Antonio Juanas

Antonio de Juanas (c. 1762 – after 1819) was a composer in Spain and Mexico.

The birthplace of Antonio Juanas is known from two letters sent to the Cathedral of Jaén in 1784. He was born in either 1762 or 1763 in the town of Narros, in the province of Soria. He was then educated at the San Felipe Neri Infant School of the Sigüenza Cathedral from the age of eight or nine, remaining for another ten years. It is possible that his teacher was Acacio Garcilópez, chapel master of Sigüenza in the 1770s. In 1780 he was made maestro de capilla at Alcalá de Henares Cathedral at the age of 17. Around the same time, the chapter of the Cathedral of Mexico decided to travel to the Iberian Peninsula to recruit a new chapel master as well as musicians. Antonio Juanas, accompanied by the singers Bartolomé Vicente Lo sada (bass), José García Pulgar (tenor) and Manuel Pastrana (tenor) all signed a contract of employment for the cathedral and traveled to Mexico City in 1791.

Recordings Antonio Juanas: Premiere Recordings of Selected Choral Works; Collegium Mundi Novi, Variant 6, John Austin Clark. Conductor: R. Ryan Endris (Centaur/Naxos, 2018, CRC 3663)