Music and theater: El alcalde de Zalamea, by Calderón de la Barca

Abstract

To establish a dialogue between different disciplines is an indispensable practice for a true understanding of knowledge. In the seventeenth century there was absolute conscience regarding this matter, and music and theatre united to leave us a legacy of plays in which the inclusion of music had nothing to do with responding to the demands of the public in the “corrales de comedia”, our playwrights granted the music a higher level. In this paper, we will attempt to clear the dramatic function(s)- that is, if there are- of the musical inclusions in the playwriting of the seventeenth century, whether they belonged to popular tradition or, on the contrary, presumably to the creation of the playwright himself. And all of these matters will be analyzed through one of the most emblematic plays of our dramatic tradition from our Spanish Golden Age, El alcalde de Zalamea, by Calderon de la Barca.