Territory is the key: A look at the birth of ‘national music’ in Spain (1799-1803)

This chapter presents a case study focused on the appearance of the expression 'national music' in newspapers published in Madrid in the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first years of the nineteenth century. It focuses on a controversy that developed around the expression 'national music' in the Diario de Madrid in 1803. The trigger for it was the collection of seguidillas, tiranas, and polos published in two volumes in 1799 and 1802 by Juan Antonio Zamacola. Zamacola affirmed in the introduction of his Collection that his purpose was 'to restore national music in Spain and to remove from our sight the Italian, which can produce no other effect than that of weakening and effeminating the character'. The controversy surrounding luxury, which was revived in Spain in the 1780s, was then articulated in the dilemma between its immorality from the Christian point of view and its positive effects on the economy.