Cultural Confluences in the Music of Alfonso X
Project funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (POCTI/EAT/38623/2001) , 2005-2008. Team: Manuel Pedro Ferreira, Rui Araújo. Institutional Partnership: Centre for the Study of the Cantigas de Santa Maria , Oxford University.
Cultural Confluences in the Music of Alfonso the Wise
Project financed by the FCT: ref. POCTI/EAT/38623/2001)
Background
The collection of 419 Cantigas de Santa Maria composed in the court of Alfonso X, King of León and Castile, in the second half of the thirteenth century, has been recognized as a fundamental milestone for the Iberian Peninsula (including the Galego-Portuguese context), and also for European culture (by the confluence, in the Peninsula, of Christian culture with the Islamic culture of al-Andalus).
In this repertoire (concluded around 1285), there can be observed for the first time, preceding the Ars Nova by some 30 years, a continuing effort to represent in writing a wide range of musical rhythms, and a preference for two kinds of musical forms connected to the southern (Islamic) culture of the Peninsula, one of which, the danza or virelai , would be used in most of Europe from c. 1300 onwards.
In spite of the progress made by recent research (Ferreira 1993 and ff.), these issues are far from receiving systematic study, and the relevance of this repertoire in the history of Western music still has not received the scholarly attention which it deserves, certainly because of its peripheral geographical and linguistic location .
In the 20th century , the only complete edition of the melodies of the Cantigas was that of Anglés, published in 1943 with a substantial number of errors; the facsimile reproductions of MS To (published in 1922) and MS E (1964), were modified and retouched, which puts into doubt their contents; and in the facsimile edition of the T manuscript, published in 1979, the musical notation is not very clear, and the same handicap is present in the microfilms available.
In consequence, the scientific community has not had proper access to the contents of the sources, which curtails any progress in their interpretation. This project aims to make available to the researchers, in a digital format, on the Internet, the whole of the paleographical data gathered, making the musical contents of the manuscripts permanently accessible, without the need to consult the original document.
Our aims
This project was launched late in 2004 to develop a paleographical and analytical survey of the musical notation of the existing manuscripts, making it possible to identify any vestiges of cultural confluence with a reasonable degree of confidence.
1 At the start, it was necessary to examine the sources (now kept in Madrid and El Escorial) to collect the notational details that were not available until now. The next task was to convert all the data to digital format, producing independent transcriptions of every single version of every single song. At the same time, the compilation of an exhaustive bibliography on the music of the CSM (and closely related topics) was begun.
2 During a second stage, the paleographical data would be revised and analyzed to organize and interpret the different notational elements, and a notation-focused database would be devised.
3 During the third and final stage, the whole of the data would be inserted into the database, allowing a cultural and historical contextualization of the musical notation of these sources, and the paleographical transcriptions would become available and freely downloadable through the Web.
With a few months remaining before the project end date, the 1st stage has been concluded, the 2nd almost so (with only final corrections to be made), and the 3rd is in progress.
April 10, 2008
Research Team:
Main Researcher: Dr. Manuel Pedro Ferreira ( mpferreira@fcsh.unl.pt )
Research assistant: Rui Araújo ( rui.a.f.araujo@clix.pt )
External consultant: Dr. Stephen Parkinson, Oxford University
Digital Paleographic Editions (ex.: CSM 30):
Here it's posssible to compare three examples of the same cantiga (although its numbering is not the same in the To manuscript, where it occurs as nº 40, and the Escorial codices T and E, where it appears as nº 30). The digital paleographic editions will be soon available for free download through the CESEM website.
Project Tools:
Below an example is given of the data insert window of the database MedievalMusic , developed within the project to allow the search of musical figures (and corresponding rhythmic profiles), notes and intervals in the CSM musical corpus . This database, when concluded, will be available at CESEM for consultation to entitled researchers, pending previous permission.
Project activities:
On the 14 June 2007, an International Round-Table about the music of the CSM was held in Lisbon (see poster below). Some of the papers presented then will be soon published online
Bibliography (disponível para consulta no CESEM, salvo indicação em contrário)
Presentations:
Rui Araújo:
«A interpretação das fontes medievais galego-portuguesas», Jornadas Medievais , Sesimbra, Junho 2006.
Manuel Pedro Ferreira:
«Understanding the Cantigas: Preliminary Steps», PMMS - Conference on Medieval Song, Oxford, 28 de Abril de 2007.
«A originalidade das Cantigas de Santa Maria e o papel de Afonso X : um ponto de vista musical», VII Encontro Internacional de Estudos Medievais-EIEM (Fortaleza, Ceará, Brasil, 3-6/7/2007)
«The Notation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria », 18th Congress of the International Musicological Society (Zurique, 10-15/7/2007)
Publications:
Manuel Pedro Ferreira:
«Alfonso X, compositor» in Alcanate: revista de estúdio alfonsíes , nº 5, (2006-2007), pp. 117-38.
«A propósito de uma nova lectura de la música das Cantigas de Santa María» in Alcanate: revista de estúdio alfonsíes , nº 5, (2006-2007), pp. 307-15.
«A conjunção de música e poesia na Península Ibérica, da Idade Média ao Renascimento» in Concerto das Artes , Porto: Campo das Letras, 2007, pp. 421-45.
Rui Araújo:
«A problemática das fontes da lírica musical medieval galego-portuguesa» in I Congreso Galego Mocidade Investigadora , Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, 2007, pp. 265-70.
Collective publications:
Campbell, Alison , « Song and source in the Cantigas de Santa Maria» in Performance Online: Revista de Interpretação Musical , Centro de Estudos de Sociologia e Estética Musical/FCSH-UNL - Unidade Investigação em Comunicação e Arte da Universidade de Aveiro, nº 3, 2008.[ http://www.performanceonline.org/pt/edicao_actual.html; no prelo]
Cohen , Judith, «'Ey-m' acá!' Cantigas Performance Practice in non-Specialist Settings: an Ethnomusicologist-Performer-Educator Perspective» in Performance Online: Revista de Interpretação Musical , Centro de Estudos de Sociologia e Estética Musical/FCSH-UNL - Unidade Investigação em Comunicação e Arte da Universidade de Aveiro, nº 3, 2008. [ http://www.performanceonline.org/pt/edicao_actual.html; no prelo]
Ferreira , Manuel Pedro, «Understanding the ‘Cantigas': Preliminary Steps» in Performance Online: Revista de Interpretação Musical , Centro de Estudos de Sociologia e Estética Musical/FCSH-UNL - Unidade Investigação em Comunicação e Arte da Universidade de Aveiro, nº 3, 2008. [ http://www.performanceonline.org/pt/edicao_actual.html; no prelo]
Useful materials for download:
Ferreira , Manuel Pedro, «Bases for Transcription: Gregorian Chant and the Notation of the Cantigas de Santa María» in Los instrumentos del Pórtico de la Gloria , II, 1993, pp. 573-620.
Ferreira , Manuel Pedro, «Iberian Monophony» in A Performer's Guide to Medieval Music (ed. Duffin, Ross W.), Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2000, pp. 144-57.
Huseby , Gerardo V., «
Musical Analysis and Poetic Structure in the Cantigas de Santa
Maria» in Florilegium Hispanicum: Medieval and Golden Age
Studies Presented to Dorothy Clotelle Clarke (coord.: John S.
Geary), Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, Madison , WI , 1983, pp.
81-101.
Useful links:
http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/composers/cantigas.html
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