This article deals with the circulation of instrumental music between Spain and the New World at the end of the eighteenth century, focusing on Madrid, Mexico City and Lima as main urban centres. By analysing archival documents preserved in these cities, I intend to show that the baroque guitar music composed and copied in Madrid was also intended to be a commercial concern in Latin America (particularly in Mexico City and Lima), and that its cultivation in the New World lasted for a long time, even through to the beginning of the nineteenth century, thus coexisting with music by Johann Christian Bach, Boccherini, Cannabich, Haydn and other modern' composers. These assertions are reinforced through an examination of two musical manuscripts copied in Lima around 1800, which also shows some of the changes undergone by the repertory during its complex process of reception. I conclude by suggesting that, in the light of all this, a linear and evolutionary view of music history, according to which new repertories replace older ones, should be reconsidered.