February 12, 2022

CANTIGAS de SANTA MARÍA (ALFONSO X el sabio)


http://cantigasdesantamaria.com/http://csm.mml.ox.ac.uk/http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cantigas/http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/composers/cantigas.htmlhttp://www.efrenlopez.nethttps://www.medievalmusicbesalu.com/https://cesem.fcsh.unl.pt/publicacoes/edicoes-e-co-edicoes-cesem/a-notacao-das-cantigas-de-santa-maria-edicao-diplomatica/

Songs of Santa MariaAlfonso X the Wise (1252-1284)
Collection of 417 medieval songs dedicated to the Virgin written in Galician-Portuguese. Most are monophonic, there are only three polyphonic.
They are divided into two groups:
1) Cantigas de miragres Compendium of miracles and stories related to the Virgin, either through her direct intervention or through the mystical loves that her figure generates in pious souls (356).
2) Cantigas de laor, are praises of the Virgin or refer to Marian or Christological festivities. These are more serious, profound, almost mystical poems, in which instead of singing the miracles of the Virgin, they reflect on her, as in a prayer.
Most of them are accompanied by 2640 very colorful miniatures, of a virtuosity rarely equaled, which by themselves already constitute an incomparable work of art.
Sources and Codex
Of the Cantigas de Santa María there are four preserved codices, all of them from the court of King Alfonso X.
1) The Toledano Codex belonged to the Toledo Cathedral until 1869 and is now preserved in the National Library of Madrid.First collection from the king's desk, after 1257. No miniatures
2) The second codex, the most important, is preserved in the Vatican Library. Contains the reflections of Alfonso X and the Royal Court of him in an introduction and a prologue. There are 406 different cantigas, illustrated with 40 miniatures, plus the musical notation
3) The codex of Florence, preserved in the National Library of this city.It contains the text of 104 cantigas, of which two do not appear in the other codices and others offer variants of some interest.It is incomplete, missing verses, many vignettes remain to be drawn and with blank musical notation lines
4) The Codex Principe or Codex of the Musicians, is preserved in the Library of the Monastery of El Escorial.Contains 194 cantigas, music and illustrations, and is incomplete
Importance
LITERARY
From the point of view of music history, it is considered the most important collection of monodic court music of the 13th century. Alfonso X of Castile inherited from his father Ferdinand III his Musical Chapel, which brought together performers and composers from various cultures and who were part of the Alfonsine court, as well as his School of Translators or royal scriptorium

MUSICAL
The melodies are taken from the Gregorian monody, from the popular lyric and from the songs of the troubadours, and are mostly in the form of a rondo, with a musical refrain that is repeated after the glosses.

PICTORIAL
The codices of the Escorial Library are adorned with a profusion of miniatures. Many of them have been of paramount importance for Spanish organography, since 13th-century instruments can be seen there: organistrum, psalter, lute, viola de arco, rebec, zither, harp, horn, castanets, bagpipes, dulzainas and many others.

Notation
Pneumatic notation (from the Greek πνεῦμα, transliterated into Romanesque as pneuma and simplified in Spanish as neuma; meaning "spirit, breath, breath") is a musical notation system used between the 9th and 13th centuries. It consisted of a series of graphic signs that were written over a text and that represented one or several sounds, without specifying the rhythm.
Around the year 1150, the 12th century, the neumes adopted a more defined form: the Square Notation. It is called square because it was written with cut goose feathers that, instead of a point, left a small square as the head of the figures.The characteristics of the square notation are that the music is written on parallel lines that indicate the height of the sound.
Mensural notation is the musical notation system used in European music from the late 13th century until about the year 1600. Mensural notation is closely associated with the successive periods of medieval music ars nova and the Franco-Flemish school of music of the Renaissance."Mensural" refers to the ability of this system to indicate complex rhythms with great accuracy and flexibility. Mensural notation was the first system in the development of European music that systematically used individual notational forms to denote temporal durations.

Musical instruments in the Cantigas de Santa Maria
https://www.bestmusicteacher.com/music_picture/index.php?txt=Cantigas
During the 12th and the 13th centuries, throughout the Christian world, flourished the cult of the Virgin Mary. Men saw her as an intermediary between the common people and God, her Son, and as a symbol of absolute love and immaculate service to a feminine idea. People were inclined to ask the Virgin to plead their cases with God, and large numbers of songs were devoted to her, singing her praise and recounting the miracles that she performed in aid of the pious and the clean of heart. There are many collections of these songs in Italian, French and Latin, but the largest one is the Cantigas de Santa Maria, compiled between 1260 and 1280 by Alfonso X, El Sabio (The Wise) King of Castilla, Toledo, Leon, Galicia, Sevilla, Cordoba, Murcia, Jaen and the Algarbe.
There are some 426 cantigas contained in four manuscripts, of which three are in Spain (two in the monastery of Escorial and one in Madrid) and one in Florence. The two most important are the Escorial manuscripts. One contains 401 cantigas with their music and a series of richly illuminated miniatures of musicians holding instruments, giving us a first-hand clue of the instrumentation used in their performance. The variety of instruments is impressive. All types of stringed instruments, bowed (fidulas and rebab or rebec) or plucked (citterns or guitars, mandolas, lutes, psalteries or zithers and harps ), wind instruments (shawms and double shawms, bladder pipes, transverse flutes, pipes or recorders, trumpets, horns or trombas, bagpipes), percussion (drums and tabors, clappers or castanets, cymbals, chime bells) and even portative organ and organistrum or symphonia. Also, the miniatures seem to provide indispensable evidence that the Cantigas were sung by one or more voices variously accompanied by one, two or a group of instruments and sometimes by dancers (thanks to Leda Filippopoulou).
https://www.bestmusicteacher.com/download/Filippopoulou_Leda_Cantigas_de_Santa_Maria.pdf