Spanish Secular Vocal Music of The Sixteenth Century Author(s): Isabel Pope Source: Renaissance News, Vol. 2, No.

1 (Spring, 1949), pp. 1-5 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2857475 . Accessed: 24/05/2013 18:45
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RENAISSANCE NEWS
A quarterly newsletter published by Dartmouth College Library for the American Council of Learned Societies
FREDERICK W. STERNFELD, editor VERNON HALL, JR. RAY NASH

Address all communications to the editor, P.O. Box 832, Hanover, N.H. Annual subscription: domestic $I.oo, Canada and foreign $1.25
Committee on Renaissance Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies: WILLIAM G. CONSTABLE, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Chairman WALLACE K. FERGUSON, New York University OTIS H. GREEN,University of Penna. Harvard University JAMESHUTTON,Cornell University WILLIAMA. JACKSON, PAUL 0. KRISTELLER, ColumbiaUniversity GEORGE B. PARKS,QueensCollege

VOL. II SPANISH MUSIC

CAUSES ITALIAN OF THE

SPRING

I949 page

No. I
5 7

RENAISSANCE

ARCHITECTURE

The foregoing are abstractsof papersto be delivered before the New England Conference on Renaissance Studies at Dartmouth College on April 29-30
REGIONAL LIBRARIES PROJECTS AND EUROPEAN NEWS CONFERENCES

9
I I I3

Spanish Secular Focal Music of Th e Sixteenth Century

BY ISABEL POPE

century: unaccompanied polyphonic songs and solo with instrumental songs accompaniment.The compositionsfor unaccomhave voices been panied preservedprincipallyin musical anthologies, the Cancioneros.Many remain anonymous, but recent investigationshave disclosed new names and made possiblenew and more complete attributions. A number of the composers were chiefly celebrated for their religious [I]

types of secular vocal music were cultivated in Spain during T WO the sixteenth

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works. Usually they were attached to the Royal Chapels in the Peninsula itself or in the Kingdom of Naples. Later in the century Spanish composerslived much abroad holding posts at various Italian courts or at the Imperial Court in Vienna. The great trio, Morales, Guerrero, Victoria wrote little or no secularmusic. A considerableliterature of solo songs with instrumental accompaniment has been preserved in the very numerous collections of music for the vihuela. This instrument, shaped very like the guitar, with narrow waist and flat back, was designed, however, for the performanceof complicated contrapuntal music such as was played more generally at that time on the lute. It had six, sometimes seven strings, some often being reinforced by a sympatheticallyvibrating string doubling at the octave to give more resonance. Of the early Cancioneros the largest and most important is the celebratedCancionerode Palacio. The 460 piecesin this splendidmanuscript, probablycompiled for Ferdinand the Catholic after the death of Isabella of Castile in I504, display to full advantage the characteristicsof the Spanishstyle over a period extending roughly from about 1460 to 1510. As regards technique these compositionsare evidence that Spanish composers were thoroughly familiar with the polyphonic practices of the Flemish School of the fifteenth century, and recent investigation has brought new evidence to show the uninterruptedassociationof Peninsular musicians with the Flemish masters. These compositionsare, however, settings of traditional Spanishforms and frequently polyphonic arrangements of traditionalairs. To a degree uniquely Spanish, cultivated poets and musicians of the Court of the Catholic Sovereigns as well as their great successorsof the Golden Age created an art which drew its vital substancefrom the folk tradition. With a good sense and taste rare at a time when musicians delighted in a show of the subtlest contrapuntal complexities, the musicians of the early Cancioneros used a simple, straightforward polyphonic style, not always devoid of a certain awkwardness and archaic quality. Their interest was to set off rather than obscure characteristicturns of melody and rhythm and to intensify the poetic meaning of the text whether gay or melancholy, sentimental or satiric.
Gasaj6monos de husia ("Let's make merry with right good will"). This villancico, music and verses by Juan del Encina, was sung and danced as an interlude in one of his little pastoral plays. It was probably performed in I495. The text was published in the first edition of the poet's works in 1496. The plate is reproduced, with the editor's permission, from La Musica en la Corte de las Reys Catolicas, II, Polifonia Profana. Cancionero Musical de Palacio. Transcribed and edited by Higinio Angles. Barcelona, 1947.

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The favorite form was the villancico, a closed form related to the mediaeval virelai with a traditionat least as old as the thirteenth century and perhaps more remotely of Arabic-Andalusianorigin. By the period of the Cancioneros this choral dance song had crystallized in the musical form: A(refrain); B B (stanza); A (refrain). Beside it flourishedthe Spanish ballad, the romance, also of ancient lineage, given new life by the poets of the Golden Age. Perhaps the most successful, certainly the best representedcomposerin these forms (some eighty of his piecesappear in the Cancionerode Palacio alone), was Juan del Encina (1469-1529). Both poet and composer, he was also the first to write secular dramas. With these little plays, into which he introduced his villancicos to be sung and danced as interludes and finales, he set the pattern for a national drama always preeminently lyric in character. The villancicos in the Cancionero de Upsala (Venice, 1556) and those by Juan Vasquez (Osuna, 155i and Seville, 1560) represent the finest examples of the form. The best have a transparent contrapuntal texture, a phrasing sensitive to the peculiar qualities of Spanish verse rhythms and a remarkablefeeling for harmonic color and expression. The vocal piecesin the vihuela tablaturebooks which appearedin such profusionbeginning with El Maestro (Valencia, 1535-36) by Luis Milan are not merely transcriptionsof polyphonic compositions, but are often true arrangements exploiting the special capacities of the vihuela. Of particular interest are the arrangements of romances. Their characteristicallymonotonous melody, repeatedthrough the long seriesof trochaic octosyllables,is relieved by the introduction of rapid scale passages and instrumentalinterludes which test the instrumentalist'svirtuosity. A favorite procedureis to write two or more versionsof the same song in one of which the voice decorates the melody with vocal embellishments of quavers, trills and turns, while in another the voice sings the simple melody and the theme is varied and elaboratedon the instrument. From such practices the purely instrumental variation form was brilliantly developed by Spanishcomposers from an early date.
Recent Publications on Spanish Music of the Sixteenth Century

La Mzsica en la Corte de los Reyes Cat6licos. Higinio Angles.

I. II. Polifonia Religiosa. Madrid, I94I. Polifonia Profana. "Cancionero Musical de Palacio," Barcelona, 1947.

0 Cancioneiro Musical e Poetico da Biblioteca Pzblia Hortensia. (sign no.

11973) Manuel Joaquim, Coimbra, 1940.

Luys de Narvaez. Los seys libros del Delphin de mzsica de cifra para taner
vihuela. (Valladolid, 1538). Transcripci6n y estudio, Emilio Pujol, Barcelona, 1945. Cancionero de Upsala. Villancicos de diversos autores, etc. (Venice, 1556). Introducci6n, notas y comentarios de Rafael Mitjana. Transcripci6n musical en notaci6n moderna de Jesus Bal y Gay. Con un estudio sobre 'El Villancico

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Polif6nico' de Isabel Pope. El Colegio de M6xico, Mexico, 1944. La Musica en la Corte de Carlos V. Con la transcripci6n del Libro de Cifra Nueva para tecla, harpa y vihuela de Luys Venegas de Henestrosa. (Alcala de Henares, I557). Higinio Angles, Barcelona, 1944. Juan Vasquez. Recopilaci6n de Sonetos y Villancicos a quatro y a cinco. (Sevilla, I56o). Higinio Angles, Barcelona, 1946. Romances y Villancicos Espanoles del Siglo XVI. Edici6n moderna para canto y piano. Jes6s Bal y Gay. La Casa de Espafia en M6xico, Mexico, 1939.

On The Causesof the Renaissance

BY JOSEPHINE WATERS BENNETT

HE weakest spot in the attempt to define, describe,and understand the Renaissance is our failure to consider causes. This failure is largely due to a failure of definition in time. The beginning has been placed anywhere between the Sixteenth and the Fourteenth Centuries. Most of the causeswhich have been suggested (the fall of Constantinople, the invention of printing, the discovery of America) are Fifteenth Century phenomena. But it is generally agreed that humanism began with Petrarch. I think we must ask ourselves why the Latin classics, which had been lying about in neglected corners of libraries, should suddenly become the most valuable things in the world. It is not enough to attribute this new enthusiasm to "fashion." Men turn eagerly to new ideas chiefly when they are dissatisfiedwith the old; and there were good reasons for dissatisfactionin Italy in Petrarch's day. The long struggle between Pope and Emperor had eliminated both from Italy, and Rome was a deserted city where only the ancient ruins retained their grandeur. It was not a passionfor elegant Latin which motivated the humanistic movement, but a search for guidance toward a new way of life. Religion and morality constituted the major field of discontent. The Mediaeval
Church was at its lowest ebb. From I305 to I377 the Popes were in

"Babylonian exile," and the first fruit of the return to Rome was thirty years of schism. The weakness of the Church extended through all ranks and orders, and was publicized by the quarrels of monks, friars, and priests. This condition affected all Europe, but it did not affect any two countries in the same way, and no two countries reacted in the same way. However, if we define the Renaissance as a period in time, and if we recognize religious, political and economic conditions as causes, then we must include all of these various reactions as phenomena of the Renaissance. The unmistakablefailure of the Church as a political instrument (of

[5]

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