José Bernardo Alzedo, a Peruvian composer born in Lima in 1789, is mostly remembered as the author of the music of the Peruvian National Anthem. Nevertheless, this famous march generally known by the initial words of the text –“Somos libres”– was written as part of a series of patriotic songs created by the composer for a variety of social occasions and settings. Only four of them have survived, but they clearly show how Alzedo used an impressive array of different musical resources to communicate his own ideals for the independence of his country. This was done within the complex political situation of Peru at the beginning of the 19th century, and the peculiar situation of Alzedo himself as a Dominican friar in Lima. The point of this article is that the patriotic song, considered as a genre within
Alzedo’s output during these years, was a malleable and effective means to express different ideological and aesthetic positions in various private and public settings of the society and context of Lima in the first half of the 1820’s.
Keywords:
music, Peru, patriotic song, national anthem, Alzedo
Rondón Sepúlveda, V., & Izquierdo König, J. M. (2015). The Patriotic Songs of José Bernardo Alzedo (1788-1878). Revista Musical Chilena, 68(222), 12–34. Retrieved from https://revistamusicalchilena.uchile.cl/index.php/RMCH/article/view/35908
