El Tratado de Santa Eulalia: un manuscrito musical náhuatl

Resumen

Lemmon and Horcasitas present the paleography andtranslation of a Nahuatl colonial manuscript on music theory from SantaEulalia, a Kanjobal (Mayan) town in the Cuchumatan mountains of Guatemala.Their translation and an earlier study were published in 1980 in Chile. Theimportant Nahuatl text is included here. Lemmon provides an introductionregarding to colonial Guatemalan music, citing a number of recent studies,while Horcasitas situates the use of Nahuatl in the region as a linguafrancaand the existence of Nahuatl varieties in Guatemala. He analyzesthe language used in the manuscript, and concludes that it shows closer ties tothe colonial Valley of Mexico dialects than to Pipil, the Nahuatl dialect moredeeply rooted in Guatemala. Taking into consideration the errors he finds,Horcasitas suggests that the writers either did not know Nahuatl, or werelittle trained in writing the language.