the seminary just as its leaders had realized a long-held dream and were striving to raise the academic standards and enhance the prestige of the students' formation for the priesthood. Thus, after six years of humanities studies, three of philosophy, and four of theology, seminarian Higinio Anglés was ordained a priest in 1912. While pursuing his ecclesiastical studies, he was able to dedicate time to his musical training. By time immemorial tradition, the study of music was not only compatible with the priesthood but also complementary and, to a certain extent, necessary, given its essential role in daily and solemn liturgy. Those who showed an interest in and possessed sufficient talent for music received every possible support from the institution and its leaders to further their musical studies. Seminarian Higinio Anglés took advantage of this opportunity to pursue music as a second profession.

Barely had he received holy orders when the new priest obtained permission to move to Barcelona and complete his musical training there, combining it with his priestly duties. In Barcelona, ​​he founded the Schola Cantorum of the parish of Santa Madrona (1916). There, he greatly benefited from the teachings of distinguished masters. With the organist Vicente María de Gibert Serra (1879-1939), he perfected his studies in harmony, counterpoint, fugue, and organ. From José Barberá Humbert (1877-1947), he received instruction in music theory and learned a method for approaching folk music technically. The Benedictine monk of Montserrat, Gregorio Suñol (1879-1946), would be his teacher in paleography and Gregorian chant. Finally, the person who would exert the greatest influence on his definitive dedication to musicology would be the composer, essayist, and editor of early music, Felipe Pedrell (1841-1922). In 1917, Anglés joined the Library of Catalonia as head of the Music Department. This department was created as a result of Pedrell's donation of his books and manuscripts.

Anglés recounts (La música de las Cantigas, III: XV) that, as a condition of bequeathing his legacy to the Library of Catalonia, the renowned musician stipulated the creation of a music section within the library, to be headed by the young priest. Higinio Anglés's first task in this department was to catalog Pedrell's musical legacy, which, along with the edition of Brudieu's madrigals, would become his first published work (Barcelona 1921).

The Library of Catalonia awarded him a scholarship to study Musicology in Germany (1923-1924) at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, where he established a close relationship with Willibald Gurlitt (1889-1963), a young and active musicologist, a pioneer in the research and performance of early music on original instruments, and editor of Praetorius's work. This first stay in Germany was decisive in shaping his dedication to Musicology, a discipline born as a historical science within the framework of 19th-century German positivism. Upon returning to Barcelona, ​​he resumed his position at the Library of Catalonia. There, he was able to combine his role as curator with that of researcher of the rich musical collections held by his library and other Spanish archives, notably from the medieval and Renaissance periods. While preparing a scholarly study on music in Catalonia up to the 13th century, which would be published in Barcelona in 1935 by the Institute of Catalan Studies, he edited the polyphonic codex of Las Huelgas de Burgos in 1932. Anglés realized that it was a unique codex, both for its repertoire and its script, among all those containing polyphonic music from the so-called Notre Dame School of Paris, whose splendor reached its zenith during the 13th century. With the publication of this book, Anglés established himself as an internationally renowned musicologist. To edit the music of this manuscript, whose existence he had learned of from the Benedictines of Santo Domingo de Silos, the Catalan priest had the invaluable assistance of the leading expert on medieval polyphony, Friedrich Ludwig (1872-1930), professor at the University of Göttingen, where he had temporarily moved in 1928.

In 1927, the administration of the Liceu Conservatory of Music in Barcelona invited Higinio Anglés to take up the chair of Music History. Likewise, in 1933, he was invited to teach this subject at the Central University of the same city.

When the Spanish Civil War broke out (1936-1939), Higinio Anglés moved to Munich, where the vicar of the diocese, Ferdinand Buchwieser, secured for him—as he would later confess—"a happy refuge at the Institut der Englischen Fräulein der Nymphenburg" (The Music of the Cantigas, II: 10). During the war, Anglés dedicated all his time to the study of the Cantigas de Santa María of King Alfonso X the Wise, thanks to his librarian friend Jorge Rubió, who provided him with a photographic copy of manuscript B.I.2 from the Library of El Escorial. During his time in Munich, he associated with eminent German professors, including the musicologists Rudolf von Ficker (1886-1954), a scholar of Gothic music; Otto Ursprung (1879-1960), a priest specializing in Renaissance polyphony; Friedrich Gennrich (1883-1967), author of important works on troubadours and trouvères; and the philologist Hans Spanke (1884-1944), who provided invaluable assistance in the study of the meter of the Cantigas de Santa María.

After the Civil War ended, Anglés returned to his Library of Catalonia, which had been relocated from its previous location to the former Hospital of Sant Pau i de la Santa Creu. In the new building, opened to the public on February 20, 1940, he reviewed the archives, verified the missing materials, and dedicated himself to acquiring primary and secondary sources to equip the Music Department with the best resources for research on Spanish music.

Higinio Anglés's tireless work in the research, defense, and dissemination of Spanish musical heritage earned him his election as a full member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando.

In his response to Anglés's inaugural address on June 28, 1943, the Jesuit and composer Nemesio Otaño (1880-1956) advocated for the creation, funded by the state budget, of a school or institution capable of "perpetuating the teachings of such a wise master." Otaño's remarks, delivered in the Academy's auditorium, had an almost immediate effect on the realization of a project that had been encouraged shortly after the founding of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in November 1939 to "train a faculty to guide Hispanic thought." Thus, three months after the aforementioned response to the speech, on September 27, 1943, the decree establishing the Higher Institute of Musicology within the CSIC was signed. In January 1944, it began operating under the direction of Higinio Anglés with two locations: one in Madrid, with a secretariat headed by José Subirá (1882-1980), and the other in Barcelona, ​​headed by Miguel Querol (1912-2002).

Higinio Anglés' professional life was inextricably linked to that of the Higher Institute of Musicology and the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome, of which he was the driving force and which he elevated to levels of great prestige. On October 21, 1947, he was appointed president of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome, succeeding his former teacher, Gregorio Suñol. This Institute, created to train the church musicians who would implement the reform promoted by Pope Pius X in a motu proprio of 1903, functioned as a university faculty and granted degrees in the various specialties of sacred music: Gregorian chant, polyphony, and organ. Anglés added musicology to the curriculum, endowing it with a select faculty and an excellent library. His research, always conducted within the Spanish Institute of Musicology, culminated in remarkable publications, some carried out by him personally, others with the quiet assistance of notable collaborators and students, particularly Miguel Querol and José María Lloréns. Within the Institute, he created a department of Hispanic folklore, where he compiled the work he had done in Catalonia during his youth and many other projects commissioned by him. But his most intensive work focused on the recovery of early Spanish music. He conceived a vast project to catalog Spanish music libraries and archives. Some of the resulting catalogs were published, such as that of the Madrid Music Library in collaboration with José Subirá, while others remained in the respective libraries and at the Institute of Musicology itself.

The activity that achieved the greatest international renown was the publication of early music by the great Spanish masters in editions notable for their typographic quality, the authenticity of the versions, and the depth of the accompanying studies. His most important publications appeared in a specially created collection entitled Monuments of Spanish Music. To compile monographs on Spanish music, he founded the scholarly journal Anuario Musical (1946).

Higinio Anglés worked at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music as an organizer, professor, and advisor to the Pope on matters of church music. In this capacity, he founded the International Congresses of Sacred Music, the Federation of Cecilian Associations—which, since the 19th century, had proliferated to defend the quality and religious significance of music in Catholic churches—and finally the Consociatio Internationalis Musicae Sacrae, dedicated to defending the traditional values ​​of Latin, polyphonic, Gregorian, and organ music at a time when liturgical reforms undertaken after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) threatened its existence.

Among the decorations received, the following stand out: Order of Isabella the Catholic (1949), Silver Medal of the President of the Italian Republic (1949), Silver Medal of the Austrian Republic (1956), Silver Medal of the Mozarteum Foundation (1956), Grand Silver Medal of the City of Paris (1957), Gold Medal of the City of Barcelona (1957), Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic (1958) and the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1960). His most important academic titles were the following: Vice-President of the International Musicological Society (1933-1958) and Honorary Member for Life; Full Member of the Royal Academy of Belles Lettres of Barcelona (1940), Full Member of the Institute of Catalan Studies (1941), Full Member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (1943), Honorary Member of the Royal Music Association of London (1945), and Member of the Academy of Music and Performing Arts of Vienna (1960). He was also a corresponding member of the following: Academy of Sciences Göttingen (1939); the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences of Copenhagen (1946); the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Brussels (1949); the Academy of Sciences of Munich (1950); and the Petrarch Academy of Arezzo. (1951), The Hispanic Society of America (1957).

In 1947 he was appointed Domestic Prelate of His Holiness.

Works:

Catalog of the musical manuscripts of the Pedrell Collection, Barcelona, ​​Institut d'Estudis Catalans, 1920

(ed.), Els madrigals i la missa de difunts d'en Brudieu, Barcelona, ​​Institut d'Estudis Catalans, 1921

Popular songs of the Camp de Tarragona, Reus, Reading Center, 1924

(ed.), Johannis Pujol (1573-1626). Opera Omnia, Barcelona, ​​Calaluña Library, 1926-1932, 2 vols.

(ed.), Johannis Cabanilles (1644-1712.) Opera Omnia, Barcelona, ​​Library of Catalonia, 1927-1936, 4 vols.

(ed.), The musical codex of the Huelgas, Barcelona, ​​Institut d'Estudis Catalans, 1931

(ed.), Antonio Soler (1729-1783). Sis quintets per a instruments d'arc i orgue o clave obligat, Barcelona, ​​Institut d'Estudis Catalans, Biblioteca de Catalunya, 1933

History of Spanish music. Appendix to the History of Music by Johannes Wolf, Barcelona, ​​1935

Music in Catalonia at the end of the 13th century, Barcelona, ​​1935

(ed.), Music in the Court of the Catholic Monarchs, Barcelona, ​​CSIC, 1941, 3 vols.

(ed.), The music of the Cantigas de Santa María of King Alfonso X the Wise, Barcelona, ​​Provincial Council, 1943, 3 vols.

Music in the Spain of Ferdinand the Saint and Alfonso the Wise, Madrid, Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, 1943

(ed.), Music at the Court of Charles V, Madrid, CSIC-Spanish Institute of Musicology, 1944

(ed.), Juan Vásquez. Collection of Sonnets and Villancicos for Four and Five Voices (Seville 1560), Barcelona, ​​1946

with J. Subirá, Musical Catalogue of the National Library of Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Spanish Institute of Musicology, 1946-1951, 3 vols.

Spain's Glorious Contribution to the History of Universal Music, Madrid [S. Aguirre], 1948

(ed.), Cristóbal de Morales (†1553). Complete Works, Rome, CSIC, 1952, 8 vols.

Dictionary of Music, Labor, Barcelona, ​​Labor, 1954, 2 vols.

(ed.), Mateo Flecha (†1553). The Salads (Prague 1581), Barcelona, ​​Provincial Council, 1954

(ed.), Anthology of Spanish Organists of the 17th Century, Barcelona, ​​Provincial Council, 1965, 4 vols.

(ed.), Tomás Luis de Victoria. Complete Works, Rome, CSIC, 1965, 4 vols.

(ed.), Antonio de Cabezón. Works of Music for Keyboard, Harp, Vihuela [...], Madrid, 1966, 3 vols.

History of Medieval Music in Navarre, Pamplona, ​​Provincial Council of Navarre, Prince of Viana Institution, 1970

Musical Scripts, ed. and study. by J. López-Calo, Rome, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1975, 3 vols.

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