Music, Song and Dance among the Aztecs - a short introduction

Among the Aztecs music, song, and dance played a very important role. Centuries before the European conquest flourished a rich music culture in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan and the centres of neighbouring kingships in the Valley of Mexico and beyond. Aztec musical thought was of a high philosophical level. Musical sounds, song and dance movements were of religious meaning and often accompanied ritual acts, such as offerings and sacrifices. Music and dance were understood as a sacrificial gift to the gods. Interestingly, there was no Aztec word for music. Music was the “art of song” (cuicatlamatiliztli) and musicians did not play but “sang” on their instruments. To dance was “to sing with the feet”.

Dancers surround a teponaztli player, Codex Selden

Within the Aztec temple precinct music was performed by priests, who cared for the musical worship of the gods in sacred courtyards and on top of the pyramids. They sounded trumpets during sacrifices and to announce the times of penance, large rattle-sticks and rattling incense ladles in processions, slit-drums during nightly rituals accompanying astronomical observations on top of the temples, turtle shells, gourd rattles, and bone rasps in ceremonies of grief, flutes, whistles, and many other instruments.

Assembled copies of Aztec wind and percussion instruments (private collection)

Apart from the music of the priests, there was a court music performed by professional musicians and singers, who resided in the palace of the Aztec ruler, in a place called the “house of the Cloud Serpent” (mixcoacalli). The court musicians performed the music of large circular dances, in which often hundreds of dancers took part. They also played for their ruler, such as during daily banquets, which were accompanied by acrobats and dwarfs, and were ordered to play for the wealthy merchants in their private feasts.

Musicians are joined by acrobats and dwarves at an Aztec palace banquet; Florentine Codex Book VIII

Additionally, music played a very important role among the Aztec warriors of the eagle and jaguar societies. These groups of noble warriors gathered in the so-called “house of song” (cuicacalli), a building near the palace, to practice dances and songs, which were performed in the ceremonies of the sacred temple precinct. In this building, which had a huge courtyard for singing and dancing, also the youths of the commoners were carefully trained in musical practice. In battle, the eagle and jaguar warriors made a frightening noise with shell trumpets and whistles and gave drum signals during attacks to direct the movements of the troops. In ceremonial circular dances they played on high-pitched whistles.

Eagle and Jaguar Warriors dance among other nobles (top - Tovar Manuscript); The Aztec 'House of Song' (bottom - Codex Mendoza)

On top of these altars were placed the statues of the Aztec gods of music, “Prince of the Flowers” (Xochipilli) and “Five-Flower” (Macuilxochitl). Musical instruments were highly valued because their ritual sound was considered to be the voice of the gods. Aztec priests fulfilled the role of expert mediators through whom a god sang. Thus, music and sound functioned as a means of communication with the spiritual realm, such as the sweet scent of copal. With specific sounds and in ecstatic dance, communication with the world of the gods was achieved.

Stone figure of Xochipilli ('Prince of Flowers'), god of music

List of Aztec musical instruments

This is a list of the musical instruments of the Aztecs. According to the Aztec classification, all instrumentalists were divided into percussionists or “beaters” and wind players or “blowers”. Each musician was named for the instrument he played, for instance, “drum beater” or “shell trumpet blower”. Musical instruments were also classified according to the symbolism of the material they were produced from, their sound characteristics and sound symbolism, and their mythological meaning.

A fine original Aztec wooden teponaztli slit-drum carved in warrior shape, National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City

Metallic sounding instruments

• oyoalli, tzitzilli, coyolli - Rows of gold and copper alloy bells, with or without hemispheric clappers.

• tlatlapanca, chililitli - Metal plates and gongs struck with mallets.

• tehuehuetl - Lithophones made from volcanic stone slabs beaten with stone spheres. Like the slit-drums, these instruments rested on a ring.

Instruments which are blown or wind instruments

Trumpets

• tecciztli, quiquiztli, cocolli - Marine shell trumpets.

• acatecciztli, atecocolli - Cylindrical trumpets made of ceramics and vegetable material.

Picture sources:-

• Dancers round teponaztli player, Codex Selden, fol. 7 (original in the Bodleian Library, Oxford), scanned from our Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología 1964 facsimile edition

• Florentine Codex images (original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence); scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994

• Private collection of Aztec instrument copies, photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore

• Aztec musical instruments in the National Museum of Anthropology, photos by Ana Laura Landa/Mexicolore

• Eagle/jaguar warriors, Tovar Manuscript, pl. XVIII (original in the John Carter Brown Library, Rhode Island, USA); scanned from the ADEVA, Graz, Austria 1972 edition, p. 273. Reproduction permission granted courtesy of The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University

• 'House of Song', Codex Mendoza folio 61r (original in the Bodleian Library, Oxford): scanned from our own copy of the James Cooper Clark facsimile edition, London, 1938

• Replica Aztec drums, photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore

• Ruins of the Red Temples, photo by Ana Laura Landa/Mexicolore

• Figure of Xochipilli, photo by Ana Laura Landa/Mexicolore

• B/W illustrations kindly provided by Arnd Adje Both