(Sp.).
A song in vogue in Spanish courtly circles during the 15th century. It was probably performed by two choirs, the second choir repeating with progressive modifications each stanza sung by the first; the resulting parallelistic scheme has been seen as a relic of one of the oldest forms of European popular song. There is some slender evidence that the cosaute may have been danced and that it is a remote antecedent of the sardana, a circle dance of Catalonia in quick 6/8 metre. The earliest extant music apparently in the form of the cosaute is in the Cancionero Musical de Palacio (compiled c1505–20). ‘Cosante’ is now considered a mistranscription of the French ‘cossaute’.
J. Romeu Figueras: ‘El cosante en la lírica de los cancioneros musicales españoles de los siglos XV y XVI’, AnM, v (1950), 15–61
E. Asensio: Poética y realidad en el cancionero peninsular de la Edad Media (Madrid, 1957, 2/1970), 50ff, 99–153
J. Romeu Figueras, ed.: La música en la corte de los reyes católicos, iv/2: Cancionero musical de palacio (siglos XV–XVI), MME, xiv/2 (1965), 140ff
X. Filgueira Valverde: ‘Sobre a nomenclatura da cantiga peculiar galego-portuguesa medieval: leixa-pren, refrán, cossaute’, Homenagem a Joseph M. Piel, ed. D. Kremer (Tübingen, 1988), 547–67
M.C. Gómez Muntané: ‘La música laica en el Reino de Castilla en tiempos del Condestable Don Miguel Lucas de Iranzo (1458–73)’, RdMc, xix/4 (1996), 25–45
T. Knighton: ‘Spaces and Contexts for Listening in Fifteenth-Century Castile: the Case of the Condestable's Palace in Jaén’, EMc, xxv (1997), 661–77
JACK SAGE/SUSANA FRIEDMANN