Medieval Spain 6 - Martin Codax, Cantigas de Amigo

Martín Codax was a Galician medieval joglar (non-noble composer and performer—as opposed to a trobador), possibly from Vigo, Galicia, Spain. He may have been active during the middle of the thirteenth century, judging from scriptological analysis (Monteagudo 2008). He is one of only two out of a total of 88 authors of cantigas d'amigo who uses only the archaic strophic form aaB (a rhymed distich followed by a refrain). And he also employs an archaic rhyme-system whereby i~o / a~o are used in alternating strophes. His dates, however, remain unknown and there is no documentary biographical information concerning the poet.

The body of work attributed to him consists of seven cantigas d'amigo which appear in the Galician-Portuguese songbooks and in the Vindel parchment. In all three manuscripts he is listed as the author of the compositions, and in all three the number and the order of the songs is the same. This provides important evidence to support the view that the order of other poets' songs in the cancioneiros (songbooks) should not automatically be dismissed as random or attributed to later compilers. Rather, the identity of the poems and their order in all witnesses supports the view that the seven songs of Codax reflect an original performance set, and that the sets of poems by some other poets might also have been organized for performance.

This parchment was discovered by chance: the antiquarian bookseller and bibliophile Pedro Vindel in Madrid found it among his holdings in 1913; it had been used as the cover of a copy of Cicero's De Officiis.

Martim Codax's poems that appeared in the parchment are the following (untitled, they are listed by their first verse):

Ondas do mar de Vigo

Mandad'ey comigo

Mia irmana fremosa treydes comigo

Ay Deus, se sab'ora meu amigo

Quantas sabedes amar amigo

Eno sagrad' en Vigo

Ay ondas que eu vin veer

In the Vindel parchment musical notation (although with lacunae) survives along with the texts, except for the sixth one. They are the only cantiga de amigo for which the music is known (and, if Codax was indeed Galician, the only medieval Galician secular songs (see Cantigas de Santa Maria). The Pergaminho Sharrer contains seven melodies for cantiga de amor of Denis of Portugal, also in fragmentary form.

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Martín Códax (c.1230): Cantigas de Amigo - Ensemble Triphonia

Bach - Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, Manuscript

Julian Shuckburgh’s new biography of J.S. Bach includes images by Caroline Wilkinson, a ‘forensic facial-reconstructor’. Wilkinson used laser scans of the Haussmann portrait and a bronze cast of Bach’s skull to build computer models of the composer’s head.

Upon Bach's death in 1750, the original manuscript passed into the possession, possibly through his second wife Anna Magdalena, of Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach. It was inherited by the last male descendant of J.C.F. Bach, Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach, who passed it on to his sister Louisa of Bückeburg.

Two other early manuscripts also exist. One, originally identified as an authentic Bach autograph from his Leipzig period, is now identified as being a 1726 copy by Bach's second wife Anna Magdalena Bach, and is the companion to the earliest surviving handwritten copy of the six suites Bach wrote for solo cello. The other, a copy made by one of Bach's students Johann Peter Kellner, is well preserved, despite the fact that the B minor Partita was missing from the set and that there are numerous errors and omissions. All three manuscripts are in the Berlin State Museum and have been in the possession of the Bach-Gesellschaft since 1879, through the efforts of Alfred Dörffel.

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Medieval Spain 4 - Cantigas de Alfonso X el Sabio

The Cantigas de Santa Maria ("Canticles of Holy Mary") are 420 poems with musical notation, written in Galician-Portuguese during the reign of Alfonso X El Sabio (1221–1284) and often attributed to him. It is one of the largest collections of monophonic (solo) songs from the Middle Ages and is characterized by the mention of the Virgin Mary in every song, while every tenth song is a hymn.
The manuscripts have survived in four codices: two at El Escorial, one at Madrid's National Library, and one in Florence, Italy. Some have colored miniatures showing pairs of musicians playing a wide variety of instruments.
The music is written in notation which is similar to that used for chant, but also contains some information about the length of the notes. Several transcriptions exist. The Cantigas are frequently recorded and performed by Early Music groups, and quite a few CDs featuring music from the Cantigas are available.

Cantiga 122, miragres muitos pelos reis faz, de Alfonso X por el grupo SEMA, dirigido por Pepe Rey

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Medieval Spain 3 - Cantar de Mío Cid

The anonymous Cantar de mio Cid is the great epic of medieval Spain. It is one of the oldest Spanish historical documents in existence, and the only Spanish cantar de geste (song of heroic deeds) to have survived almost completely intact. The 3,730-line poem chronicles the exploits of the Cid (from the Arabic sayyid, which means “master”), or Rodrigo (Ruy) Díaz de Vivar, a commander under King Alfonso VI of Castile, who wins back his King's favor by taking back southern Spain from its Islamic occupiers. Like many literary works of the Middle Ages, the Cid is based on an historical figure, but much of this story is fictionalized in order to offer an idealized portrait of the main character and emphasize his valor and loyalty. The poem interweaves irony, heroic drama, and realism to present colorful portraits of Moors, Jews, and Christians, providing modern readers with a unique glimpse into medieval Spain. Over the centuries, numerous editions and translations of the Cid have appeared, attesting to the work's popularity. 

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Español versión de Pedro Salinas

Menendez Pidal 1913 (spanish)

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Raymond Roussel - Locus Solus (1914)

John Ashbery summarizes Locus Solus thus in his introduction to Michel Foucault's Death and the Labyrinth: "A prominent scientist and inventor, Martial Canterel, has invited a group of colleagues to visit the park of his country estate, Locus Solus. As the group tours the estate, Canterel shows them inventions of ever-increasing complexity and strangeness. Again, exposition is invariably followed by explanation, the cold hysteria of the former giving way to the innumerable ramifications of the latter. After an aerial pile driver which is constructing a mosaic of teeth and a huge glass diamond filled with water in which float a dancing girl, a hairless cat named Khóng-dek-lèn, and the preserved head of Danton, we come to the central and longest passage: a description of eight curious tableaux vivants taking place inside an enormous glass cage. We learn that the actors are actually dead people whom Canterel has revived with 'resurrectine', a fluid of his invention which if injected into a fresh corpse causes it continually to act out the most important incident of its life."

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Locus Solus

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Medieval Spain 2 - Codex Las Huelgas

The Codex Las Huelgas or Codex Musical de Las Huelgas (E-BUlh) is a music manuscript or codex from c. 1300 which originated in and has remained in the Cistercian convent of Santa María La Real de Las Huelgas in Burgos, in northwestern Spain, then Castile. It was rediscovered in 1904 by two Benedictine monks. The manuscript is written on parchment, with the staves written in red ink with Franconian notation. The bulk of material is written in one hand, however as many as 12 people contributed to it, including corrections and later additions. The manuscript contains 45 monophonic pieces (20 sequences, 5 conductus, 10 Benedicamus tropes) and 141 polyphonic compositions, 1 of which doesn't have music. Most of the music dates from the late 13th century, with some music from the first half of the 13th century (Notre Dame repertory), and a few later additions from the first quarter of the 14th century.Johannes Roderici (Johan Rodrigues) inscribed his name in a number of places in the manuscript. He may have composed a couple of the pieces in the manuscript, as well as being scribe, compiler, and corrector, according to his own inscriptions.

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Medieval Spain 1 - Mozarabic Antiphonary of Leon

The manuscript was copied by Totmundo Abbot in the year 1069, in the leonine monastery of San Cipriano of the County and was dedicated it to Ikila Abbot, who got to be bishop of Leon. In a note in folio 25, one says that in the year was directly copied of another manuscript of the time of the king Wamba 672 . At the moment Cathedral of Leon is in .

The manuscript begins, like is habitual in many Spanish codices of the high average age, with a Cross of Oviedo (in memory, according to the legend, of that it appeared to him to king Pelayo in the battle of Covadonga) and a miniature in which it is seen the cotrack, Totmundo, giving the finished book once, to Ikila Abbot. Totmundo takes on the head the pronoun ille in humility signal. This representation of the delivery of the finished work was also very frequent in the first incunables.

The book contains sung antiphons in the celebrations of the liturgical cycle and the saints. Mozarabic Antiphonary is unique that has arrived to us complete. Of other Mozarabic antiphonaries, like both of Silos, the one of San Juan of the Rock or the one of San Zoilo de Carrión has only conserved small fragments.

The antiphonary presents/displays the musical annotation in Neumas without pentagrama, in visigótica Annotation, and it could not have been deciphered until the moment, in spite of the efforts realized by the musicologists. It contains many illustrations, especially scenes of the life of Jesus. Some letters own interlaces that remember but to the art carolingio that to the visigótico.

Antiphonary of Leon Codex Manuscript

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Athanasius Kircher and Greek Music

Musurgia Universalis (1650) is probably Athanasius Kirchers most famous work. It deals with music from almost every possible aspect: historical, physical, technical, medical, mythological, mathematical and so on. There are articles on musical instruments from different times and cultures, harmonic science, tuning of instruments, acoustics, instrument making, musical theory, the "music" of birds and other animals, tonal systems from antiquity and onwards etc. It also contains some historical documents, as a reproduction of the music to Pindaros' First Pythian Ode (this was declared to be a "falsification" in the 1930's) and a translation of Abraham ben Ghia Hanassis history of Jewish music. The theory and practice of automatic instruments and of a device that could compose music are treated, and so is Tarantism, a disease that was belived to be caused by the sting of the Apulian tarantula, a big spider.

Pindaro First Pythian Ode

Pindaro Music transcription

In his Musurgia Universalis, Kircher published a musicae veteris specimen: the first verses of Pindar Pythian Ode, which he claims to have transcribed from a Ms. of IX century seen in the Basilian monastery of S. Salvatore at Messina. However, the disappearance of this Ms., following the devastation suffered by Messina between 1674 and 1678, has led many Philologists to doubt the good faith of Kircher, and think it as a clever fake work. However, the troubles of Messina fully justify the Ms. disappearance; If anything, one might doubt the music dating it contains. In the other part, Kircher's musical doctrine was remarkable; He also created a gimmick with which everyone could write music in different styles: Pindar Ode is a practical application?

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