Cantigas de Santa Maria

The Cantigas de Santa Maria (about: Songs for the Virgin Mary abbreviated as CSM) are one of the largest collections of songs of the Middle Ages. You are in Galician - Portuguese, one of the medieval languages ​​of the Iberian peninsula, written and collected during the reign and probably commissioned by King Alfonso X ( 1221-1284 ).

Content

The Cantigas consist of 420 poems mostly with mensural notation, which mainly serve the praise of the Virgin Mary. Many songs are embellished with some elaborate miniatures. 357 of these songs tell this by the wonders of the Virgin Mary. 63 more concerned with the teaching of Mary and with Marienfestlichkeiten. The songs here very greatly differ in their metric. The most common Virelai and Rondo are represented.

Alfonso's project is not just a mere collection of songs and reports of miracles, but a cultural project of great importance to the medieval literature, music and art. Your completion took most of his tenure in claim ( 1252-1284 ). He saw it as an important means to his political survival and his personal salvation.

Authors

The author or the authors of the texts and melodies are not sure to name. Popular enough, the Cantigas but often Alfonso X, King of Leon and Castile attributed. Walter Mettmann, author of a critical edition of the Cantigas, believes that you can assign as many of the songs the Galician poet and troubadour the outbuildings. The question of direct participation of the king remains unclear, with some authors ten, others a hundred tunes want to know composed by him.

Copies

To date, four copies of the Cantigas are preserved. Make it three different sections in the drafting of the collection of songs dar.

• To The Code of Toledo, an early collection of 100 pieces. He is regarded as the first editorial revision of the notes and was probably copied in the 14th century. Him some annexes were added subsequently. It is now preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid ( signature MS 10069 ).

In the second phase, the collection was greatly expanded ( about 400 pieces ) and richly decorated ornamental. This processing phase consists of the

• T Code, also called Códice rico, which is preserved in the library of the Escorial ( Signed by MS TI1 ), and the
• F Code, the so-called Florentine manuscript. This was left in an incomplete and disordered state. It contains 109 of the Cantigas, but no notes but only empty staves. Today, this code is in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence kept ( signature Banco Rari 20).

In the last phase was the

• E Code or Códice de los músicos, which is also located in the Escorial ( Signed by MS BI2 ). It consists of two volumes and is the largest of the Cantigas collections dar. It is written in Gothic handwriting and is decorated with 1,262 miniatures. This version was built around 1280 to 1283. You has some small flaws and signs of hasty completion on.