Juan Hidalgo was a harpist in Spain’s Royal Chapel and a composer particularly known for his secular music, especially that written for the theatre, be it for plays, autos sacramentales (allegorical religious plays), operas or zarzuelas. Many of his tonos humanos would have been written for such spectacles, on some of which he collaborated with the great dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Hidalgo was famous in his own lifetime, and is considered the Spanish Baroque’s leading pioneer of theatre music.