THE SONGS OF THE SCAFFOLD: CHARACTERISTICS, CREATION, AND DIFFUSION OF EXECUTION BALLADS IN SIXTEENTH˗ AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CATALONIA (original) (raw)
Related papers
Quaerendo, 2021
This article explores the pan-European phenomenon of the execution ballad, songs that told the news of true crimes and their punishment by public execution. Looking at examples across nine languages, from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century, this comparison reveals that these ballads share multiple features in textual content and format: a recognisable, formulaic narrative; sensationalist and emotive language; and a conservative perspective that confirms that the condemned is guilty and that justice’ is being served. We also note key regional differences, such as in the use (or not) of contrafactum, the setting of new lyrics to familiar melodies, in the use of the first versus third person voice, and in the depiction of graphic violence, both of the crime committed and the execution. Ultimately, we argue for the existence of an almost universal tradition in Europe of how to sing the news of punishment.
The Medieval Fate of the Cantigas de Santa Maria: Iberian Politics Meets Song
2016
This article reviews the evidence for the medieval performance of the Cantigas de Santa Maria (CSM) and discusses King Alfonso's intentions for the work, including the intended audience. The CSM were conceived as an ambitious cultural enterprise with both religious and political objectives, but were doomed to failure by the steep political decline of their creator. The only surviving evidence for the CSM's presence in any court outside Alfonso's is the Barbieri MS, an eighteenth-century descendant of a lost original, plausibly transmitted to the Portuguese court before 1270. Other traces of performative use are rubrics and marginal notes in an appendix to manuscript To and their corresponding reworking in manuscript E, which point to short-lived ritual use. Internal iconographical, literary, and compositional evidence suggests that Alfonso did intend the CSM to circulate among a broad range of social classes. He manipulated poetic and metrical forms from the troubadour tradition to highlight the dignity of the Virgin Mary, but he privileged forms directly inspired by the Andalusian zajal familiar to popular audiences and among the minstrels, to encourage the penetration of his songs beyond his courtly circle. The CSM were meant to consolidate Christian restoration in the recently conquered southern territories, but also to serve as personal and dynastic propaganda, asserting their author's royal supremacy over Castilian lords, his preeminence among Iberian kings, and his status as the Christian monarch most worthy of the office of Holy Roman emperor.
2019
The present study consists of two major parts: the first and central part of the project is an expanded historical and cultural consideration of Luis Venegas de Henestrosa's Libro de cifra nueva (1557); the second is a translation of Venegas's Libro, here made available in English for the first time. As one of the earliest books of intabulations for keyboard printed in Spain, the Libro is a valuable source of information about keyboard practice in 16 th-century Spain: performance practices, improvisation at the keyboard, the repertoire played on and arranged for the instrument, and the sources of that repertoire. The project places this important source in the context of Early Modern Spanish culture and addresses important shifts in music pedagogy arising from by Humanist ideas introduced to Spain in the 16 th century. My study shows that autodidacticism (or self-teaching) was the Humanist ideal that had the most impact on the content and layout of the book. Given the great degree of self-determination that this book's autodidacticism offered readers, its musical praxis stands revealed as an important socio-cultural tool. Drawing on other contemporary works that promote the use of autodidacticism to learn language, decorum, games, and court polity, my conclusions show how music-making could become a powerful set of skills capable of shaping subjectivity, a set of skills that was used equally by individual subjects as well as the State in the process of creating identity. iii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Originally from Puerto Rico, Carlos Roberto Ramírez is a musicologist and harpsichordist whose primary research area is the study of Early Modern music and culture, focusing on the convergence of musical practice, organology, the history of the book, and subjectivity from 1350 to 1750. Carlos's secondary research area examines representations of gender, class, and race in Latinx musics, exploring the interaction of structures of power and subject-formation in the genre of reggaeton. An ardent advocate for the combination of musical practice and scholarship, Carlos performs regularly and has had the opportunity to study historically informed practice with some of the leading exponents in the field such as Christopher Hogwood, Jordi Savall, Neal Zaslaw, Annette Richards, and Joyce Lindorff. He has presented his research at a number of conferences, including the
The American Historical Review, 2013
In his early 20th-century anti-clerical novel La Catedral, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez follows his protagonist into Toledo Cathedral's Mozarabic Chapel for the daily celebration of what Richard Ford, in the 19th century, called 'this peculiar ritual': 'As Gabriel listened to the monotonous singing of the Mozarabic priests he remembered the quarrels during the time of Alfonso VI between the Roman liturgy and that of Toledo-the foreign worship and the national one. The believers, to end the eternal disputes, appealed to the "Judgment of God". The king named the Roman champion, and the Toledans confided the defense of their Gothic rite to the sword of Juan Ruiz, a nobleman from the borders of Pisuerga. The champion of the Gothic breviary remained triumphant in the fight, demonstrating its superiority with magnificent sword thrusts, but, in spite of the will of God having been manifested in this warlike way, the Roman rite by slow degrees became master of the situation, till at last the Mozarabic ritual was relegated to this small chapel as a curious relic of the past'.(1)
Tyrs paqe. is part of a larger study thar looks closery at the Lamentations of Jeremiah and their immediate context as they appear in a number of late spanish sourcesr. The Lamentations represented a favoured topos for Spanish musicians, as much or perhaps more so than for musicians of other countries. yet little is known about the Lamentations in their liturgical context, in Spain or ersewhere. Using the Lamentations as an example, I wish to explore the hypothesis thit close studies of small sections of -the liturgy can help us it int uuout ways in which we might identify reriabre markers of regionality or locality, ana that as we become more confident about such definitions, they may contribute to the building of a < in Spain in the eariy sixteenth century2. Such a map, showing as it would, where changes'in practice ' This study was funded by a grant from the Australian Research Council. I wish to acknowledge the use of materiars from the Hill Monastic Manuscript I_ibrary (HMML). I would arso like to thank rhose of my corleagu"., "rf".iurry David Sutherland, who have either read with a criticar eye earrier veisions ofihis paper, who have had the patience and good wiil to discuss issues, or who have responded to requests for materials from libraries to which I have not had access.
2014
The cultural landscape which characterized Spain from the time of the Muslim invasion to the heights of its Golden Age was tremendously complex. Some scholars have seen in the history of the Peninsula a recurring desire for unification—be it geographic, linguistic, or religious—while others have pointed to the myriad ways in which the unique tri-cultural mix of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian manifested itself. This volume adds to the conversation by examining ways in which textual multiplicity responds to various forms of coerced unification. The essays grouped in the first part of the collection look at works in which we can recognize a variety of coexisting philosophical and religious models at play. Chapter 1 examines El filósofo autodidacta, a fusion of Greek neo-Platonism with some of the more liberal strains of oriental Islam written in twelfth-century al-Andalus. Chapter 2 shows how a philosophical-theological allegory in the Sumario of a Morisco author may have functioned in the multiple confessional communities of late medieval and early modern Spain. The third chapter looks at a seventeenth-century biblical comedy by Álvaro Cubillo de Aragón, which reworks the Genesis narrative of Lot shifting between different models of divine and civil obedience. The second half of the volume focuses on literary writing practices and mechanisms in which we can see a response to the unifying impulse. Chapter 4 examines regulatory and narrative determinism in late fifteenth century Castile as it is critiqued by the acrostic which opens Celestina. Chapter 5 considers maurophilia and maurophobia in Castilian literary works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries while chapter 6 looks at shifting viewpoints of the bufón-cronista in the mock historical chronicle of Don Francés de Zúñiga. Chapter 7 shows how the echoes of defiant Golden Age practices reverberate in a recent theatrical performance of the works of María de Zayas. Chapter 8 ends the collection by focusing on the ways in which Cervantes plays with two distinct textual models that seem to coexist in Don Quixote: one which appears to offer multiple narrative layers and one which does not.
Se trata de una novedosa aproximación al mundo del artista medieval, cuya obra se debatía entre la autoría divina y la firma individual. Temas como la formación del artista, su estatus laico o eclesiástico, el recurso a los modelos o la importancia de la itinerancia en su aprendizaje son abordados con rigor en esta publicación. Asimismo, los distintos roles profesionales desempeñados en los talleres medievales nos permiten conocer mejor cómo se construía y decoraba una catedral en la Edad Media. En esta visión sociológica de la obra de arte no puede faltar el papel omnipotente de los patronos medievales, personajes normalmente relacionados con la realeza y el estamento eclesiástico, que en muchos casos son los verdaderos “autores” de estas empresas, en la que las mujeres tuvieron también un destacable protagonismo. En el libro participan 20 autores procedentes de diversas universidades e instituciones museísticas de toda Europa. La publicación es el resultado del proyecto de investigación “Artistas, patronos y público. Catalunya y el Mediterráneo. Siglos XI-XV” (MICINN HAR2011-23015. Se trata de una novedosa aproximación al mundo del artista medieval, cuya obra se debatía entre la autoría divina y la firma individual. Temas como la formación del artista, su estatus laico o eclesiástico, el recurso a los modelos o la importancia de la itinerancia en su aprendizaje son abordados con rigor en esta publicación. Asimismo, los distintos roles profesionales desempeñados en los talleres medievales nos permiten conocer mejor cómo se construía y decoraba una catedral en la Edad Media. En esta visión sociológica de la obra de arte no puede faltar el papel omnipotente de los patronos medievales, personajes normalmente relacionados con la realeza y el estamento eclesiástico, que en muchos casos son los verdaderos “autores” de estas empresas, en la que las mujeres tuvieron también un destacable protagonismo. En el libro participan 17 autores procedentes de diversas universidades e instituciones museísticas de toda Europa. La publicación es el resultado de los proyectos de investigación “Artistas, patronos y público. Catalunya y el Mediterráneo. Siglos XI-XV”-Magistri Cataloniae (MICINN HAR2011-23015.) y "Movilidad y transferencia artística en el Mediterráneo Medieval (1187-1388). Artistas, objetos y modelos-Magistri Mediterranei (MICINN-HAR2015-63883-P) http://editorialcirculorojo.com/entre-la-letra-y-el-pincel-el-artista-medieval-leyenda-identidad-y-estatus/