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The Performance of Music in Spain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

J. B. Trend
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Extract

On the last occasion on which the subject of Spanish music was discussed at a meeting of this Association, we were able to listen to the finished product—a product “finished” in every sense of the word, for, as members will recollect, the illustrations, consisting of a number of Spanish madrigals, were beautifully performed by the English Singers. This time, I should like to begin at the other end, as it were—with the remains of early Spanish music as they confront the researcher, and the traveller. For the researcher is not confined to musical MSS. or to the statements of the theorists. Sculpture, ivories, miniatures and contemporary descriptions in prose or verse, often throw more light on the conditions of performance and the character of the music itself, than the actual MS. with the musical notation (supposing it to exist and to be intelligible), and they are certainly more illuminating than the treatises on musical theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Musical Association , Volume 55 , 1928 , pp. 51 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1928

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References

1 Sir Thomas Arnold, Painting in Islam. (Oxford, 1928) Plate lix, a and b. Performances of music are shown in ten other plates of this beautifully illustrated volume.Google Scholar

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Menéndez Pidal however has lately given a somewhat different account, based on a careful collation of all the contemporary chronicles. The question of the abolition of the Mozárabic chant began some years before the capture of Toledo; the two champions met at Burgos on the 9th April, 1077. The defender of the old Spanish music was Lope Martinez de Matanza, a Castilian; the champion of the new music, however, was not a Frenchman, but Mozarab of Toledo, who had presumably been hearing Mozárabic chants all his life and had grown heartily sick of them. In the duel the Castilian came off victorious, but the partisans of Queen Inés declared that their champion had been vanquished by treachery. In order to silence the disputes, a fire was lighted in the square at Burgos, and the music-books containing the rival church services were cast into it. The Mozárabic book miraculously leapt from the flames; but the King in anger, kicked it back again, repeating the proverb Allá van leyes do quieren reyes (the law goes as the king wills). So the new church-music became obligatory in León and Castille. (R. Menéndez Pidal, La España del Cid, 1929, vol. 1, pp. 264–281).Google Scholar

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