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The organ and the clock were, up until the Industrial Revolution, the two most complex machines ever to have been created. Their ingenuity, cost, and ability to elicit reactions of wonder meant that they were readily adopte d as symbols of power and prestige, and over time were to become incorporated into the very fabric of both city and church. As elsewhere in Europe, the organ in the Hispanic world reached its zenith in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a result of technological advances and a quest for new sounds, in keeping with the insatiable desire for novel experiences that was typical of the epoch. Unlike its counterparts, the unique central location of the liturgical nucleus within the interiors of Hispanic cathedrals privileged the organ as a visual, spatial, and sonic focus. Conditioned by the broad hall-like configuration of these interiors, Hispanic organs developed a lateral façade, evolving in the eighteenth century as monumental walls of sight and sound - a nexus of architecture and music. This paper uses a lens of spatial analysis to explore the quest for architectural and sonic symmetry, spatial novelty, and sensorial affect in the Hispanic world. Examples such as the cathedrals of Seville, Mexico City, Granada, and Malaga are used to assess the role that the double-façade mirror organ played in the configuration of the sonic-architectural experience of the Baroque. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fiestas in celebration of the canonization of King Fernando III in 1671, organized by the cathedral of Seville, were among the most splendid in seventeenth-century Spain. The written account by Fernando de la Torre Farfán, illustrated by magnificent etchings, gives an unusually detailed description of the ephemeral architecture and decoration created for the occasion. Recent research gives insights into the extent to which this was a remarkable collaborative effort between the greatest artistic talents in Seville (Juan de Valdés Leal, Bernardo Simón de Pineda, Bartolomé Murillo, Pedro Roldán, Matías de Arteaga, and a host of other artists) and the canons of the cathedral, notably, Justino de Neve and Juan de Loaysa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]