Cantigas de Santa Maria
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The Cantigas de Santa Maria ("Songs to the Virgin Mary") are manuscripts were written in Galician-Portuguese, with music notation, during the reign of Alfonso X El Sabio (1221-1284) and are one of the largest collections of monophonic (solo) songs from the Middle Ages. All of the songs at least mention the Virgin Mary, and every 10th is a religious hymn. Some of the manuscripts containing this music also contain colored miniatures showing pairs of musicians playing a wide variety of instruments.
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[edit] Description
The Cantigas are written in Galician-Portuguese, the lyrical language of Castile at the time. The Cantigas are composed of 420 poems, 356 of which are in a narrative format relating to Virgin Mary miracles; the rest of them, except an introduction and two prologues, are of lore or involve Marian festivities.
The authors are unknown, even if several studies indicate that Galician poet Airas Nunes might well have been the author of a large part of them. King Alfonso X — named as Affonso in the Cantigas — is also believed to be an author of some of them as he refers himself in first person.
The metrics are extraordinarily diverse: 280 different formats for the 420 Cantigas. The most common are the virelai and the rondeau. The length of the verses varies between two and 24 syllables. The narrative voice in many of the songs describes an erotic relationship, in the troubador fashion, with the Divine.
The music is written in notation which is similar to that used for chant, but also contains some information about the length of the notes. Several transcriptions exist. The Cantigas are frequently recorded and performed by Early Music groups, and quite a few CDs featuring music from the Cantigas are available.
[edit] Codices
Three codices (copies) of the Cantigas are preserved. They are known as the E Codex, the T Codex, and the Florencia manuscript. The E Codex kept in El Escorial, originally from the royal court of Seville, is in two volumes and is the largest collection of the Cantigas; it is richly illuminated in a Gothic hand, containing no less than 1262 carefully detailed miniatures, and has been dated to 1280-1283. The T Codex, from Toledo, which had been considered a copy of an earlier manuscript, has now been reevaluated; it may be in fact be the oldest of the codices, dating from the lifetime of King Alfonso. The Florence manuscript has 109 of the cantigas but contains no music, only empty staves; however it is richly illuminated.
[edit] Media
"Santa Maria, strela do dia" Image:Santa Maria.ogg
Problems listening to the file? See media help.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- The Songs of Holy Mary by Alfonso X, the Wise: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. Translated by Kathleen Kulp-Hill. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe 2000. ISBN 0-86698-213-2
[edit] External links
- http://perso.club-internet.fr/brassy/PartMed/Cantigas/CSMIDI.html Full Text with MIDI files (site in french).
- http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cantigas/ (facsimile, illuminations, links to transcriptions)
- http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/composers/cantigas.html (a comprehensive database of the released Cantigas recordings.)
- http://www.falsobordone.com/eng_index.htm (Swedish early music group, four songs of their cantigas-CD are downloadable)
- http://csm.mml.ox.ac.uk/ (The Centre for the Study of the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Oxford University)br:Cantigas
ca:Cantigas de Santa María de:Cantigas de Santa Maria es:Cantigas de Santa María fr:Cantigas de Santa Maria gl:Cantigas de Santa María nl:Cantigas de Santa Maria pt:Cantigas de Santa Maria
