medieval.org
Nimbus 5081
1986
medieval.org
Nimbus 5081
1986
1. Santa Maria, Strella do dia [2:40]
CSM 100
Holy Mary, Star of the Day
2. Non sofre Santa Maria [2:58]
CSM 159
THE LOST STEAK
3. Non e mui gran maravilla [2:35]
CSM 294
THE GERMAN GAMBLER
4. Santa Maria amar [2:54]
CSM 7
THE BABY RESCUE
5. A Santa Maria dadas sejan loores [0:49]
CSM 140
To Holy Mary praise be given
6. Quen boa dona querra loar [3:01]
CSM 160
He who wishes to praise a good lady
7. Muit e mais a piadade [2:57]
CSM 201
THE GIRL WHO ATE SPIDERS
8. A Virgen, que Deus Madre est [1:25]
CSM 322
A MAN SWALLOWS A RABBIT BONE
9. Virgen, Madre Gloriosa [2:36]
CSM 340
Glorious Virgin Mother
10. Porque ben Santa Maria [2:24]
CSM 327
A PRIEST STEALS AN ALTAR-CLOTH
11. Entre Av'e Eva [1:13]
CSM 60
Between Ave and Eve
12. Se ome fezer de grado [1:20]
CSM 207
A KNIGHT'S FORGIVENESS
13. Fremosos miragres [4:51]
CSM 352
A KNIGHT'S HAWK
14. Por nos, Virgen Madre [2:32]
CSM 250
Implore God for us, Virgin Mother
15. Ben pode Santa Maria [1:36]
CSM 189
A DRAGON-SLAYING
16. O que en Santa Maria [2:56]
CSM 216
A KNIGHT BARGAINS WITH THE DEVIL
17. Ay Santa Maria [3:00]
CSM 79
MUSA GOES TO HEAVEN
18. Santa Maria loei [0:52]
CSM 200
Holy Mary have I praised
19. Muito, foi noss' amigo [2:09]
CSM 210
Gabriel was our friend
20. Rosa das Rosas [3:29]
CSM 10
Rose of all Roses
21. Santa Maria, strella do dia [1:38]
CSM 100
Holy Mary, Star of the Day
22. Entre Av'e Eva [1:39]
CSM 60
Between Ave and Eve
Martin Best, voice, lute, oud, psaltery, baldozo
Jeremy Barlow, recorders, pipes, medieval flute
David Corkhill, drums, bells, nakers, dulcimer
Alastair McLachlan, rebecs and fiddle
Lucie Skeaping, voice, rebecs
Singers:
Olivia Blackburn, Jennifer Quigley, Margaret Cameron, Simon Colston, Graham Dalby, Andrew Buscher
Continuous Playing Time: 51:30
Recorded at All Saints' Church, Tooting 10th-12th June 1984
A Digital Recording
Recorded, Mastered and Manufactured in the United Kingdom by Nimbus Records Limited.
Cover picture: The Court of Alfonso X el Sabio / copyright Urquía Latorre.
Design by Barron Hatchett, Manchester
℗ 1984 © 1987 Nimbus Records Limited.
THE
SONGS and poems of the 13th century and before have only recently begun
to receive the attention which, as vibrant representatives of their
age, is their due. Yet we take for granted their legacy of thought, of
feeling, of exquisite melody and verse. In particular, we take for
granted the presence of Love in the lives of the Troubadours—a legacy
bequeathed to them by Dante, who turned it from a languishing potion
into a moral force in turn wrought by Renaissance poets, playwrights and
composers into the individual passion we revere today.
In this
developing realisation of Love's power the cult of the Virgin Mary
played a central role. And nowhere is the cult displayed with greater
vividness and sympathy than in the collection of Cantigas, or songs,
compiled and written by Alfonxo X, the learned, of Castille.
Within
the Cantigas lies a panoply of medieval life rivalled only by the
Canterbury Tales or Boccaccio's Decameron. Here we see a losing gambler
chucking her dice angrily at God (who promptly chucks it back); or a
cleric stealing an altar cloth to make new undewear. But it is the
miracles of Mary which are the centre piece: over a bewildering range of
human folly and predicament, her benificent eye holds sway. With
compassion and delicacy her miracles solve every conceivable crisis, and
eloquently suggest that while it may have been a masculine God who
dispensed justice and mercy to the medieval faithful, it was she (as a
heavenly vision of the Domina of the Troubadours) who softened the blow.
Alfonso
X of Castille was by any account a remarkable figure. Like his
grandfather Alfonso VIII, he was a brilliant intellectual. His capacity
for deep and sustained study bore honour to his times and to his
country. As a scientist, he investigated the discoveries of Jewish
researchers in Toledo; as a linguist, he translated them, and the works
of Arabic and classical writers into Castillian; and later he extended
the same service to philosophers. By this process the Castillian tongue
was refined, taking on the shape of today's Spanish language.
As
practical administrator he also served his kingdom. In Seville he
established an equitable distribution of housing, and reorganised its
water supply. He also recognised the rights of migrating shepherds,
making it possible for wool to become Castille's major export. And his
work on the legal system replaced many injustices with the Roman concept
of public good.
This diversity of achievement had political
expression in his dream of a united Spain. Problems of finance and
distance defeated it. But the vision itself remained, and Spain
eventually became unified.
The Cantigas manuscripts comprise a
total of 400 songs mainly in virelai (refrain/verse/refrain) form. Every
tenth song is a loor, or praise song, in which Alfonso personally
contemplates the Virgin as an object of adoration. The language is
Gallo-Portuguese, a dialect familiar to Alfonso and used as a literary
language in the same way as 13th century Italian poets used the
Provençal of the Troubadours. As a piece of pictorial art the
manuscripts are peerless, and notable for their illustrations of the
performers of Alfonso's court. All the instruments used on this record
could have been found there.
In the High Middle Ages, melody was the means by which
poetry—that is, literature—was transmitted, performed and
kept alive.
Later
in the 13th century, Dante began to observe the tendency of later
troubadours to embellish their love-songs with tantalising
autobiographies (vidas), and to create stories (razos) around them. The
Cantigas also display this tendency, with their regulated mixture of
tales and praises.
Yet they do more: they forsake the Lady of the
Troubadours and focus specifically on Mary, the Mother of God and Queen
of Heaven, who herself chooses to become identified with life on earth
below.
Dante, who was much admired by Alfonso, doubtless drew on
this central aspect of the Cantigas for his depiction of Beatrice, who
was not only the flesh and blood object of his adoration, but also the
goal of his moral journey towards Paradise in which Love itself is
identified as the grounds of his individuality.
In this
performance of the Cantigas an attempt is made to emulate this process.
It begins with a pilgrim song (Santa María, Strella do Dia) to which the
pilgrims process and enter (Alfonso specified a Church as the
performing space, and of all the venues Salisbury Cathedral has been the
most outstandingly effective setting). Stories of low life are swapped.
Later, the preoccupations of knights and countries take over, and these
yield in turn at Alfonso's final concentration on the qualities of the
Virgin herself. This structure reflects the medieval belief in
hierarchy. Seen today as inflexible and class-ridden in medieval times
it was a means whereby the lowest creature was joined in clear stages of
connection, to the highest reaches of Heaven.
© Martin Best 1986
[liner notes from
A MEDIEVAL BANQUET, NI 1753, DISC THREE]
The Cantigas of Santa María
Alfonso el Sabio
(the learned) (1221 - 1284) became king of Castile and León in 1252.
His court was an artistic and scholarly centre, where Jewish, Islamic
and Christian met. As a patron of the arts and of learning he was
responsible for a number of important publications. This disc features a
selection of works from the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a varied collection of 400 songs, largely written in virelai
(refrain/verse/refrain) form, that celebrate the Blessed Virgin,
whether in songs of praise or in anecdotal accounts of the miracles she
was said to have performed. Alfonso had a team of musicians working for
him who would frequently adopt melodies from popular songs of the day.
The texts frequently incorporated titillating 'real-life', often bawdy
stories (razos) depicting mundane predicaments, crimes and
misfortunes. This use of familiar material served the dual purpose of
making the songs accessible, by encouraging the listener to identify
with the situation depicted in the text, whilst at the same time
reinforcing the relevance of religion in every day life. The poetic
nature of the works however, was reflected by the fact that they were
inscribed upon beautifully ornate rnanuscripts, and the texts were
written in a literary language, Gallo-Portugese.
The first song, entitled Santa María, Strella do dia, extols Mary as 'a star of the day', and asks her to show the way to God. On a less elevated level, the song, Non sofre Santa María,
relates how Mary helped to retrieve a stolen steak which was
subsequently suspended on a silken thread before her holy alter as a
symbol of gratitude. The next two songs are examples of those that
appeared as every tenth song - a personal expression of Alfonso's
veneration of the Virgin Mary. It is not known for certain whether
Alfonso himself contributed his own work to the collection although it
is thought that he would certainly have had the ability to do so. Muit é mais a pidade
tells how Mary miraculously resolved a particularly torrid state of
affairs in which a girl kills her three illegitimate children and then
attempts to take her own life by eating a poisonous spider. ln the next
song, A Virgen que Deus Madre est, the Virgin rescues a man who is choking on a rabbit bone. A priest steals an alter cloth in Porque ben Santa María,
a song in which the moral is firmly reiterated in the refrain: 'Since
Holy Mary knows full well how to give her gifts to us, he who sets out
to steal from her does a very stupid thing'.
Entre Av'e Eva
a short song of praise, without refrain, draws the perceived difference
between Eve and Ave, who are rather tentatively connected by their
names. Eve is said to have divided man from Paradise and God, whereas
'Ave' is considered to have united them. The diverse nature of the
Virgin's miracles is dearly shown in Se ome fezer de grado and Fremosos miragres,
both of which are examples of scenarios where a Knight is the
protagonist. In the first, the Virgin is responsible for preventing a
father whose son has been murdered from exacting revenge upon his
killer. The second song relates how a knight's declining hawk is
miraculously restored to its former glory. The 'moral' of this
particular tale is questionable since the Virgin's miracle in this
instance was prompted by little more than the material desire of a
person of elevated social status.
Por nos, Virgen Madre
is another example of Alfonso's dedications to Mary, and on this
occasion, the Virgin is asked to 'implore' God on man's behalf. The
instrumental Cantiga that follows originally told a tale that would
appear to belong to the realms of folklore rather than that of every day
experience. A pilgrim loses his way and is met by a dragon whom he
slays but whose breath is so poisonous that he is made grievously ill.
He manages to reach Mary's alter at Salas, where he is immediately
cured.
It would seem that on the whole, the injured party in each
case must believe in Mary in order to receive her assistance. The
Knight of the next song, O que en Santa María, however, cannot
take his religion too seriously if he is willing to make a pact with the
Devil for the sake of material gain. It is interesting to note that
when Mary saves that day she does not issue reprimands as one might
expect. Any moralizing, which is usually no more than a gentle reminder
than a treacherous threat, is frequently left to the repetitive
refrains. This seems to correspond with the mild aspect of religion that
Mary symbolises in this collection.
The refrain in Ay Santa María
declares that followers of Mary are freed from folly. The verses go on
to relate the story of Musa, an attractive but 'senseless' girl who is
prevented from living a a frivolous life by being taken into Heaven. We
might regard this as a slightly harsh and prematune end to an earthly
life, if Musa's greatest crime was 'frivolousness'. This is followed by
two praise songs, the second of which expresses gratitude towards
Gabriel for bringing the tidings of God's arrival on earth. Rosa das Rosas
hails Mary in an almost romantic manner, in which the author professes
to have given himself to the Virgin 'over all other loves' illustrating
the close link between the earthly object of the troubadours' affections
and her development into the divine, as embodied by the Virgin Mary.
© 1999 Martin Best / NIMBUS Records
