(Sp.: ‘songbook’; Port. cancioneiro).
The term has in practice been used from the 15th century more often to designate a collection or anthology of poems without music, whether intended for singing or not. Indeed, the words ‘cancionero’ and ‘cancioneiro’ did not begin to appear in the titles of songbooks with music until the 19th century. Hence, some Spanish scholars now use the term ‘cancionero musical’ for a songbook with music.
EDITIONS OF CANCIONEROS WITH MUSIC
JACK SAGE/SUSANA FRIEDMANN
The earliest Castilian collections now designated ‘cancioneros’ are two 15th-century anthologies of learned poems, one compiled in 1445 by Alfonso de Baena primarily for Juan II of Castile, the other a similar compilation made by Lope de Stúñiga for Alfonso V at the Spanish court of Naples about 1458. Neither was originally entitled ‘cancionero’, but the compilers must have had the classical link between poetry and music in mind since some of the poems are expressly described as having been set to music. The word ‘cancionero’ was first printed in a title in the Cancionero (Salamanca, 1496) of Juan del Encina. This collection too contains not a note of music, but the word was presumably chosen for the title to imply that the poems of this poet–musician were singable; many of them appear with music, often by Encina himself, in the Cancionero Musical de Palacio (see §2 below) and other songbooks of the 16th century. An impending divorce between poetry and music was clearly signalled in 1511 with the printing at Valencia of the most celebrated of the non-musical cancioneros, Hernando de Castillo’s Cancionero general, and at Lisbon in 1516 by Garcia de Resende’s primarily Portuguese Cancioneiro geral. Castillo’s Cancionero produced a remarkable number of offshoots in the 16th century (see Rodríguez-Moñino, A1973). These too nearly always offered poems to be read as poems, though there were a few attractive exceptions containing lyrics expressly for singing or dancing, such as the Cancionero de galanes and Cantares de diversas sonadas (c1530–35).
Most 15th- and 16th-century cancioneros were compiled for learned or aristocratic readers. More mundane collections devoted exclusively to ballads (romances), intended for a wider public, began to appear with the Cancionero de romances (Antwerp, c1548). Here again there was no music, probably because those expected to use the book (possibly Spanish soldiers in Flanders) would be able to recall the simple, traditional tunes easily enough. Such ballad anthologies were often printed under appetizing titles – for example Silva de varios romances (Zaragoza, 1550) – but from about 1580 a few titles began to display the word ‘romancero’ (‘ballad book’) for anthologies of both traditional-type ballads and new more contrived kinds. The word ‘romancero’ has been widely used ever since to denote a collection of Spanish ballads of any kind, with or (more often) without music. M. de Madrigal’s monumental Romancero general (Madrid, 1600–14) and the highly successful Romances varios de diversos autores (Zaragoza, 1640–64), for instance, were collections of new-type ballads that were primarily to be read as poems and were directed to a mixed public. Some anthologies of refrain songs, however, presented indiscriminately as villancicos or as romances to be sung to known tunes, were still printed in the 17th century; notable examples were the Laberinto amoroso (Zaragoza, 1618–38) and the Primavera y flor (Madrid, 1621–59).
Although songbooks complete with music are at least as frequent in Spain and Portugal from the late 15th century as in other European countries, monodic collections were not compiled until the 17th century (for example E-Mn M3880–82, c1700). Important monodic songs appeared in the vihuela tutor books from 1535 (when Luys Milán brought out his El maestro), but their inclusion was incidental to the illustration of vihuela technique and not a consequence of any particular desire to compile cancioneros. From about 1620, guitar ciphers began to appear over the words of certain lyrics of some anthologies (see Acutis, A1971 and Wilson, A1973). These ciphers were numbers or, later, letters, indicating chords to be strummed as accompaniment to the tunes of the songs in question (Sage, A1984).
The earliest of the polyphonic songbooks, compiled between about 1480 and 1532, are related to each other insofar as they share some pieces. They are the Cancionero Musical de la Colombina (E-Sc 7–1–28, c1490), the Cancionero Musical de Palacio (Mp 1335, c1505–20), the Cancionero Musical de Barcelona (Bc M 454, c1500–32) and the Cancionero Musical de Segovia (in SE, early 16th century). All, especially the Cancionero de Palacio, contain some partsongs based on tunes (usually in the top part) which probably existed before 1450 (see Romance, §1). The Cancionero de Montecassino (I-MC N 871, c1480–1500) falls into this early group as a Spanish cancionero only because it was culled from the musical repertory of a Spanish dominion, the Aragonese court of Alfonso V at Naples, and because a handful of its contents are Spanish or Catalan songs. The Cancionero de la Colombina contains 95 pieces, the majority three- or four-part art songs of a simple kind based on texts dealing with courtly love; nearly all of them are villancicos. The most important of the early songbooks is the celebrated Cancionero de Palacio, representing the musical repertory of the Spanish court at the time of the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. 458 of the original 548 compositions have survived; most are for three or four voices and, again, most are villancicos, about 50 are canciones, and about 40 are romances. There are many more or less refined settings of courtly texts similar to those in the Cancionero de la Colombina, but there are also as many with folklike texts and tunes, though the distinction between the courtly and the popular is by no means clearcut. Indeed, one of the most striking features of this and most other early cancioneros is the way poets and musicians often produced a happy blend of plebeian and courtly elements. Religious songs are, as usual, in the minority. The most favoured composer is Encina, followed by Francisco Millán, Francisco de la Torre, Pedro de Escobar and Francisco de Peñalosa. The predominance of Spanish songs shows that the collection served as a testimony to native Spanish artistry; but there are a dozen pieces in Italian and French, and three are settings of Spanish texts composed by the Fleming Johannes Wreede including his celebrated Nunca fue pena mayor in pride of place at the head of the cancionero. On the other hand, Spanish texts appear in only 38 of the 204 pieces in the Cancionero de Segovia and in only 25 of the 122 in the Cancionero de Barcelona; the frequency with which foreign composers appear in these and other cancioneros of the 16th century as well as in the Cancionero de Valladolid (E-V M 255, 1650) in the 17th, added to the number of collections of foreign compositions compiled in Iberia in the 16th century (see Chansonnier (i)), shows that Spanish and Portuguese Renaissance composers were as aware of musical developments in the rest of Europe as they were of their national heritage. Moreover, recent studies of the frequency of Iberian song in the printed collections of neighbouring countries have shown that this influence was mutual. The last of the cancioneros related to the early cycle centred on the Cancionero de Palacio are the Cancionero de Elvas (P-Em 11973, c1550) and the Cancionero del Duque de Calabria (Venice, 1556). Although it was copied in the mid-16th century, 14 of the three-part villancicos in the Cancionero de Elvas are common to the Cancionero de Palacio, and most of the others are comparable in style. The Cancionero del Duque de Calabria probably owes its judicious selection of 54 villancicos to the fact that it was intended as some kind of prestige volume in the Duke of Calabria’s circle; all are in Spanish, but six are by Gombert. Though the selection ranges over the first half of the century, many of the songs point to the madrigalesque style signalled more clearly by Juan Vásquez from 1551.
By the turn of the century madrigalism had led on to a search for new forms and rhythms often linked with provocative new dances such as the zarabanda and the seguidilla on the one hand and quasi-recitative on the other. Whereas, up to about 1570, cancioneros were built on a good deal of traditional material, 17th-century songbooks, beginning with such as the Romancero Musical de Turín (I-Tn Ris.Mus.1–14, c1600), Romances y letras a tres vozes (E-Mn 1370–72, c1600) and the Cancionero Musical de Sablonara (D-Mbs E 200, c1625) – the last-named drawn from the repertory of the court of Philip III – show how musicians grew so fascinated by novelty that they came close to making a clean break with tradition. One of the external features retained was the refrain form, now indiscriminately designated villancico and romance, though the restless new melodies are generally very different from the old four-phrase ballad tunes. The largest and in many ways the most interesting of the 17th-century cancioneros, Libro de tonos humanos (E-Mn M 1262, 1656), contains 226 partsongs by Spanish and Portuguese composers, notably Manuel Correa and Manuel Machado, active in the first half of the century. The new cantata-like villancico is exemplified by other collections (e.g. Mn M 3882). Another significant trend, the demand for ‘hit’ songs taken from the contemporary musical theatre, found an outlet in manuscript cancioneros (for instance Mn M 3880 and I-Vnm IV 470, both c1700, and E-Mn M 2618, c1730). These 17th-century sources received renewed attention in the last two decades of the 20th century, first by the modern editions of cancioneros and of songs for the theatre by Lope de Vega, Caldéron and Góngora, but also by a marked emphasis on the context and performance of the cancionero repertory. The Libro de tonos puestos en cifra de arpa (Mn M 2478, 1706) demands attention as a judicious selection of 17th-century Spanish songs arranged as harp solos. Single-composer cancioneros are rare. Apart from Mn M 3880, which is devoted mainly to partsongs by Juan Hidalgo, the most notable example is the collection of monodies with guitar accompaniment (GB-Cfm MU4, c1700) by José Marín, a good representation of the increasing trend towards music intended for domestic use.
Until the 19th century, Iberian musical cancioneros, for all their interest in traditional or popular words and tunes, were collections of compositions by courtly or professional musicians made without any specifically folklore intentions, though from the late 16th century they were aimed at a progressively wider public. The tunes in Salinas’ De musica (1555) are sometimes presented as a folklore cancionero, though he in fact included melodies of many kinds simply to illustrate his arguments, not intentionally as a collection of traditional music. Collections of folksongs, without music at first, are a feature that came in the 19th century with the growth of interest in the art of the people, although – according to Eduardo Martínez Torner – the first man to plan such a collection, José González Torres de Nava, approached the Spanish government as early as 1799 for funds to help him transcribe popular dances and songs. By the 1880s a number of individual folktune collectors were at work, led by José María Valera y Silvar, Sixto Córdova y Oña, José Inzenga and Antonio Machado senior (‘Demófilo’), as well as scholars and composers of the stature of Francisco Asenjo Barbieri and, later, Felipe Pedrell. These pioneers and those who followed them understandably adopted a variety of unreliable methods, although the selection was usually by region or village. The first to adopt disc recording in Spain is reported to have been Torner (see Katz, B1974), but the effective pioneer in scholarly techniques was Kurt Schindler. In 1929 he took down the tunes of 371 songs in the province of Soria, assisted by native Spaniards in recording the words; in 1932 and 1933 he recorded 369 more on an aluminium disc recorder, and these served as the basis of his invaluable Folk Music and Poetry of Spain and Portugal (1941). Many cancioneros have been compiled since then, ranging from those by Manuel García Matos, which are at least as reliable as Schindler’s volume, to those published by the Falangist movement, which contain songs freely harmonized and adapted. The collection of traditional song in the Iberian peninsula in the Hispanic diaspora (as sung by the descendants of Judeo-Spanish communities in north Africa, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Americas), the publication of its texts and music and, more recently, recordings are complemented by a move towards the systematic study of the repertory throughout the Spanish-speaking world.
(selective list)
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Cancionero de Montecassino, I-MC N 871, c1480–1500, ed. I. Pope and M. Kanazawa, The Musical Manuscript Montecassino (Oxford, 1978) |
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Cancionero musical de la Colombina, E-Sc 7–1–28, c1490, ed. G. Haberkamp, Die weltliche Vokalmusik in Spanien um 1500: der ‘Cancionero musical de Colombina’ von Seville (Tutzing, 1968) and in MME, xxxiii (1971) |
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Cancionero musical de Palacio, Mp 1335 (olim 2–1–5), c1505–20, ed. F.A. Barbieri, Cancionero musical de los siglos XV y XVI (Madrid, 1890) and in MME, v, x (1947–51); texts ed. J. Romeu Figueras, MME, xiv/1–2 (1965) |
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Cancionero musical de Barcelona (Bc M 454 1500–32), ed. E. Ros-Fabregas, The manuscript Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya M 454: Study and edition in the context of the Iberian and Continental manuscript traditions (diss., CUNY, 1992) |
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Cancionero musical de Segovia (SE, early 16th century), ed. N.K. Baker, An Unnumbered Manuscript of Polyphony in the Archives of the Cathedral of Segovia: its Provenance and History (diss., U. of Maryland, 1978) |
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Cancionero musical de Elvas, P-Em 11973, c1550, ed. M. Joaquim, O cancioneiro musical e poético da Biblioteca Públia Hortênsia (Coimbra, 1940) |
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Cancionero de Elvas (Em 11973 c1550), ed. G. Miranda, The Elvas Songbook (Stuttgart, 1987) |
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Cancionero del Duque de Calabria [Cancionero de Upsala]: Villancicos de diversos autores a dos y a tres y a quatro y a cinco bozes agora nuevamente corregidos (Venice, 155630); ed. J. Bal y Gay and R. Mitjana, Cancionero de Upsala (Mexico City, 1944) |
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Cancionero musical de Medinaceli, E-Mmc 13230, c1569, ed. in MME, viii–ix (1949–50) |
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Romancero musical de Turín (I-Tn Ris. Mus. 1–14, c1600), ed. M. Querol Gavaldá, Cancionero musical de Turín (Madrid, 1989) |
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Cancionero de Ajuda (P-La MS 47–V–10/13 c1600), extracts ed. in M. Querol Gavaldá, Cancionero musical de Góngora (Barcelona, 1975) |
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Romances y letras a tres vozes, E-Mn 1370–72, c1600, ed. in MME, xviii– (1956–) |
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Cancionero musical de Medinaceli, Mmc 13231, c1600, extracts ed. in MME, xxxii (1970) |
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Cancionero musical de Casanatense, Rc 5437, c1620, extracts ed. in MME, xxxii (1970) |
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Cancionero musical de Casanatense (Rc 5437 c1620), ed. in MME, xl (1981) |
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Cancionero de La Sablonara (D-Mbs E 200, c1625), ed. J. Etzion, El cancionero de La Sablonara (London, 1996) |
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Cancionero musical de Coimbra, P-Cug MM 26, c1645, extracts ed. in MME, xxxii (1970) |
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Cancionero musical de Onteniente, B. Ferriol’s private collection, 1645, extracts ed. in MME, xxxii (1970) |
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Libro de tonos humanos (E-Mn M 1262, 1655–56), extracts ed. in MME, xxxii (1970), MME, xlvii (1988) and M. Querol Gavaldá, Manuel Machado: Romances e cançoes (Lisbon, 1975) |
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For fuller bibliographical details of some of the above, and other editions, see Sources, ms, §§III and IX, 10. |
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J. Romeu Figueras: ‘El cosante en la lírica de los cancioneros musicales españoles de los siglos XV y XVI’, AnM, v (1950), 15–61
J. Stenou and L. Knapp: Biblioteca de los cancioneros castellanos del siglo XV y repertorio de sus géneros poéticos (Paris, 1957–)
J. López-Calo: ‘El archivo de música de la Capilla Real de Granada’, AnM, xiii (1958), 103–228; xxvi (1971), 213–35; xxvii (1972), 203–27
J. Romeu Figueras: ‘La colección Cantares de diversas sonadas’, AnM, xii (1967), 98–143
A. Rodríguez-Moniño: Poesía y cancioneros (siglo XVI) (Madrid, 1968)
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M. Querol Gavaldá: ‘Dos nuevos cancioneros polifónicos españoles de la primera mitad del siglo XVII’, AnM, xxvi (1971), 93–111
A. Rodríguez-Moñino: Manual bibliográfico de cancioneros y romanceros impresos durante el siglo XVI (Madrid, 1973)
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J. Baron: Spanish Art Song in the Seventeenth Century (Madison, 1985)
R. Goldberg: ‘El cancionero de Cambridge’, AnM, xli (1986), 172–90
M. Morais: Vilancetes, Cantigas e Romances do Seculo XVI (Lisbon, 1986)
J. Etzion: ‘The Spanish Polyphonic Cancioneros, c.1580–1650: a Survey of Literary Content and Textual Concordances’, RdMc, xl (1988), 65–107
J. Baron: ‘Spanish Solo Art Song in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century’, De musica hispana et aliis: miscelánea en honor al Prof. Dr. José López-Calo, ed. E. Casares and C. Villanueva (Santiago de Compostela, 1990), 451–76
T. Knighton: ‘The a Cappella Heresy in Spain: an Inquisition into the Performance of the Cancionero Repertory’, EMc, xx (1992), 560–81
J. Labrador Herraiz and R.A. Difranco: Tabla de principios de la poesía española. (Siglos XVI y XVII) (Cleveland, 1993)
O. Rees: ‘Text and Music in Lisbon BN 60’, RdMc, xvi/3 (1993), 1515–34
J. Sierra Pérez: ‘El cancionero musical de El Escorial’, RdMc, xvi/5 (1993), 2545–52
D. Devoto: ‘Un millar de cantares exportados’, Bulletin hispanique, xcvi (1994), 5–16
S. Schmitt: ‘Die proportio quintupla in einigen Villancicos des Cancionero Musical de Palacio’, AnM, l (1995), 3–22
R. Budasz: ‘A presencia do cancioneiro Iberico na lirica de José de Anchieta: um enfoque musicológico’, Latin American Music Review, xvii (1996), 42–77
J. Sage: ‘Self-Education: Song Collections in the Seventeenth Century’, Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies, iv (1996), 93–105
J. Yakely: ‘New Sources of Spanish Music for the Five-Course Guitar’, RdMc, xix (1996), 267–88
E. López-Chavarri: Música popular española (Barcelona, 1927)
K. Schindler: Folk Music and Poetry of Spain and Portugal (New York, 1941)
J. Romeu Figueras: ‘La poesía popular en los cancioneros españoles de los siglos XV y XVI’, AnM, iv (1949), 57–91
A. Salazar: ‘Folk Music: Spanish’, International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, ed. O. Thompson (New York, 7/1956, 9/1964)
M. García Matos: ‘Sobre algunos ritmos de nuestro folklore musical’, AnM, xv (1960), 101–21; xvi (1961), 27–54
J. Tomás Parés: ‘Publicaciones de música popular en Cataluna (revistas, libros, colecciones, discos)’, AcM, xxxiii (1960), 121–36
B. Gil García: ‘Panorama de la canción popular burgalesa’, AnM, xviii (1963), 85–102
I.J. Katz: ‘The Traditional Folk Music of Spain: Explorations and Perspectives’, YIFMC, vi (1974), 64–85
I. Aretz: ‘Areas musicales de tradición oral en América Larina: Una crítica y tentativa de reestructuración de los “cancioneros” establecidos por Carlos Vega’, Revista musical chilena, xxx/134 (1976), 9–55
A.L. Askins and J. Sage: ‘The Musical Songbook of the Museu Nacional de Arquelogia e Etnologia, Lisbon (ca. 1603)’, Luso-Brazilian Review, xiii (1976), 129–37
I.J. Kate and M. Manzona: K. Schindler: Música y poesiá popular de España y Portugal (1941) (Salamanca, 1991) [facs/ed.]
E. Rey García and V.P. de Andrés: ‘La recopilación de la música popular española en el siglo diecinueve: cien cancioneros en cien años’, RdMc, xiv (1991), 255–73
J. Martí: ‘Folk Music and Ethnomusicology in Spain’, YIFMC, xxix (1997), 107–40
I.J. Katz: Judeo-Spanish Traditional Ballads from Jerusalem (New York, 1972–5) [incl. sound recording]
S. Weich-Shahak: ‘Dialogue in the Sephardic cancionero’, Jb für Volksliedsforschung, xli (1996), 42–77