Cancionero Musical De Palacio: Music Of The Spanish Court

Accentus Ensemble

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Cat No: 8553536

Release Date: 01 January 2000

Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099453622

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: Cancionero Musical de Palacio

Description
Cancionero Musical de Palacio In the year 711 Arab armies from NorthAfrica crossed into the Iberian peninsula and in a few decades establishedthere a new Islamic kingdom that included nearly all present-day Spain.Together with the Arabs came some 50,000 Jews, whose numbers increased duringthe course of the century. The opposition to foreign domination began to makeitself felt from the thirteenth century, continuing until 1492 when Granada wastaken, the last Moorish kingdom, and the whole Iberian peninsula passed againunder Christian suzerainty. In the almost eight preceding centuries there hadbeen a mixture of the three groups of people, Arabs, Christians and Jews, witha consequent exchange of some cultural elements. In 1492 this stimulating processcame to a sudden end. The fall of Granada was taken as a welcome reason toexile the unconverted Jews, and, with the help of the Inquisition, to imposeCatholicism as a state religion. More critical authors of the period were wellaware of the cultural loss and the spiritual impoverishment that Spainunderwent through these events. The support for Columbus and the subsequentattempts to establish overseas the Catholic Vice-Regal dominion offered, itseemed, a more than welcome opportunity away from the particular problems ofthe country.The end of the fifteenth century broughta definite change in art music. Before this the Spanish rulers had looked formusicians in France, Flanders or Italy, but the Catholic court, under Ferdinandand Isabella, whose marriage in 1462 had united the kingdoms of Aragon andCastile, with their accession to the throne in 1474, engaged only Spanishmusicians for their orchestra. Above all it was Ferdinand who, after the deathof Isabella in 1504, invited the best Castilian musicians to his court andfounded the royal chapel, one of the largest in Europe, with 46 musicians.Through this development of awareness of their own culture a style developeddifferent from the Franco-Flemish style of the early fifteenth century. Thisnew style, strongly oriented towards folk-music and based on a simpler harmonicstructure, brought in no way a simplification or descent into the banale, butrather an incomparable strength of feeling and expression. Counterpoint nolonger held the main point of interest, but, instead, the sensitive expressionof the text. Rather than looking back to original Christian Spain, here thereare traces of that culture of which Spain wanted to be rid, that had made sucha deep impression on the people, not only in music. The inner melancholy of themusic, the rhythm, the form and the contents of many songs are evidence of thepresence of Jews and Arabs.Several so-called Cancioneros serveus today as sources of the court repertoire, collections of songs, among whichthe most important is the Cancionero de Palacio. This is found in thelibrary of the Royal Palace in Madrid and originally included 551 compositions,of which, through the loss of 54 pages, 460 are preserved. The origin of thi
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