Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History

Keywords: Keywords: Bakhtin, Cantigas, Dialogism, Discursive-musical polyphony, Jewish, Middle Ages, Music.

The aim of the present work is to analyse the interrelationship between the text and the musical tessitura in one of the pieces from the Cantigas de Santa Maria, by Alfonso X, el Sabio (13th Cent.). The chosen work is extracted among those which deal with the presence of the Jewish people in a Christian realm, where I look for to recover in the melodies, marks that reinforce or denigrate their image, comparing them with Christian presence as well the Virgen Mary. Thus, I take in assumption that music is a language, and I will support the analysis in taking into account the concept of “discursive-musical polyphony” created by Lanna using the theoretical framework of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin.