“As there were once many philosophers, yet among them all only he who
was believed to embrace a knowledge of all things with certainty was
called simply wise. Now, however, the world is getting old, and no one
is to be called, I do not soy wise, but, what is less, a philosopher”.
Domingo Gundisalvo, De Scientiis (12th century)
Thus
wrote Gundisalvo, the Archdeacon of Segovia (philosopher and translator
from Arabic to Latin) in one of his treatises based on the work of the
Arabic mathematician al-Farabi. Though Gundisalvo did not live to
witness the reign of a Castilian king called by his contemporaries “el
Sabio” (in the sense of both wise and learned), his definition aptly
applies to the widely-encompassing intellectual pursuits of Alfonso X
(1221—1284) who, during his long reign from 1252 to 1284, established
himself as one of the most remarkable kings of his day. His tentacles of
patronage extended into an enormous number of scholarly, artistic,
legal and (not always so successfully) governmental areas.
On
coming to the throne of Castile and Leon in 1252 he immediately and with
great zest began to institute his idealistic reforms. The breadth of
written works produced during his reign was truly encyclopaedic and,
being blessed both by the royal stamp and being written not in Latin but
in the Castilian vernacular (or, in the case of lyrical works, in
Galician-Portuguese), these works had an enormously wide appeal and
accessibility. By eagerly partaking of the wisdom of the East and the
West, which entailed gathering together in his courts at Toledo and Leon
the best artists (poets, musicians, scribes and illuminators) and
scholars (translators, mathematicians, philosophers, historians,
astronomers and so on) from the three religions of the Iberian Peninsula
— Christian, Jewish and Islamic — he demonstrated his belief that
Spain's ultimate destiny was to make heterogeneous cultural links.
Possibly
Alfonso wished to claim for himself (that is, for his kingdom and his
God), by extensive cultivation and development into new areas, something
equivalent to the marvels of material luxury and intellectual sublimity
which flourished during the Muslim caliphates and which were revealed
to him as a member of the conquering armies entering the Muslim-ruled
cities of al-Andalus.
After the capital Cordoba fell to Alfonso's
father Ferdinand III in 1236, the treasures of this city were revealed
to the conquerors. Known as “the bride of al-Andalus” and “the ornament
of the world”, it was said to surpass all the capitals of the world
except Baghdad in its intellectual knowledge and architectural beauty.
Two outstanding examples were its huge library containing 400,000
volumes (compared to the 400 — 600 volumes then housed in St Gall) and
its sumptuous mosque called La Mesquita. But there were many other
marvels, not least the high value put on knowledge, evidenced by its
brilliant Jewish culture and the prodigious output from the women
copyists of the numerous Islamic religious schools. Alongside this was
the vast network of poets and musicians as well as the artisans
producing leatherwork, jewellery, woven silks, cloths and manufacturing
paper for literary works.
The modern historian Americo Castro
describes the feeling of awe experienced by Castilian troops entering
Muslim Seville for the first time after its capture by Ferdinad III in
1248:
“these victorious armies could not repress their
astonishment upon beholding the grandeur of Seville; the Christians had
never possessed anything similar in art, economic splendour, civil
organisation, technology and scientific and literary productivity”.
For
Alfonso the downside of this emulation in maintaining all the various
scholarly and literary activities, mingled as they were with other
kingly pursuits such as gift-giving, foreign intrigues and revolts by
Muslims and his own nobles, was that it forced him to tax his subjects
heavily. This in turn caused widespread ill-feeling and eventually led
to his fall from grace.
Certainly there is evidence that Alfonso
was involved in what was produced, although it is not easy to know
exactly how much this entailed. Describing how fussy be was about
presentation, he tells, in the prologue to his Libro de la ochava esfera,
how be frequently had to eliminate redundancies and rephrase passages
of poor expression in the work of his scribes. Yet, considering the
colossal output of his scholarly entourage, it would be reasonable to
deduce that he acted more often as a guiding force. This is in fact
clearly stated in the Primera Parte of his Grande e General Estoria:
“The
King writes a book not by writing it with his hands but in the sense
that he gathers material for it...adapts it, shows the manner in which
it is to be presented and orders what is to be written”.
The literary outcome — all voluminous works — included the history of the world, the Grande e General Estoria, and the history of Spain, the Estoria de España (or Primera Cronica General); legal works such as the Fuero Real, the much revised Siete Partidas (known in its first draft as the Especulo) and the Setenario; scientific works in astrology such as the De Judiciis Astrorum
(the Arabic version by al-Maghrabi roas translated by a Jewish scholar
into Castilian and then by a Christian scholar into Latin); in astronomy
such works as the Libros del Saber de Astronomia (which subdivided into several other books) and the Tablas Alfonsíes
(based on an Arabic source, reworked by two Jewish astonomers - Yehuda
ben Moses Cohen and Isaac ben Sid — and still in use in the 17th
century, surviving in at least 100 copies); zodiacal books such as El Libro de las cruces and the Lapidario; and books about chess, dice and board games, the Libros del axedrez, dados et tablas.
In
1251, while still a prince, Alfonso comissioned a Castilian translation
of the Indian animal tales of Bidpai called, in Sanskrit, Panchatantra. This had previously been translated into Persian and then Arabic as Kalila wa Dimna.
Original lyrical works by Alfonso include approximately 44 poems of love and wit of the cantigas de amor and the cantigas de escanho e de maldizer
genres, all but one of which are in Galician-Portuguese (which was used
universally for secular poetry in the Christian courts throughout the
Iberian Peninsula).
Indubitably the most important creative outpouring from him and his collaborators was the unique and prolific collection of cantigas de Santa Maria.
It can be stated unequivocally that, in his time, no other poet or
sponsor of poets achieved greater prestige or produced as many poems as
Alfonso X. The mammoth task of collecting and organising songs in praise
of the Virgin Mary (cantigas de loor) and about miracles she performed (cantigas de miragre) took over 40 years.
The
427 items in this spiritual thesaurus were exquisitely copied with
illuminations and bound together into a codex, four different
manuscripts of which survive: three incomplete, but all related with
differences in contents, calligraphy, musical notation and
illustrations. Unless otherwise stated, the source for our performances
has been the earliest, the complete and the largest (not in size, but in
numbers of pages and songs) - the manuscript of El Escorial, catalogued
as b.1.2 (also known as j.b.2 or E') and dated c.1210-1283. Its 361
pages contain a prologue and 12 songs as introduction, followed by
another prologue and 402 carefully arranged cantigas de miragre and de loor. After the second prologue these are organised in groups of ten from cantiga 10 onwards - that is, one cantiga de loor is followed by nine cantigas de miragre (an order which is possibly related to the mediaeval arrangement of the rosary).
Above the text and melody of cantiga 1 and then every cantiga ending with the number X (that is, above every cantiga de loor),
there is a miniature depicting musicians playing instruments. The X may
also have acted as a reminder of Christ (being the first letter of his
name in Greek) and of the Ten Mosaic Laws; or perhaps even referred
obliquely to Alfonso himself as the Xth Alfonso of Castile. The first
miniature shows Alfonso in his court flanked on both sides in a
pentamerous framework (a visual reminder of the five letters of the
Virgin's name?) by scribes, scholars and string players. This large
grouping is somewhat atypical of the remaining 40 miniatures in each of
which only one or two persons are depicted. Overall, the 41 miniatures
reveal a widely comprehensive instrumentarium, played by a
variety of performers (male and female) of varying social classes (from
the king, his clerics, princes and courtiers, to joglars and peasants)
and religions (Christian, Jewish and Islamic). These pictures are quite
realistic in their relatively accurate and detailed depiction of
musicians seated, squatting or standing, sometimes singing (or
declaiming), possibly moving - all holding a wide array of plucked,
bowed, blown, beaten and struck instruments.
While the mnemonic
information contained in mediaeval illumination must be carefully
appraised to avoid “reading” it too literally (for example, “this song
was played with the instruments depicted above it”), it seems to us that
there is some sort of message here that is hard to ignore, especially
when considering whether or not to use instruments in the performance of
any of the cantigas. As mentioned further below, in such cases
our instrumental choices were only in part guided by the types and
groupings found in the Alfonsine manuscripts.
In the chosen
manuscript (b.1.2), the letters of the Galician-Portuguese texts are
written in French-Gothic script by a scribe who identifies himself on
the back of folio 361 (in smaller, more cursive letters than in the main
text) as follows:
“Virgen bien aventurada
ser de mi remenbrada
Johñes gundisalvi”
(Unfortunately
there is no evidence linking this “gundisalvi” to the 12th century
Archdeacon, Domingo Gundisalvo, or to the 13th century poets Gonzalo
(“Gonzalvo”) de Berceo and Fernan Gonçalves).
As with his other
monumental literary projects Alfonso called on the best researchers,
historians and poets available to find and collate the miracle tales,
and then set them into Galician-Portuguese poetic structures (mostly in
the zajal format) to suitable melodies (likewise, mostly as virelais).
As well as such identifiable theological and narrative collaborators as
the Franciscan brother Juan Gil de Zamora and the court cleric Bernardo
de Brihuega and possibly the Compostelan cleric Arias Nuñes, it is
possible that Alfonso called on the many Iberian, Provençal and Italian
poets who frequented his court to assist and add to his own lyrical
endeavours.
It seems quite clear from the prologue particularly and then every one of the cantigas
that in the compilation of this collection Alfonso was driven by a
purpose — namely, to edify spiritually and morally not just the men and
women who frequented his courts but, more especially, the populace at
large for whose well being he felt responsible. This was to be effected
by citing countless demonstrations (interspersed with praises) of the
mercy and goodness of the Virgin Mary towards even the most vile
sinners.
MARIAN CULT
While possibly the olden known prayer to the Virgin Mary comes from the late 4th century — Sub tuum praesidium confugimus
(“we take refuge in your protection”), yet from as early as the 2nd
century Christian theorists wrote and debated extensively about her
holiness and ecclesiastical significance especially on such matters as
her perpetual virginity and the immaculate conception. (Indeed the Roman
Catholic Church has been the only church to formally accept this last
doctrine and only did so in 1854). From the 4th century Marian cults
extolling her holiness spread from Syria through Byzantium, across
Europe into England, France and the Iberian Peninsula. As was usual with
other saints and heroes, legends about her miracles abounded, which
eventually being written down in the 11th and 12th centuries, were
preserved for hundreds of years. In these stories Mary is the spiritual
mother offering salvation to all in need by acting as the mediatrix
between them and her son. Prior to this, a great and continuing flood of
devotional tributes were made to her by Christian churches in the East
and the West — for instance, the institution of Saturday as Lady's Day
(established in the 9th century by Alcuin of York), as well as various
feast days, sermons, prayers, antiphons (especially the famous four: Alma redemptoris mater, Regina caeli laetare, Salve regina and Ave regina caelorum) and of course the building of great cathedrals in her name (Nostre Dame) at such places as Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, Rouen, Bayeux and Paris.
While
it is possible to make a case for precedents for the idea of compiling
sets of poems dedicated to the Virgin Mary, or recounting miracles
attributed to her, nonetheless there are certain elements which make
Alfonso's undertaking decidedly unique - firstly, its magnitude and
breadth and then, the conceptual structuring, along with the visual
layout and presentation of the material.
Possible precedents are
found in the works of at least three men — Gauthier de Coincy. Gonzalo
de Berceo and Juan Gil de Zamora. Between 1218 and 1233, Gauthier de
Coincy, the Benedictine Prior at Vic-sur-Aisne, wrote two books of Miracles de Nostre Dame.
Written in 30,000 lines of verse narrative, these contain 58 miracle
tales which he took from an original Latin source. To 22 of these
newly-composed poems were added pre-existing melodies taken from a wide
range of sources. This was a standard 13th century practice which
Alfonso seems to have continued. Some modern scholars have likewise been
able to identify a very small proportion of the melodies in Alfonso's
collection as being from other Christian sources. Gauthier's is the
earliest and largest collection of sacred songs in the vernacular prior
to the cantigas de Santa Maria and its popularity is attested by
the fact that it was recopied into at least 80 known manuscripts.
Gauthier (as well as Folquet de Marsella and the anonymous author of the
Catalonian Llibre Vermell) also composed lyrics on the five and seven Joys of Holy Mary - a subject also treated in several of the Alfonsine cantigas.
Another
“Gonzalvo”, the so-called “ioglar de San Domingo” (and, incidentally,
the first Castilian poet known by name), was the secular priest and
notary Gonzalo de Berceo (c.1196—1264). He was the author of three
Marian works - the Loores de Nuestra Señora, the Duelo de la Virgen and, most relevantly, the Milagros de Nuestra Señora.
This last is a collection, written in Castilian, of 25 miracle stories
with an allegorical introduction. Again, like Gauthier's collection,
Gonzalo worked from a Latin prose original containing 28 stories, 24 of
which he borrowed and reset (his 25th tale, La iglesia robada, is set in Spain and may be of local origin). As with the Alfonsine cantigas,
the Virgin Mary is presented in a variety of human moods (gentle,
raging, jealous) which always dissolve eventually into merciful
forgiveness and protection.
In searching for precedents it is
significant that both Gauthier and Gonzalo represent direct links to
Alfonso, not only via their subject matter, but also because both of
them transformed prose works in Latin into vernacular poetry to make
them more accessible to the general populace.
The third author from whom Alfonso definitely did borrow was his friend and confessor Brother Juan Gil de Zamora, who wrote the Liber Mariae. Fifty of the 70 miracle stories in this book were used in Alfonso's collection.
There
has been a vast proliferation of analytical studies written about
Alfonso's lyrical output. Joseph Snow's critical bibliography cites over
376 titles from c.1278 to 1976. The first, written by the
above-mentioned poet, musical theoretician and Alfonso's collaborator,
Juan Gil de Zamora, makes clear reference to Alfonso's creative
involvement in the poetic and musical aspects of the project :
“...in the manner of David, in order to make known publicly the glorious Virgin, he composed many very beauntiful cantinelas regularly measured with appropriate words and related melodies”.
Since
1976 the continuous and steady avalanche of further Alfonsine studies
published in books and journals was given an additional impetus in the
1980s by the international Symposium in New York, which in turn inspired
Dr John Keller and others to found a journal dedicated to the cantigas celled Cantigueiros.
PERFORMANCE
Although virtually nothing is known about exactly how or where these cantigas
were performed, there is nonetheless a body of connective material
which may allow us to arrive at a range of reasonably-informed
hypotheses, the validity of which can never be “proven” one way or the
other. The desire to pursue these hypotheses into actual sound is
motivated by the charming texts whose narrative content can still
enthrall modem audiences (a proven fact), their settings in uniquely
eccentric poetic structures and the beautiful melodies, each of which is
clearly delineated (in b.1.2, the source used) in skeletal format under
the synopsis-like masthead of each text.
The melodies are
clearly decipherable in their pitch but not in their rhythm. Even though
some of the notation resembles mensural notation, no consensus on how
the rhythms should be disposed has yet been reached. In 1922 Juan Ribera
published his arguments (with transcriptions) for using Arabic
practices to solve the rhythmic problems. These were firmly squelched by
Higinio Anglés who offered his own solution of transcribing the
melodies with modal rhythms or with mixed metres, the latter allowing
the monody a more flexible fluency than that available using strictly
regular 13th century modal rhythms.
In our transcriptions we have
considered and extended beyond these and other ideas by allowing the
poetic metre and word stress to influence choices of musical metres. We
have also considered additive metres in 5, 6 and 7 (with their internal
accentual patterns in groups of twos and threes which can be regularised
or reshuffled within the phrase), keeping in mind that all these metres
are found not only in the collections of Spanish romances and villancicos
of the late 15th and early 16th centuries but also survive in
present-day folk music practices in Spain, as well as in
Andalusian-Moroccan and the widely dispersed Judeo-Spanish communities.
We
have also kept in mind that it was quite acceptable in certain
religious ceremonies in mediaeval Christian Spain for song and dance to
occur in combination. This is undisputedly confirmed in the rubrics of
the 12th century Codex Calixtinus concerning pilgrim behaviour at Santiago de Compostela and likewise, at Montserrat, in the Llibre Vermell (see The Ring of Creation, WAL 8005-2). There are several supportive illustrations in the cantigas manuscript of El Escorial, T.j.1. For example, cantiga
120 depicts a group of ten musicians and dancers performing while
Alfonso kneels beside them (in the middle of the picture) as the link
between their earthly forms of devotion and the heavenly recipients on
the right, the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus; and cantiga 62
(the same source) shows two trumpeters and twelve dancers out on the
castle battlements as a visual representation of the dance referred to
in the text while the Virgin Mary (again, on the right) effects the
miracle for a mother and her son. Two examples in the song texts will
further confirm this mode of performance. Firstly, a cantiga de loor (number 86) found only in the music-less Florence Manuscript (F), begins as follows:
“In praise of Holy Mary
With singing and with dancing
let us give praises
to the crowned Virgin
who is our hope”
Secondly, a cantiga de miragre (number 24 in b.l.2), the story of how a lily-like flower grew in the mouth of a dead clergyman, finishes as follows:
“Immediately after they made a sermon they led off with dancing”
We
have also considered, cautiously, the possibility that these and all
the other miniatures in b.1.2 might reflect something of contemporary
performance, for instance that the cantigas may have been
accompanied by one or two instruments, or in special cases, larger
instrumental ensembles as well as dancers. This is still matter on which
no scholarly consensus has been reached.
The aim over this series of recordings of cantigas de Santa Maria
has been to present as wide as imaginatively possible a range of
hypothetical performance solutions. As well as incorporating all of the
above-mentioned possibilities we will encompass such other matters as
the Arabic-based concept of improvising preludes, interludes and
postludes to establish the mode of the cantiga and to introduce
melodic motives based on the main melody, inventing new motives which
are pre-learnt and re-stated in later interludes as recurring melodic
cues; having strophes sung sometimes with measured, at other times with
unmeasured, rhythms or declaimed with or without instrumental
accompaniment; adding drones above and below the main melody;
improvising contrapuntal counter-melodies; using question-answer alternatim
textures (where solo voice or instrument is answered by an ensemble of
voices and/or instruments); ornamenting, gracing and extending the main
and other melodies; presenting various sizes of ensemble from small to
large; and ending the performance with extended, dance-like instrumental
postludes.
In addition, on each CD we have experimented with the idea of presenting some cantigas as textless melodies (as sort of voice-less jubilus),
especially with the idea of realising in sound the “suggestions” made
in the naturalistic miniatures of b.1.2 of playing melodies on pairs of
instruments (harps, psalteries, pipes-and-tabors), or on solo
instruments (bells, organetto), and then, extending on this, moving to
slightly larger ensembles of homogeneous or heterogeneous instruments.
It
is unfortunate that in Christian-dominated Spain all the niceties of
performance practice were maintained in oral-aural traditions which wem
not notated or even described, as they were by the Arabic theorists of
Muslim al-Andalus (unless, of course, Alfonso and his team thought that
the iconography did visually and evocatively “describe” current
performance practices according to the established mnemonic traditions).
Our search for solutions leads down many paths including those
connected with Jewish and Arabic practices, the latter especially in
theoretical treatises which have not yet been fully explored by European
performers.
The exquisite uncertainty of the search engenders
some regret that so much was preserved and kept securely enclosed in the
minds and memories of practitioners of the time. The solace expressed
by Ibn Hazm, the distinguished and original 11th century Muslim
poet-scholar of Cordoba, at the burning of his books by political
fanatics becomes for us a woeful lament for what has been lost and, in
the words of Psalm 69, “blotted out the book of the living”. Ibn Hazm
wrote:
“Trouble me not regarding this burning of books and papers,
but rather say: ‘Now we shall see what he knows’. If they have burned
the paper, they have not burned what the paper contained. That is in my
breast and I carry it wherever my horses take me. It stays where I halt,
and it will only be buried in my tomb”.
GENERAL COMMENTS
Unless
otherwise stated, all transcriptions of music and text relate to El
Escorial manuscript, b.1.2. Each of the CDs in this series contains ten
items, to maintain the decimal quality of Alfonso's groupings, though in
a different disposition of cantigas de loor and de miragre.
In the cantigas de loor the refrains are performed after each stanza; whereas, in the cantigas de miragre, they are often omitted after stanzas to allow the text to run in a continuous flow, particularly when enjambement is present.
A
variety of musical textures has been devised to suggest different ways
in which these songs may have been performed. The full range of such
textures in our arrangements is available only across the series rather
than within each CD, although with each CD we have tried to provide
contrasts in a cohesive whole.
The original melodies of the cantigas on this CD are structured as virelais, with various modifications on a general A1 A2 bl b2 a A1 A2 circular format.
The recording has been
organised to reproduce the acoustical ambiance of a large, stone church
as a fitting venue for dedication of these praises.
— • —
We are indebted immeasurably once again to the inspirational research and expertise of many scholars such as Walter Mettman, José Filgueira Valverde, Joseph Snow, John Keller, Peter Dronke, and to Dr Kathleen Kulp Hill of Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond (USA) for so graciously giving permission to use her translations with rights reserved. None of this would have been possible in the initial stages without Dr John Stevenson who supplied us with our first Englished texts.
Through the devotion and expertise of Barbara Stackpool, to whom this disc is offered, this group has found its salvation and survival: ¡Viva la dama de las castañuelas!
Notes by Winsome Evans © 1996
THE RENAISSANCE PLAYERS
director :
Winsome Evans, B.E.M., O.A.M.
patrons :
Professor Donald Peart
Emeritus Professor Sir Peter Platt
· Winsome Evans : bombarde, treble and alto shawms, gemshorn, organetto, psaltery, harp, bells, bowed diwan saz
· Ingrid Walker : whistle, gemshorn
· Katie Ward : vielle
· Benedict Hames : rebec, gemshorn, bowed diwan saz
· Andrew Tredinnick : mandora, ud, chitarra moresca
· Llew Kiek : gittern, baglama
· Barbara Stackpool : castanets, finger cymbals, tambourine
· Andrew Lambkin: tapan, darabukka, daireh, bells
· Mina Kanaridis : soprano, reader
· Jenny Duck-Chong : mezzo-soprano, bells
· Mara Kiek : alto, daireh
· Geoff Sirmai : reader
Musical arranger © : Winsome Evans
Producer : Llew Kiek
Engineer : Guy Dickerson, Megaphon Studios
Translation : Dr Kathleen Kulp Hill, with permission, rights reserved, © 1994
Digital editing and compiling at Airmotion Studios : Geoff Sturre, All Music Manufacturing
Mastering Engineer : Oscar Gaono, Sony Music
Typesetting : Natalie Shea
Cover art : Winsome Evans
Special thanks to : Dr John Stevenson for his generous assistance with text paraphrases
INSTRUMENTS
· treble shawm : Philip Levin, U.S.A.
· alto shawm : Gunter Koerber, Germany
· bombarde : Glotin et Cie, France
· whistle : Jonathan Swayne, England
· gemshorns : Brian Garlick, England
· harp : Frank O'Gallagher, Australia
· psaltery : unknown, U.S.A.
· mandora, ud, chitarra moresca : Peter Biffin, Australia
· gittern : Arnold Black, Australia
· baglama, diwan saz : unknown, Turkey
· vielle : Ian Watchorn, Australia
· rebec : Bernard Ellis, England
· portative organ : Ron Sharp, Australia
· tambourine : Jeremy Montagu, England
· finger cymblas : unknown, Malaysia
· castanets : unknown, Spain
· darabukka : unknown, U.S.A.
· daireh : unknown, India
· tapan : Risto Todorovski, Australia
· bells : Whitechapel Bell Foundry, England
Recorded at ST. Peters, Sydney
Copyright © 1996, The Renaissance Players
Walsingham CLASSICS