Galician-Portuguese lyric
Encyclopedia
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, the Galician-Portuguese lyric, sometimes called trovadorismo in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
and trobadorismo in Galicia, was a lyric poetic
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
school or movement. All told, there are around 1680 texts in the so-called "secular lyric" or lírica profana (see Cantigas de Santa Maria
Cantigas de Santa Maria
The Cantigas de Santa Maria are 420 poems with musical notation, written in Galician-Portuguese during the reign of Alfonso X El Sabio and often attributed to him....
for the religious lyric). At the time Galician-Portuguese
Galician-Portuguese
Galician-Portuguese or Old Portuguese was a West Iberian Romance language spoken in the Middle Ages, in the northwest area of the Iberian Peninsula. It was first spoken in the area bounded in the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and the Douro River in the south but it was later extended south...
was the language used in nearly all of Iberia
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
for lyric (as opposed to epic) poetry. From this language derive both modern Galician
Galician language
Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
and Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
. The "school", which was influenced to some extent (mainly in certain formal aspects) by the Occitan troubadour
Troubadour
A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....
s, is first documented at the end of the twelfth century and lasted until the middle of the fourteenth, with its zenith coming in the middle of the thirteenth century, centered around the person of Alfonso X, The Wise King. It is the earliest known poetic movement in Galicia or Portugal and represents not only the beginnings but one of the high points of poetic history in both countries and in Medieval Europe. Modern Galicia has seen a "revival" movement called Neotrobadorismo.
The earliest extant composition in this school is usually agreed to be Ora faz ost' o senhor de Navarra by Johan Soarez de Paiva, usually dated just before or after 1200. Traditionally, the end of the period of active trovadorismo is given as 1350, the date of the testament of D. Pedro, Conde de Barcelos
Barcelos
Barcelos Municipality is located in Braga District, in the north of Portugal. It has a total population of 123,831 and an area of 378.9 km². With 89 parishes, it is the municipality with the highest number of parishes in the country, as well as the city of Barcelos...
(natural son of King Dinis of Portugal), who left a Livro de Cantigas (songbook) to his nephew, Alfonso XI of Castile
Alfonso XI of Castile
Alfonso XI was the king of Castile, León and Galicia.He was the son of Ferdinand IV of Castile and his wife Constance of Portugal. Upon his father's death in 1312, several disputes ensued over who would hold regency, which were resolved in 1313...
.
The troubadours of the movement, not to be confused with the Occitan troubadours (who frequented courts in nearby León
Kingdom of León
The Kingdom of León was an independent kingdom situated in the northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded in AD 910 when the Christian princes of Asturias along the northern coast of the peninsula shifted their capital from Oviedo to the city of León...
and Castile
Kingdom of Castile
Kingdom of Castile was one of the medieval kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. It emerged as a political autonomous entity in the 9th century. It was called County of Castile and was held in vassalage from the Kingdom of León. Its name comes from the host of castles constructed in the region...
), wrote almost entirely cantiga
Cantiga
A cantiga is a medieval monophonic song, characteristic of the Galician-Portuguese lyric. Over 400 extant cantigas come from the Cantigas de Santa Maria, narrative songs about miracles or hymns in praise of the Holy Virgin...
s (although there were several kinds of cantiga) with, apparently, monophonic
Monophony
In music, monophony is the simplest of textures, consisting of melody without accompanying harmony. This may be realized as just one note at a time, or with the same note duplicated at the octave . If the entire melody is sung by two voices or a choir with an interval between the notes or in...
melodies (only fourteen melodies have survived, in the Pergaminho Vindel and the Pergaminho Sharrer
Pergaminho Sharrer
The Pergaminho Sharrer is the name given to a mediaeval parchment fragment containing seven songs by King Dinis I of Portugal, with lyrics in the Galician-Portuguese language and musical notation....
, the latter badly damaged during "restoration" by Portuguese authorities). Their poetry was meant to be sung, but they emphatically distinguished themselves from the jograes who in principle sang, but did not compose (though there is much evidence to contradict this). It is not clear if troubadours performed their own work.
Beginning probably around the middle of the thirteenth century, the songs, known as cantares, cantigas or trova
Trova
Trova is one of the great roots of the Cuban music tree. In the 19th century a group of itinerant musicians known as trovadores moved around Oriente, especially Santiago de Cuba, earning their living by singing and playing the guitar...
s, began to be compiled in collections known as cancioneiros (songbooks). Three such anthologies are known: the Cancioneiro da Ajuda, the Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti (or Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa), and the Cancioneiro da Vaticana
Cancioneiro da Vaticana
The Cancioneiro da Vaticana is a compilation of troubadour lyrics in Galician-Portuguese. It was discovered c. 1840 in the holdings of the Vatican Library and was first transcribed by Ernesto Monaci in 1875....
. In addition to these there is the priceless collection of over 400 Galician-Portugues cantigas in the Cantigas de Santa Maria
Cantigas de Santa Maria
The Cantigas de Santa Maria are 420 poems with musical notation, written in Galician-Portuguese during the reign of Alfonso X El Sabio and often attributed to him....
, which tradition attributes to Alfonso X, in whose court (as nearly everywhere in the Peninsula) Galician-Portuguese was the only language for lyric poetry (except for visiting Occitan poets).
The Galician-Portuguese cantigas can be divided into three basic genres: male-voiced love poetry, called cantigas de amor (or cantigas d'amor) female-voiced love poetry, called cantigas de amigo (cantigas d'amigo); and poetry of insult and mockery called cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer. All three are lyric genres in the technical sense that they were strophic songs with either musical accompaniment or introduction on a stringed instrument. But all three genres also have dramatic elements, leading early scholars to characterize them as "lyric-dramatic".
The origins of the cantigas d'amor are usually traced to Provençal and Old French lyric poetry, but formally and rhetorically they are quite different. The cantigas d'amigo are probably rooted in a native song tradition (Lang, 1894, Michaëlis 1904), though this view has been contested. The cantigas d'escarnho e maldizer may also (according to Lang) have deep local roots. The latter two genres (totalling around 900 texts) make the Galician-Portuguese lyric unique in the entire panorama of medieval Romance poetry.
Sources
Principal manuscripts of the secular Galician-Portuguese lyric- A = “Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, Biblioteca do Palácio Real da Ajuda (Lisbon).
- B = Biblioteca Nacional (Lisbon), cod. 10991.
- N = Pierpont Morgan Library (New York), MS 979 (= PV).
- S = Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Capa do Cart. Not. de Lisboa, N.º 7-A, Caixa 1, Maço 1, Livro 3 (see Sharrer 1991).
- V = Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, cod. lat. 4803.
Basic bibliography
- Asensio, Eugenio. 1970. Poética e realidad en el cancionero peninsular de la Edad Media. 2nd ed. Madrid: Gredos.
- Cohen, Rip. 2003. 500 Cantigas d’Amigo, edição crítica/critical edition. Porto: Campo das Letras. https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/33843
- Ferreira, Manuel Pedro. 1986. O Som de Martin Codax. Sobre a dimensão musical da lírica galego-portuguesa (séculos XII-XIV). Lisbon: UNISYS/ Imprensa Nacional - Casa de Moeda.
- Ferreira, Manuel Pedro. 2005. Cantus Coronatus: 7 Cantigas d’El Rei Dom Dinis. Kassel: Reichenberger.
- Lanciani, Giulia and Giuseppe Tavani (edd.). 1993. Dicionário da Literatura Medieval Galega e Portuguesa. Lisbon: Caminho.
- Lanciani, Giulia, and Giuseppe Tavani. 1998. A cantiga de escarnho e maldizer, tr. Manuel G. Simões. Lisbon: Edições Colibri.
- Lang, Henry R. 1894. Das Liederbuch des Königs Denis von Portugal, zum ersten mal vollständig herausgegeben und mit Einleitung, Anmerkungen und Glossar versehen. Halle a.S.: Max Niemeyer (rpt. Hildesheim - New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1972).
- Lang, Henry R. "The Relations of the Earliest Portuguese Lyric School with the Troubadours and Trouvères." Modern Language Notes, Vol. 10, No. 4. (Apr., 1895), pp. 104–116.
- Lapa, Manuel Rodrigues. 1970. Cantigas d’escarnho e de mal dizer dos cancioneiros medievais galego-portugueses, edição crítica. 2nd ed. Vigo: Editorial Galaxia.
- Mettmann, Walter. 1959-72. Afonso X, o Sabio. Cantigas de Santa Maria. 4 vols. Coimbra: Por ordem da Universidade (rpt. Vigo: Ediçóns Xerais de Galicia, 1981).
- Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Carolina. 1904. Cancioneiro da Ajuda, edição critica e commentada. 2 vols. Halle a.S.: Max Niemeyer (rpt. with Michaëlis 1920, Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional - Casa de Moeda, 1990).
- Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Carolina. 1920. “Glossário do Cancioneiro da Ajuda”. Revista Lusitana 23: 1-95.
- Nobiling, Oskar. 1907a. As Cantigas de D. Joan Garcia de Guilhade, Trovador do Seculo XIII, edição critica, com notas e introdução. Erlangen: Junge & Sohn (= Romanische Forschungen 25 [1908]: 641-719).
- Nunes, José Joaquim. 1926-28. Cantigas d’amigo dos trovadores galego-portugueses, edição crítica acompanhada de introdução, comentário, variantes, e glossário. 3 vols. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade (rpt. Lisbon: Centro do Livro Brasileiro, 1973).
- Nunes, José Joaquim . 1932. Cantigas d’amor dos trovadores galego-portugueses. Edição crítica acompanhada de introdução, comentário, variantes, e glossário. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade (rpt. Lisbon: Centro do Livro Brasileiro, 1972).
- Oliveira, António Resende de. 1994. Depois do Espectáculo Trovadoresco, a estrutura dos cancioneiros peninsulares e as recolhas dos séculos XIII e XIV. Lisbon: Edições Colibri.
- Sharrer, Harvey L. "The Discovery of Seven cantigas d'amor by Dom Dinis with Musical Notation." Hispania, Vol. 74, No. 2. (May, 1991), pp. 459–461.
- Stegagno Picchio, Luciana. 1982. La Méthode philologique. Écrits sur la littérature portugaise. 2 vols. Paris: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Centro Cultural Português.
- Tavani, Giuseppe. 2002. Trovadores e Jograis: Introdução à poesia medieval galego-portuguesa. Lisbon: Caminho.
- For further bibliography see Galician-PortugueseGalician-PortugueseGalician-Portuguese or Old Portuguese was a West Iberian Romance language spoken in the Middle Ages, in the northwest area of the Iberian Peninsula. It was first spoken in the area bounded in the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and the Douro River in the south but it was later extended south...
.
Other references used
- Barton, Simon. The Aristocracy in Twelfth-Century León and Castile. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ISBN 0 521 49727 2.
- Rodrigues, Linda M. A. "On Originality, Courtly Love, and the Portuguese Cantigas." Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 27, No. 2. (Winter, 1990), pp. 95–107.
- Tolman, Earl Dennis. "Critical Analysis of a Cantiga d'Escarnho." Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 8, No. 2. (Winter, 1971), pp. 54–70.