-Index-

Preface

Music in Middle Ages and Early Modernity

Antonio Celso RIBEIRO, Ricardo da COSTA

Original title: La Música en la Edad Media y en el inicio de la Edad Moderna

Special Issue

The Cantigas of Santa Maria – a musical treasure of the reign of Afonso X, the wise man (1252-1284)

Lenora Pinto MENDES

Original title: As Cantigas de Santa Maria – um tesouro musical do reinado de Afonso X, o Sábio (1252-1284)

Keywords: Cantigas, Music, Poetry.

Produced in the alfonsine scriptorium, the Cantigas de Santa Maria constitute a true encyclopedia of medieval music. Inserted in the medieval European troubadour movement in its Marian aspect in which the Virgin Mary takes the place of the lady of the court. They survived in four richly illuminated manuscripts with the record of all their melodies on the staff of five lines and squares neums developed a little earlier by the master Guido D’Arezzo. Considered a treasure by the wise king, the books of the songs also possessed healing powers. Some cantigas record passages of the life of its royal author.

Angelus or The touch of the Virgin: the Music in the Cantigas de Santa Maria (13th century) by King Alfonso X

Bárbara Dantas

Original title: Angelus ou O toque da Virgem: a Música nas Cantigas de Santa Maria (séc. XIII) do rei Afonso X

Keywords: Alfonso X, Architecture, Art, Cantigas de Santa María, Middle Ages, Music, Poetry.

Harmonious as a song, the Galician-Portuguese poetry, systematized by the zéjel metric, was the basis of the poetry of Cantigas de Santa Maria, a compilation that contains reports of miracles and praises to the Virgin performed in the second half of the 13th century at the request of the castilian king Alfonso X (1221-1284), creator, sponsor and supervisor of the work. In Cantigas, reality is overcome by imagination without limits and the relation of poetry with two other artistic forms (Music and image) makes it literary support in which the themes of the songs to the Virgin were formed. Music and image share with the poetry a sensitivity capable of expressing in different ways certain reports of miracles or praise. For this article, I present to you the Cantiga 276 of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. From iconographic and architectural analyzes, I realized the association between church bells, the architecture of the sanctuary towers where they are housed and the melody of the Angelus (The Virgin's Touch).

The musician and humanist Damião de Góis (1502-1574)

Márcio Paes SELLES

Original title: O músico e humanista Damião de Góis (1502-1574)

Keywords: Court, Humanist, Music.

Damião de Góis, was born in Alenquer in a family of the Portuguese nobility, grew up in the court of D. Manuel I where he had access to musical learning. Later, a diplomat under King John III had contact with Franco-Flemish music, developed in the chapels of the court of Burgundy and lived with important humanists of his time as Erasmus and Bembo. His compositions as well as his musical taste in the French-Flemish style served as an argument in a complaint in the Holy Office that ended up leading to his death in 1574.

The Music in Don Quijote by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)

Antonia Javiera CABRERA MUÑOZ

Original title: La Música en el Don Quijote de Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)

Keywords: Don Quijote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes, Music.

This article deals with Music in the great work Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605 and 1615), written by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1615) during the Spanish Golden Age. In this relationship between the two Arts (Literature and Music) we emphasized the protagonist character of the work, Don Quixote de la Mancha, who, in both parts, gradually evolve his musical sense to see himself as a fully musical character in the second part: Music is present in various attitudes of his in several episodes, using the recitation and singing, instrumental, general knowledge and even dance to show their musical skills. Several authors have studied this relationship in detail, so that in this work we made a brief synthesis of some contents with the purpose of introducing the Brazilian reader to this relationship in Don Quixote, since in Brazil there is nothing published on the subject, as verified in the main research databases available to the general public and specialized. We begin with a brief synthesis of the life and work of Cervantes, highlighting his literary path to understand a little of his worldview as an intellectual; then we dedicate ourselves to his relationship with Music, the musical environment of his time and how the musical expression was introduced in his works; at once, we made a cut of Don Quixote musician, by highlighting some musical aspects that character shows. The analysis of Don Quixote showed that Music is as much pastoral as in the urban or contemporary to Cervantes. In reading the work, it was also verified that Music unfolds in three ways that correspond to its three outputs: in the first, the musical elements are scarce and simple and show, crudely, the contrast between what imagined by the knight and rural reality; in the second, the same happens as in the first, but little by little the gentleman is contemplating reality as it is and are the other characters who try to convince him that everything is a product of enchantments; in the third, Don Quixote assumes the role of musician in the manner of the knight-errant.

The advent of solo ricercare in sixteenth century as a transposition of the voice in instrument: the discorso in Giovanni Bassano (c. 1560-1617)

Patricia Michelini AGUILAR

Original title: O advento do ricercare solista no século XVI como transposição da voz em instrumento: o discorso em Giovanni Bassano (c. 1560-1617)

Keywords: Bassano, Diminutions, Ricercare, Ricercata, Soggetto, Speech.

Throughout the sixteenth century, especially in some Italian cities, instrumental cult music began to develop with certain autonomy in relation to vocal music. The human voice was still considered the most expressive and perfect way for musical practice, but the instruments, constantly improved, became more valued, especially when they emulated the voice. In this paper we will demonstrate that the ricercare for melodic instruments came from the transposition of vocal into instrumental music. We begin with a brief history of this genre; we continue with a description of the main compositional procedures used at the time for vocal music, in order to find some paralells with the diminutions in Signor mio Caro (Cipriano de Rore) and with the Ricercate Terza and Quarta, musics from the manual Ricercate, passaggi et cadentie (Veneza, 1585), by Giovanni Bassano (c. 1560-1617). We try to demonstrate that Bassano uses certain devices present in vocal music of the period to create pieces that already indicate an instrumental character, such as the conscious choice of musical intervals and rhythmic figures for building soggetti (little themes) and subsequent development on virtuosic ornamentation. We conclude supposing that the lack of text on ricercatas does not eliminate the presence of a hidden voice, originated by pure intonation, without words that give it a literal meaning, but related to current expressions of some affetti.

Marin Marais (1656-1728). From cobbler to king’s musician

Kristina AUGUSTIN

Original title: Marin Marais (1656-1728). De sapateiro a músico do rei

Keywords: Bass Viol, French Baroque Music, Historically Informed Performance, Viola da Gamba.

The main purpose of this article is to provide a short biography about Marin Marais in Portuguese. The information gathered is not unpublished and was based on articles and books available. The main contribution of this article was to find and verify the citation of primary sources that are often not mentioned or cited in the wrong way.

French Oratory Speech and François Couperin Gigas: correspondences and disparities

Beatriz Carneiro PAVAN

Original title: O discurso oratório francês e as Gigas de François Couperin (1668-1733): correspondências e disparidades

Keywords: François Couperin, French music of the 18th century, Gigue, Harpsichord.

In the last decades the historical-musical research has become necessary object for the performance of works of distant periods. The joining of common elements between rhetorical and musical discourse adds to the material interpretative bases that underlie it. This fact shows some correlations between the Gigas by François Couperin and the French spoken language in order to base their performance.

Reassessing Bourdelot-Bonnet’s first French History of Music (1715)

Myrna HERZOG

Keywords: 17th century, 18th century, Bonnet, Bourdelot, France, Gôuts Réunis, Historiography, History of Music.

This is an historiographical examination of the first History of Music published in France in 1715, written during a long span of time by three different authors. Histoire de la Musique et de ses effets depuis son origine jusqu’a present portrays the ideological war taking place in France in the late 17th and early 18th-century between defenders of the French and the Italian styles and proposes an union of the two – what would be later called Les Goûts Réunis (the united tastes) – as an esthetic solution to the conflict.

Father José Maurício Nunes’ Sinfonia Fúnebre (1790): an analysis employing Robert Gjerdingen’s Musical Schemata

Ernesto HARTMANN

Original title: A Sinfonia Fúnebre (1790) do Padre José Maurício Nunes Garcia (1767-1830): análise com o conceito de Schema Musical de Robert Gjerdingen

Keywords: Father José Maurício Nunes Garcia, Galant Style, Schemata, Sinfonia Fúnebre (1790).

In this work I investigate the use in Father José Maurício Nunes Garcia’s Sinfonia Fúnebre (1790) of what the American musicologist Robert Gjerdongen calls Schemata. According to Gjerdingen, Schemata are abstract structures that were part of the Galant Style, either in Central Europe as in the Colonies, as Brazil is the case. In order to do so, I make a brief overview of the editions available for analysis; review of the Schemata concept in Gjerdingen and other authoritative authors; elaborate a table that articulates form, tonality, Schemata bar by bar; and last, exemplify the use of this Schemata in musical excerpts of the work. I conclude that the systematic and very sophisticated use of the Schemata by the Brazilian composer demonstrates that he is by no means just a mere imitator of the Galant Style, but instead, a great master of this idiom and capable to organize the Schemata at his will to fulfill his expressive needs as it is the case in this Sinfonia Funebre.

Articles

The Construction of Space(s) and Identity(s) in Medieval Literature: Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales as a Case Study

Mourad EL FAHLI

Keywords: Christendom, Cultural Interchange, Europe, Heathendom, Identity, Infidels, Representation.

This paper examines the engagement of medieval literature in the construction of identities, particularly those of Europe and Muslims. While the former is represented as a unified Christian space, the latter is depicted as an external threat that endangers God’s plan and kingdom. Hence, medieval literature distinguished two opposing spatiality’s namely Christendom and Heathendom. Such spatial configuration deliberately overlooked internal schisms and antagonisms that characterized medieval Europe and instead opted for an ideal utopian vision, which has its origin in crusading discourses that emphasized unity in the face of “infidels.” To examine these issues, the paper takes as an example Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, which is considered by many as one of the most influential medieval literary works. Medieval ideological othering has-ad still- shaped understandings and configurations of the various contacts between West and East and between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The paper further enriches the discussion by a focus on cross-cultural interchange that informs Chaucer’s oeuvre, particularly the influence of Medieval Arabic scientific studies on his conception of lovesickness. Such interchange paradoxically problematizes the western condemnatory attitude towards Islam.