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20th Century Trends in the Rhythmic

Interpretation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria
(Honors)
Chelsey Belt
Illinois Wesleyan University, cbelt@iwu.edu

Recommended Citation
Belt, Chelsey, "20th Century Trends in the Rhythmic Interpretation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria (Honors)" (2013).
Papers. Paper 5.
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20th Century Trends in the Rhythmic Interpretation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria

Chelsey Belt

The interpretation of rhythm in medieval music has been a topic of contention almost

since the advent of historical music scholarship. The notation of each repertory presents its own

idiosyncrasies and challenges. The unique repertory of the Cantigas de Santa Maria has

provided an excellent canvas for this debate during the majority of the twentieth century.

Surviving in four manuscripts, the Cantigas originated at the Castilian court of Alfonso X (called

el Sabio or “the wise”), who ruled Castile and Leon from 1252 until 1284. Between 1257 and

1283, after a miraculous recovery from illness, Alfonso worked with a team of poets, artists, and

musicians to compile this collection of songs to the Virgin Mary.

Because the musical notation of the Cantigas manuscripts offers neither concrete

indications of proportional duration nor meter, scholars have applied a variety of interpretational

techniques in attempt to come up with satisfactory performance methods. By examining the

evolution of recorded performances put out by various ensembles over the years, we can observe

a diversity of interpretational techniques in practice as well as the audible results of the

performance choices. This paper covers the historical context of the rhythmic notation and the

primary 20th century scholars who influenced Cantigas interpretation with theoretical writings

and performing editions before evaluating the rhythmic interpretations of five recordings of the

Cantigas from the latter half of the 20th century.

It is important to consider the rhythmic context of the Cantigas before delving into

analysis of performers’ rhythmic choices. The CSM predate Tinctoris’ theoretical writings, the

first evidence of a concept of universal rhythmic proportion, by about two centuries, but overlaps

the youth of the French rhythmic modes, the Notre Dame theoretical system that allowed for the
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poetic rhythmicisation of notated music during the transition from the twelfth to the thirteenth

century. The composition of the Cantigas, though geographically removed, also coincides with

the golden years of the French lyric genres. These, such as the troubadour and trouvère

repertories, belong to a separate tradition than the liturgical one that bore Notre Dame theory, but

were performed with their own version of poetic rhythmicisation.

It is also important to note that though the Cantigas were written down in the same

century as Franco de Cologne’s notational treatise, Franco’s concepts were not yet standard. The

unique historical placement of the CSM requires the performer or editor to interpret rhythm

without the aid of most of the theoretical tools that we have become accustomed to while

working with later medieval music. When we work with the Cantigas, we are working without a

standard of rhythmic proportion, without a concept of tactus, and without consistent mensural

note shapes.

One historical event mentioned above that has the potential to affect the rhythmic

interpretation of the CSM is the system of rhythmic modes. We know that they were coming into

practice around the time that the Cantigas were composed, but it is not clear whether they can or

should be applied to them. One of the most significant arguments against the application of the

rhythmic modes to the Cantigas is location; these modes originated in French music, and

evidence that they had bearing on music in Alfonso’s Castile and Lèon is lacking. Even so,

performers and scholars are fairly evenly divided as to whether it makes sense to use the

rhythmic modes in the music of the Cantigas, and this issue is among the most controversial

when it comes to rhythm in the CSM. I cover this argument in more detail later when I discuss

the important scholars of 20th century Cantigas performance practice.

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It is helpful to consider the offerings of all four extant manuscripts of the CSM. Toledo

(To, Biblioteca Nacional de Espana, 10069) is the earliest, a sort of first draft, such that there are

occasional small differences between some Cantigas in To and the same Cantigas as they appear

in the later manuscripts. The middle two codices, Rico (T, Biblioteca de El Escorial, T.I.1) and

Los Musicos (E, Biblioteca de El Escorial, B.I.2) are highly ornamented, containing many of the

famous illustrations. A fourth manuscript, Florence (F, Biblioteca Nazionale, b.r. 20) is

incomplete and is thought of as the second volume to T. There are two distinct notational

varieties transmitted by the CSM manuscripts. Manuel Pedro Ferreira deems the earlier a late

Aquitainian style, while describing the other as a version of French square notation.i Both are

considered pre-Franconian. The earlier style exists in To, and the later style is found in both the

T and E manuscripts. This difference in notation style is actually helpful to interpreting rhythm

because the scholar can compare multiple versions of the same song, facilitating the elimination

of variables such as scribe mistakes and notational inconsistencies.

Research seeking to understand the CSM within the context of medieval music has

established a number of basic viewpoints regarding potential traditions from which the Cantigas

draw influence, such as those of liturgical, Arab, and folk music. Research from the liturgical

standpoint approaches the Cantigas manuscripts through the lens of chant and other sacred music

traditions and applies existing concepts from the French liturgical tradition, Franconian notation

and rhythmic modes. Research that considers the role of Arab music varies significantly in the

amount of influence it credits to that tradition. Some scholars have applied elements of Arab

music theory, such as rhythmic formulas, to the music of the Cantigas, while others explain only

the forms of the Cantigas as deriving from the Arab tradition. Many invoke the context of

Andalusian music, or the local Iberian Arab tradition, to explain elements of the Cantigas.
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Research from the broad standpoint of folk music tends to address indigenous musical forms

including romance lyric and dance music in the interpretation of the music of the Cantigas.

There are two scholars whose work significantly influenced approaches to the

interpretation of rhythm in the Cantigas de Santa Maria for a great deal of the twentieth century:

Julián Ribera and Higinio Anglès. Performance choices made in several of the recordings

discussed hereafter display their legacies, and I will summarize each scholar’s philosophy and

contributions before discussing individual recordings.

Julián Ribera worked primarily in the first quarter of the 20th century, and focused on the

Spanish Islamic culture of Al-Andalus. His 1929 work, Music in Ancient Arabia and Spain,

contains a substantial chapter on the performance of the CSM, and personal transcriptions of

more than forty Cantigas, excerpted from his 1922 performing edition. Ribera’s contributions

formed the basis for the Arab music viewpoint: that the music of the CSM derives directly from

the Classical Arab tradition due to the Moorish influence in Alfonso’s Spain. Thus, Ribera’s

performing edition contains Cantigas transcribed according to elements of Arab music theory,

most notably the Arab system of rhythmic modes.ii

Ribera’s suggestions for performance are heavily based on his own conjecture that

without sufficient context, the notation of the Cantigas was of little use to the scholar, that no

one who had not lived in the thirteenth century stood any chance of interpreting it on its own.iii

“Thus the notation forms a stumbling-block, for it was of value only to those who
had heard and memorized the music and needed only a slight aid to the memory,
and was of no assistance to those who had no previous acquaintance with it.”iv

Ribera rejected his contemporaries’ efforts to interpret Cantigas notation as mensural according

to Guidonian theory, the French rhythmic modes, or through poetic meter as was commonly
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applied to troubadour song, but he later came to his own understanding of mensurality in the

notation through the methods of Arabic music theory.v

The route by which Ribera came to his application of Arab music theory to the music of

the CSM was his study of the Cancionero de Palacio, a diverse manuscript of songs compiled

about two centuries after the Cantigas. Ribera maintained that his exploration of that manuscript

allowed him to become familiar with a body of popular melodies originating from the earlier

traditions of the Spanish Moors, so that when he studied the music of the Cantigas, he was able

to pick out significant similarities.vi

“That is to say, I was familiar with a kind of music constructed on the same plan
as the Cantigas and about which I could feel no doubts, for it was written in
modern notation; music which had not been taken into consideration in the
[previous] attempts at interpreting the Cantigas . . . by a happy coincidence, I
found the archaic types from which many of these later melodies are derived.”vii

Ribera upheld that by comparing the later songs and the Arab theoretical background that they

suggested to the Cantigas manuscripts, he could determine rhythm, tempi, modality, and even

appropriate ornamentation and instrumental participation. He provides his rationale for all of

these discoveries, but presently we will focus on his specific method of rhythmic interpretation.

The “Oriental authors of the ninth century”viii are often referenced by Ribera in his

discussion of the rhythmic system that he applies to the Cantigas, but I have not been able to

determine the specific theoretical writings upon which he bases his explanation, as he worked in

Spain at the turn of the century. He favorably compares several traditional rhythmic patterns (the

Arab rhythmic modes) to the French rhythmic modes, shading the Arabic Henzej pattern as an

alternate interpretation of the fifth French mode, Ramel as correspondent to both the first and

second French modes, the Takils as versions of the third and fourth modes, and Makhuri as

similar to the sixth mode.ix Ribera’s tendency to see this sort of relationship may have
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contributed to his ability to see the notation of the CSM manuscripts, especially To, in a similar

context, and to come up with his method for assigning notes to beats.

Ultimately, Ribera achieved his system of rhythmic interpretation by searching for

similarities between the rhythms implied in the Cantigas notation rhythmic patterns of the Arab

modes, which, as opposed to the Cantigas notation, can be definitively

y translated into modern

notation. The rhythmic values used in the notation of the CSM are highly relative, with identical

symbols used to mean different things from song to song and even from section to section within

a song. Ribera used the Arab modes to “solve” these ambiguities; when he deemed that a

particular Cantiga made sense with one of the modes, he could translate the entire Cantiga into a

consistent notation by applying the equivalent modern notation rhythmic values to the contour of

the Cantiga.

To illustrate this, we can look at Ribera’s example using the rhythmic pattern of the

second takil.. Ribera describes the modern notation of this mode as “a sixteenth note, an eighth

note, an accented eighth note, and a sixteenth rest – a 3/8 rhythm.”x Referencing the Cancionero

de Palacio, he also describes this mode as “popular among the Spanish Moors.”xi Ribera found

this mode appropriate for the interpretation of several Cantigas in To, which he references by the

manuscript’s holding location of Madr

Madrid,
id, and lists its original notation patterns which he believes

invoke the second takil rhythm – square punctum, square punctum, oblique punctum 
,

and oblique punctum, square punctum, oblique punctum

.xii The following is Ribera’s own

transcription of the second takil.xiii

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Ribera specifies that in each case, the beat consists of one note, but as per the takil, there is a

difference in intensity and therefore duration between first two beats, which he believes accounts

for the difference in notation within the manuscript.xiv

Whether or not one finds Ribera’s application of takil convincing, this particular situation

reminds us of the lack of consistent proportion between the two primary note shapes in the

Cantigas manuscripts; they vary in duration according to context. For example, in the first of the

Cantigas notation patterns Ribera provides (
), both the short and the long duration of the

takil are represented by the same note shape, but in the second (

), the initial short note is

represented by an oblique punctum and the longer second note by a square punctum. However,

the third note, the long note before the rest in the takil, is represented by an oblique punctum,

which is typically the shorter of the two shapes in the Cantigas notation. In my opinion, the best

explanation for this discrepancy may be that because the final long note in Ribera’s takil pattern

falls just before a rest, it has a subdued intensity compared to the long note that precedes it.

Among the edited Cantigas he provides, six are interpreted in the second takil, including Cantiga

1, Des oge mais quer’ eu trobar, and Cantiga 42, A Virgen mui groriosa.

Ribera’s legacy is considerably simpler to comprehend than his methods. He was the first

to consider the Cantigas outside of the Western-liturgical-theoretical context standard of his

contemporaries. His incorporation of local and oral traditions into his analysis of medieval

repertoire was a strikingly modern concept for his time. The late-Twentieth century scholars and

performers who incorporate Arab theory or various other cultural traditions into their

interpretation of the Cantigas, like his modern disciple Manuel Pedro Ferreira and several of the

ensembles discussed hereafter, owe directly to Julián Ribera’s pre-war research.

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Though the scope of Ribera’s influence is wide, not all scholars were satisfied by his

ideas, which brings us to Higinio Anglès, the other 20th century pioneer of the Cantigas. The

research of Anglès, three decades Ribera’s junior, stands in stark opposition to Ribera’s. Anglès

found the application of Arab theory completely inappropriate; among his strongest opinions was

that Cantigas rhythm could be sufficiently explained by the French rhythmic modes. Anglès

published a complete edition of the CSM in three volumes between 1948 and 1964: La música de

las Cantigas de Santa María del Rey Alfonso El Sabio, the coincidence of which with the

energetic youth of the early music movement had a profound and lasting influence on Cantigas

performance.

I refer to Anglès’ research as being of the Liturgical school, as it relies heavily on the

theoretical standards for modality, notation, and rhythm developed by scholars of liturgical

music in France and the low countries, though that theory applies to more than just liturgical

music, extending influence over several nobility-cultivated genres of art music. As previously

mentioned, Anglès’ interpretation of rhythm in the CSM is heavily based on the French rhythmic

modes. This type of interpretation was the “friendliest” to many 20th century scholars and

performers, as they were already familiar and comfortable with its application by working with

other medieval repertoires.

Manuel Pedro Ferreira , although he tends to agree more with Ribera in the rhythm

debate, describes Anglès’ interpretation as follows:

“Despite some notational ambiguity, typical of the pre-Franconian systems, the

collection of songs assembled by Alfonso X can be rhythmically transcribed with
a reasonable degree of assurance. Already in Anglès’ edition we could easily
observe that the rhythm of the CSM is generally of the simple modal type, with
frequent modal mixture (the combination of two modes is referred to by
Anonymous IV and illustrated by the fifth mode of Lambertus). There are
nevertheless special modal patterns (sixth mode of Lambertus), and also cases of
quadruple meter which recall Andalusian music, rhapsodic rhythm, (as in the
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cantigas de amigo), and iso-syllabic rhythm (sometimes of a florid nature, as in

the cantigas de amor).”xv

It is more typical of modern scholars like Ferreira to take a conciliatory position, to interpret

these repertoires as the combined result of diverse influences and traditions.

There are many instances in which it is difficult to apply French rhythmic modal theory

to the Cantigas notation, and these Anglès justified as being taken directly from “popular

music.”xvi This interpretation was not well accepted by later scholars and has served to take away

some of the authoritative weight of Anglès’ work. However, the fact that Anglès did not try to

force the notation into something resembling a French mode at these points adds credence to his

performing edition.xvii

Other criticisms to Anglès’ research include his heavy reliance on E, the Codice Los Musicos,

which is considered by modern scholars to be the least definitive of the surviving manuscripts,

the presence of several errors in the reproduction of the manuscript parts above the edited lines,

and his liberal assignment of duple meter to Cantigas whose original phrase structures strongly

disagree with its use.xviii

Anglès edition is also unique in that he took care to print the original Cantigas notation

over the corresponding staves of his edited part. This feature, in addition to its inclusion of the

entire body of CSM melodies, may have contributed to the popularity of Anglès edition among

later 20th century and even 21st century performers. In contrast to Ribera’s influence, those late-

century scholars and performers who interpret the Cantigas along the lines of French liturgical

theory often display elements of Anglès’ research.

Ribera’s legacy survives in a more conceptual form (such that performers are more likely

to take his general idea of Arab influence and then make their own interpretation than use his),

whereas those influenced by Anglès tend to accept his position more completely and use his own
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editions. Whether this is because out of the two, Anglès’ is the more modern and thus less

deterrent, or because his research is more congruent with the ideas and practices of medieval

music that performers and scholars are accustomed to from other genres remains to be seen.

In any case, these two scholars, Ribera during the early 20th century and Anglès during the

middle decades, left performers two polarized bodies of edited Cantigas to consider.

Since Ribera and Anglès, a few editions and publications of facsimiles by other scholars

have emerged in time to influence some of the recordings discussed here. These include a highly

ornamented facsimile of T, the Codice Rico held at the Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El

Escorial and put out in 1979 by Edilán-Ars Libras of Madrid.xix Though it was a limited edition

and somewhat too extravagant to be directly available to many performers, its availability in

libraries served as an important resource for many ensembles looking to synthesize their own

performing edition.

Another influential CSM edition of the 20th century was available beginning in 1986,

Walter Mettmann’s Alfonso X. el Sabio: Cantigas de Santa María. This edition was employed

frequently for performances of the following decade. It is based primarily on E, and while

Mettmann made many personal decisions in its creation, it was received with less controversy

than previous editions. Its widespread popularity is due to the fact that it represented sort of a

“happy medium” between the editions of the earlier scholars and creating one’s own edition from

facsimile. This may be because it does not present radical new ideas; it is generally congruent

with Anglès’ preceding ideals with less transcription mistakes and a more modern opinion. The

most recent edition to have become available is by Chris Elmes, with the first volume published

in 2004 and the fourth and final volume published just last year. This edition has been met
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favorably by performers thus far but is too recent to have had an effect on the recordings

discussed below.

I have chosen five recorded performances by various ensembles that I believe to be

representative of the changing attitudes and practices of rhythmic interpretation in the CSM over

approximately the past half-century. I will also reference additional recordings that belong to or

exemplify particular trends or concepts, but these are not discussed in detail. A table of

discography is available in the appendix.

The first recording was produced in 1977 and formed the first volume in a collection

called History of Spanish Music that was put out by The Musical Heritage Society, a New York-

based mail order record label popular in the sixties and seventies. The LP is entitled The

Medieval Period: Alfonso X El Sabio Las Cantigas de Santa Maria. The performers are

comprised of a collection of Spanish ensembles and soloists: Capilla Musical y Escolania de

Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caidos, a children’s choir under the direction of Fray Luis Lozano;

Gregorio Paniagua’s instrumental ensemble Atrium Musicae; tenors Jens Uwe Eggers and

Laurentino Sáenz de Buraga; and baritone Jose Luis Ochoa de Olza, who was also the project’s

overall director.

The performance notes on the liner are by Roberto Pla, who would come out with his

own edition of the 40 Cantigas de Loor (the non-narrative songs of praise contained within the

Cantigas) almost 25 years later in 2001. This early performance endeavor provided an important

vehicle for experimentation for Pla in regards to performance practice and general interpretation

of the notation. In his description of this project, he states:

“It is a task divided into several different parts: the selection, from manuscripts,
of the repertory; the choice of the best transcriptions or their realization if none
were available [my emphasis]. Wherever possible, we have used the original
manuscripts . . . We have reconstructed interpretive forms and trained performers,
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so as to achieve correct interpretation in respect to style . . . In all these aspects, so

varied and difficult to achieve, the hearer can be sure of finding the greatest
authenticity that present-day paleography, musicology, and technology allow. All
this means that the Collection of Early Spanish Music is not only a more or less
coherent and successful artistic program. If it were only this, it would still be very
important; but we have actually turned back time, holding to a strict, exacting
postulate of reconstruction that I would call ‘resuscitating,’ so as to relive Spain’s
distinguished musical past.”

Looking past the general boldness of his claims, Pla provides us with a few significant bits of

information regarding the interpretational style of the performers. The portion that I have

underlined here regards the group’s manuscript use. The first half of the quote, especially the

phrase “if none were available” implies that it was their first choice to use pre-existing

performing editions for the Cantigas that they decided to perform, creating their own only when

others could not be come by, but immediately afterwards, Pla states that they used the original

manuscripts whenever possible. This could be taken to mean that they primarily used editions

but compared them to the manuscript version for reference. In any case, the final product, the

recording, is a better indication of what they actually did.

This recording was done on an especially grand scale compared to most recordings of the

cantigas, with its large children’s choir, ten-piece orchestra, and three vocal soloists. It is

important to note that all of these musicians were modern-trained; they received early music

instruction for the express purpose of making this recording, resulting in what can be referred to

as technical tension. This tension has an effect not only on tone production, but also on the

rhythmic interpretation. The most tangible way that I can think of to describe the rhythmic effect

of technical tension on the part of the performer is that it adds a noticeable sense of “hesitancy”

to the sound, such that the patterns do not come across as fluent. Discomfort with the technique

affects a performer’s rhythmic accuracy even in modern notation, so its manifestation in

performing from an already controversial early notation renders the presentation less convincing.
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Aside from performer-dependent details, when compared against Escorial facsimiles, the

predominant style of rhythmic interpretation in this recording appears to be a chant-like one. For

instance, in the Prologo, Porque trobar, each syllable of text is assigned a beat, such that the

square punctum with a downward-facing stem is the beat note. Ligated puncta and virga

generally merit multiple notes per syllable, but are not assigned a constant value. The overall

effect is similar to the performance of Solesmes chant notation. This type of interpretation is

maintained for all other tracks performed vocally. When instruments are included in vocal

numbers, they match the interpretation of the vocalists. These sung tracks contain no

improvisation.

This recording includes a few instrumental tracks, and these contain the few cases in

which the performers break away from the strict chant-based interpretation. Percussion is added,

note values are kept constant, and triple and dotted patterns are used. Application of the French

rhythmic modes appears to be responsible for this contrasting dancelike atmosphere. Des oge

(Cantiga 1) is the first instrumental track, and its predominant rhythmic pattern as transcribed

from the recording can be expressed as four groups of eighth-quarter per phrase, ♪♩♪♩♪♩♪♩which

corresponds to the second or iambic mode. The original notation that corresponds to the

interpreted eighth-quarter rhythm is a plain square punctum followed by a square punctum with

a downward-facing stem (  | ). Other instrumental tracks such as Nas Mentes (29), O que

en Santa Maria (216), and Non sofre Santa Maria (159), are interpreted similarly, with quick,

dancelike use of the rhythmic modes. The overall liturgical influences displayed by Roberto

Pla’s performance choices on the 1977 Musical Heritage recording, in combination with liberal

use of the French rhythmic modes, are most in line with Higinio Anglès’ ideals of rhythmic

interpretation.
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The next recording in my 20th century cross-section, Esther Lamandier’s Alfonso el

Sabio, was produced in France just three years later, but contains a world of differences.

Lamandier herself is the only vocalist used in the recording. She accompanies herself variously

on harps, portative organ, and vielle, so that the thickest possible texture is one voice and one

instrument. One immediate difference is that she does not use the instruments to double herself

monophonically; she improvises heterophonically and even polyphonically as she sees fit.

Improvisation is also employed freely in the vocal line through ornamentation. The liner notes

reveal that she worked directly from facsimiles.

In comparing Lamandier’s performance to manuscript notation, this immense sense of

interpretational freedom is the most noticeable attribute. She is clearly a consummate early

musician and is not hindered by modern technical tendencies. Many of the songs she has chosen

are preceded with improvised instrumental preludes. In the case of her Cantiga 20, Virga de

Jesse, this prelude is followed by a rhapsodic recitation of the refrain and first verse, in which the

relationships between the note values are clearly proportional but not constant. Her use of the

harp in this track serves both as a drone and as a phrase marker; this in combination with the

recitation style is reminiscent of bard-style lyric poetry improvisation. When she reaches the

third verse, on “Miragres fremosas,” she changes style completely. The interpretation becomes

dancelike and modal, alternating the second and fifth rhythmic modes

(♪ ♩♪ ♩ ♩. ♩. ♪ ♩♪ ♩ ♩. ♩. ).

Other tracks display similar techniques. Cantiga 159, Non sofre Santa Maria, also has a

very dancelike character due to Lamandier’s choice of a quick duple meter, where the punctum

with the downward-facing stem is treated as the beat note and pairs of virga, also with

downward-facing stems, are interpreted as even divisions of the beat (such that | |


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corresponds to ♩♪♪). This long-short-short rhythm is the predominant pattern and appears to be a

version of the dactyl third mode, because the textual accent falls on the pair of short notes rather

than where it would normally fall on the long note.

The ultimate factor behind Lamandier’s rhythmic choices seems to be the Cantiga texts.

She uses rhythm to impart an additional layer of musical expression, opting for light, dancelike

interpretations when the poetry is joyous or humorous, as with 159 and the third verse of 20, and

slower, more rhapsodic rhythmic phrasing when the poetry has a more serious or reverent

character, as with the initial verses of 20. This interpretational style hearkens of the popular lyric

genres, as it employs several text-based rhythmic methods often used in the interpretation of

troubadour and trouvère repertories. Because she uses the rhythmic modes but only occasionally

and as an expressive tool more than as a rule of interpretation, we can see that Lamandier’s

methods are rooted much more strongly on secular tradition and improvisation than the stricter,

liturgically-based ideals of Anglès that we see in the recording of three years prior.

The third recording that I have chosen moves us to England and ahead to the year 1984.

The Cantigas Of Santa Maria Of Alfonso X by the Martin Best Medieval Ensemble is a product

of a period within the early music movement in which recordings of medieval music became a

lot more mainstream, and performances of the Cantigas were popping up all over and in a

variety of styles. It is presented in the increasingly common format of a small choir with a

handful of instrumentalists who double the singers, in a primarily heterophonic interpretation.

Best has this texture in common with a 1983 recording by the Grupo Universitario de Camara

de Compostela and Carlos Villanueva, a 1988 recording by the U.S. based Ensemble Alcatraz,

Jordi Savall’s 1993 collaboration with La Capella Reial De Catalunya, and Australian Winsome

Evans’ recording with The Renaissance Players in 1996.

 Belt 16

Another point that applies to Best’s recording and the contemporaries listed above is that

this period was also marked by a lapse in creativity and original interpretation. Many of these

groups were satisfied to play from editions, sometimes Anglès’, but after 1986, the newly

available edition by Walter Mettmann inspired many groups (those who wished to latch on to the

rising medieval music trend) to crank out a recording of the Cantigas. These groups spent most

of their liner notes appealing to interest in the novelty of the Alfonso legend and the story of the

creation of the CSM, rather than explaining how they arrived at their performance style.

Best does not specify the performance resources that his group used, and his recording

was produced before the availability of Mettmann’s edition. In comparing his performances to

the facsimiles, the rhythmic interpretation appears to primarily be based on Higinio Anglès’ strict

modal interpretations. The first track, Santa Maria strela do dia (Cantiga 100), is interpreted in a

straight 4/4, with the predominant pattern (again based on the dactyl third mode) of long-short-

short expressed as half-quarter-quarter. Best’s Cantiga 140, A Santa Maria dadas, is dominated

the short-long rhythm of the third mode. His version of 159 Non sofre also employs this third

mode. The result is fast and dancelike like Lamandier’s, but the texture is less improvisatory.

The fourth recording was made in the same era as Best’s and those of his contemporaries

and makes use of both performing editions popular at the time, but differs considerably in style.

Sequentia’s recording El Sabio. Songs for King Alfonso X of Castiglia and Leon (Vox Iberica III)

was produced in 1992 under directors Barbara Thornton and Benjamin Bagby. The texture

includes greater vocal participation than many contemporary recordings, with a women’s

ensemble of six and a men’s ensemble of five. They use only three instrumentalists.

In their liner notes, Sequentia states outright that they performed from a combination of

facsimiles of manuscripts To and E and Walter Mettmann’s edition. They also mention that they
 Belt 17

occasionally consulted Anglès edition.xx These choices have a mixed effect upon the recording.

Certain Cantigas were based entirely upon one of these editions and are performed in steady,

modal rhythm. Others that the performers interpreted directly from facsimile are heavily

improvised and contain rhythm that sounds much more rhapsodic, flowing with the text instead

of in a set meter.

Sequentia’s interpretation of Cantiga 100 is solidly in the former group, with a steady

duple rhythm based on the third mode. I have yet to find a performance in which any rhythmic

liberties are taken with this Cantiga; every group seems to perform it in this way. Sequentia’s

Cantiga 250, Por Nos, Virgen Madre, however, is a better example of the second type of

performance found in the recording, in which rhythm is treated less proportionally, there is no set

meter, just long and short values depending on how many notes fall per syllable. The Cantigas

that are performed this way contain the most improvisation and textural experimentation, in the

form of heterophonic melodic ornaments as well as polyphonic lines.

Rhythm in Sequentia’s recording displays a combination of influences both liturgical and

lyric, but does not incorporate any major Eastern influences. The final recording I will discuss,

Theatrum Instrumentorum’s Alfonso “El Sabio”: Cantigas de Santa Maria comes from a

separate era in Cantigas interpretation. The later 1990’s into the 21st century marked a revival of

Juliàn Ribera’s previously ignored Arab theory. The Theatrum Instrumentorum recording along

with several contemporaries largely left behind the liturgical and French theory that was so

widely used and began to experiment with the influence of folk music, especially the Andalusian

tradition.

The distinctive sound of Theatrum Instrumentorum’s interpretation of the Cantigas stood

out to me as I researched the Cantigas discography, so I contacted director Aleksandar Sasha

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Karlic. Unlike many ensembles that tend to be comprised of classical musicians who received

early music training, the musicians of Theatrum Instrumentorum are primarily folk musicians

who received early music training. They approached the Cantigas with a pre-existing fluency in

Mediterranean and Arabic folk traditions. Karlic found this appropriate as he considers the CSM

a repertory that “lies in the border area between popular and cultivated.”xxi

This recording contains an important hallmark of more modern interpretations, what can

be referred to as a “blended” approach: informing performance with as many relevant traditions

as possible. Karlic discussed how this approach was especially relevant to Cantigas performance,

due to the diversity of traditions that coexisted on the Iberian Peninsula during the thirteenth

century. This approach is evident in the way that this ensemble devised their performing edition:

by combining elements of all four surviving manuscripts with elements from two editions, one

old (Ribera’s) and one new (Mettmann’s).xxii

The primary influence that bears upon the rhythmic interpretation of Theatrum

Instrumentorum’s recording is Arab theory. Karlic stated that the principles of wazn, the classical

Arab rhythmic cycles helped them sort out rhythmic discrepancies between manuscripts, because

“it (wazn) flows directly from the text.”xxiii In addition to this, the instrumental preludes and

interludes were improvised “according to the principles of taqsim – [the] rules of improvisation

according to a particular maqam.”xxiv

Theatrum Instrumentorum’s Prologo is presented as a text-based interpretation, with

standard one-beat-per-syllable organization, but this basic structure is overlaid with heavy

Mediterranean-style ornamentation, so that the moving notes are often accomplished by several

smaller note values than written in a diminution-like technique. Cantiga 1, Des oge mais, is one

example that incorporates several of the instrumental taqsims. The first phrases are pure
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improvisation, but as they draw closer to the start of the Cantiga refrain, they begin to

incorporate melodic and rhythmic material from the Cantiga. The refrain and verses in these

cases are presented in an Arab singing style, so that the rhythm is embellished with classical

Arab-style ornaments.

These Cantigas that are presented with classical Arab improvisation and singing style are

underlain with percussion using one of the classical Arab rhythmic cycles, which has an effect on

how the notated rhythm is interpreted. Because performing directly from the facsimiles tends to

result in a rhythmic interpretation that uses flexible note values from phrase to phrase, the result

is that the values within the phrases are either stretched or shortened to fit the length and accents

of the cycle in the percussion.

A few other recordings from this period exhibit similar interpretation styles to Theatrum

Instrumentorum’s. These include Joel Cohen’s recording from the same year with Camerata

Mediterannea, Alfonso X el Sabio: Cantigas de Santa Maria and a 1996 recording by Eduardo

Paniagua with Musica Antigua, El Camino de Santiago. The Cohen recording was made in

Morocco by musicians primarily trained in classical Arab music, the Abdelkrim Rais Andalusian

Orchestra of Fès. Eduardo Paniagua is the brother of Gregorio Paniagua, one of the directors of

the 1977 Musical Heritage recording, and the young Eduardo performed in the instrumental

ensemble for that recording. Eduardo’s own recording differs greatly from his brother’s; El

Camino de Santiago is heavily Arab influenced.

The above recordings in addition to Theatrum Instrumentorum’s are very much modern

realizations of the ideals purported by Julián Ribera all the way back in the first decades of the

20th century. These modern recordings combine a variety of influences, but the newfound
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enthusiasm for applying classical Arab theory to Western music composed in Arab-influenced

locales like Andalusian Spain is most evident.

As a group, these five recordings display a remarkable diversity of influence. We clearly

see elements of the work of both 20th-century forerunners, Julián Ribera and Higinio Anglès, as

well as the results of personal interpretational and performance choices on the parts of the

ensembles. In the case of the legacies of these two scholars, it is interesting to note that for

perhaps the first two-thirds of the years covered by the recordings, the mid-seventies through the

early nineties, Anglès’ influence prevails, but across about the last third, the later nineties into

the 21st century, we see a revival of Ribera’s ideas relating to the employment of Arab tradition.

In my opinion, the most compelling recordings, regardless of the individual traditions that

they may be based upon, are those that did not rely singularly on any edition, but built their

interpretations on their own inquiries into the facsimile sources, perhaps supplementing their

decisions with the work of preceding scholars. Two recordings out of my selected five inspired

these criteria: Esther Lamandier and Theatrum Instrumentorum. I also believe that the rhythmic

success of these performers owes in part to their degree of musicianship, for the most persuasive

interpretations belong to ensembles that incorporate a high level of improvisation. The freedom

and instinctive musicianship that results of expert historically-informed or indigenously-

informed improvisation is most appropriate for the rhythmic interpretation of a repertory that

survives from a period when notated music was the exception.

When confronted with the rhythmic questions of repertories like the Cantigas that are

characterized by the fluidity of pre-Franconian notation, we must first acknowledge that it would

be unreasonable to ever expect to arrive at a definitive method for interpretation and be aware of

the possibility that multiple accepted interpretations coexisted when the manuscripts were
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created. In doing so, we must also recognize the importance that improvisation must have held in

the performance of the music of such a young, post-oral tradition. Once we have considered all

of these circumstances, it becomes apparent that we cannot rely solely on the scholarly study of

the manuscripts. The active performance of such a repertoire is the most effective way of

arriving at an acceptable, historically informed interpretation, and the comparison of

performance to performance rather than performing edition to performing edition is the most

productive method for determining the success of a particular method of interpretation. Thus, at

least in the case of the Cantigas, we can also surmise that the constant rotation from explanations

based in liturgical traditions to those based in folk (here Arab) traditions is driven as much by the

personal preferences and practical discoveries made by performers as those of scholars in the

field of medieval music.

Endnotes
i Manuel Pedro Ferreira, “Iberian Monophony,” in A Performer’s Guide to Medieval Music, ed. Ross
Ferreira (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2000), 152.
ii Manuel Pedro Ferreira, Andalusian Music and the Cantigas de Santa Maria, in Cobras y Son, ed.

Stephen Parkinson (Oxford: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2000), 7.

iii Julian Ribera, Music in Ancient Arabia and Spain, trans. Eleanor Hague and Marion Leffingwell

(California: Stanford, 1929), 178.

iv Ibid., 178.
v Ibid., 185.
vi Ibid., 189.
vii Ibid., 189.
viii Ibid., 194.
ix See Ribera, Music in Ancient Arabia and Spain, 195 for illustration.
x Ribera, 199.
xi Ibid., 199.
xii Ribera calls square puncta “squares” and oblique puncta “rhomboids.”
xiii Ribera,195.
xiv Ibid., 199.
xv Ferreira , “Iberian Monophony,” 153.
xvi Ibid., 152.
xvii Ibid., 152.
xviii Ibid., 153.
xix “Cantigas de Santa Maria On Display,” University of Miami Libraries Blog, January 6, 2012,

http://library.miami.edu/blog/2012/06/01/cantigas-de-santa-maria-on-display/.
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19 Liner notes to El Sabio, Benjamin Bagby and Barbara Thornton, Sequentia (Freiburg: Harmonica

Mundi, 1992), 1-5.

20 Aleksandar Sasha Karlic. E-mail message to author, February 6, 2013.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.