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Spanish Madrigals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

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Extract

Spanish Madrigals are seldom mentioned in histories of music. Very few have been published, and those are never publicly performed. The word Madrigal, as a musical term, is not found in the Spanish language. The latest edition of the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, published this year, gives as the only meaning, a form of verse, and repeats the derivation from mandra, a herd, which we now know to be false. Madrigal, however, has another meaning in Spanish, though that is not a musical one either. It is the name of a wine—and also of a town: Madrigal de las Altas Torres, “Madrigal of the High Towers”; and it is not altogether inappropriate that a place called Madrigal of the High Towers, should have been the birthplace of a great queen—Isabella of Castille.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1925

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References

Catalonia, however, can show something of a date considerably earlier—the “Red Book” of Montserrat, containing pilgrims' songs for two and three voices, with words in the vernacular. Other pilgrims' songs are preserved in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, though in these the words are in Latin.Google Scholar

Magister Johannes Anglicus had permission and a recommendation from James II of Aragon (1291–1327) to travel through his realms playing the organ and teaching the Catalan organists. See H. Anglès, “Report of the Basle Congress for Musical History, 1924”¿ and R. Menéndez Pidal, “Poesía juglaresca y juglares,” Madrid, 1924.Google Scholar

The villancico by Morales, written in a blank space in a MS of at least fifty years before his time (Catalan Library, Barcelona), is described in the catalogue as “text illegible” It turns out to be a setting (for 3 voices) of a well-known poem by Boscan, also set by Vasquez, and by the anonymous author of a printed collection of villancicos in the University Library, Upsala (Sweden).Google Scholar

Mossen Anglès, director of the Department of Music in the Catalan Library, Barcelona, informs me that a complete set of part-books exists at Valencia in the Colegio del Patriarca. The Catalan Library also possesses a Cantus 2 part-book.Google Scholar

“Lamentabatur Jacob,” 5 voc.Google Scholar