Alfonso X, compositor (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
The Polyphonic Songs Attributed to Pedro de Escobar
2019
This brief assessment of the nineteen songs attributed to Pedro de Escobar, all, with the exception of one Christmas villancico, in the Palace Songbook , attempts to place them in context in terms of the sources in which they were copied, their texts and their musical style. Although much work remains to be done on the structure and dating of the Palace Songbook , it is possible, through musical analysis, to posit that some songs can be considered to have been copied earlier and others later, probably from the later 1490s into about the middle of the second decade of the sixteenth century. Three songs were particularly widely diffused, notably in Portuguese sources of the latter part of the sixteenth century; only one is found in a non-Iberian source and would seem to have a particular connection to Juan del Encina, whose style is adopted and imitated by Escobar in his songs. These songs embrace a fairly wide range of themes, reflecting the content of the Palace Songbook as a whole,...
Andalusian Music and the Cantigas de Santa María
Cobras e son. Papers from a colloquium on the text, …, 2000
This paper revisits the problem of the relationship between Christian and Islamic culture in the Iberian Peninsula. It shows that Persian-Arab rhythmic theory as expounded by Al-Farabi, through the corresponding practice in Al-Andalus, heavily influenced the collection of songs known as the "Cantigas de Santa Maria" compiled by King Alfonso X el Sabio before 1284.
One of the most striking characteristics of the music from the Spanish kingdoms at the time of Ferdinand and Isabel in comparison with other musical traditions of the same period is the relative scarcity of sources of instrumental and polyphonic music. This lack can partly be explained by the loss of many manuscript sources and the late introduction of music printing in Spain; El Maestro by Luis Milán, printed in 1536, is the earliest Spanish collection of solo instrumental music and accompanied songs, as well as the first printed Spanish tablature. However, there is a third reason: the importance of oral tradition in the transmission and performance of music in Spanish culture during the Renaissance, in both sacred and secular contexts. This essay will survey the different traditions of unwritten music in Spain at the time of the Catholic Monarchs: in the liturgical context, particular emphasis will be placed on the transmission and performing practices of extempore counterpoint and unwritten fabordones; and in the secular context, several aspects related to the oral repertory of vernacular songs, both polyphonic and accompanied, as well as instrumental music will be considered.