IV. The High Renaissance (16th Century)
IVl. The Spanish Masters.
The most interesting composer at the turn of the 16th century
was
Juan del Encina
; he was born at Salamanca about 1469 and died some time after
1530. At one time he served the second duke of Alba, and also
received favours from Pope Leo X in Rome, at whose court he
stayed for five years; he also undertook a journey to the Holy
Land. As well as being a composer, Encina was also a poet of
great delicacy, and translated the Bucolics of Virgil. He was a
pioneer in the Spanish secular theatre and several of his
compositions, which are presented in the
Cancionero de Palacio,
are based on Virgil's Eclogues, and were written for stage
presentation.
During the long reigns of Charles V (1517-56) and Philip II
(1556-96) Spanish music, especially church music, reached its
highest level of perfection and there was no lack of expert
musicians of international calibre. Instrumental music,
especially for organ and vihuela, attained an excellence equal to
anything being produced in Europe while Spanish religious
polyphony, which had distinctive individual qualities, was in the
very first rank not only in its spiritual intensity but also in
its musical achievement.
The school of Andalusia
Three great schools contributed to the astonishing wealth of
Spanish religious music in this period: Castile,
Catalonia-Aragon, and Andalusia. Among the many composers of the
Andalusian school were Pedro Fernandez de Castilleja (d. 1547),
nearly all of whose works have been lost though his status may be
guessed from the fact that
Guerrero
named him 'Master of Masters';
Juan Navarro
(c. 1530) who died in Mexico about 1610 and was author of the
first work devoted entirely to music to be printed in the New
World. The most important of all the Andalusian school were
Guerrero and his great teacher, Morales.
Francisco Guerrero
, born at Seville about 1528, was also a pupil of his brother
Pedro -- himself a competent composer. Guerrero's main
characteristics are the serenity and gentle lyricism of his
music, and, if not the greatest, he is one of the most 'Spanish'
composers of the 16th century.
The outstanding figure of the Andalusian school and one of
Spain's greatest composers is
Cristobal de Morales
, the 'Divine Morales' as a modern writer has called him.
In the field of secular polyphony the most gifted Andalusian
master was
Juan Vasquez
. He left a very fine Office for the Dead, but his songs are
sheer masterpieces, some of them being set to words by unknown
poets such as Garcilaso and Boscan, while others are set to
anonymous traditional poetry. Such is the beauty of these songs
that nearly all vihuelists published their own transcriptions of
them.
The school of Castile and Victoria
Among musicians of the Castilian school we find the names of
Juan Escribano
;
Bartolomé de
Escobedo
, cantor at Salamanca and later at Rome, where some of his
compositions are preserved;
Francisco Soto de
Langa
, who died in Rome and worked at the Oratory with St Philip Neri
and Animuccia, and
Diego Ortiz
, distinguished for his instrumental compositions. But the most
important of all the Castilian school was
Luiz de Victoria
, who is the only Spaniard who can be put on the same plane as
Lassus
and
Palestrina
.
Aragon
The masters of the Catalan-Aragonese school are also numerous.
In Aragon we find
Melchor Robledo
, and
Sebastian Aguilera de
Heredia
, organist and composer, who went to Flanders in the suite of
Isabella, daughter of Philip II. Francisco de Peñalosa from before 1497 until 1516 held posts as a singer at the court of Aragon and maestro di capilla to various members of the royal family; in 1517 he became a Papal singer in Rome; Probably the teacher of Morales, he was highly regarded by his contemporaries and contributed ten songs, including a remarkable six part quodlibet to the Cancionero de Palacio.
Mateo Flecha the Elder
, born at Prades about 1483, belonged to the Catalan school; he
died at the monastery of Poblet in 1553. Flecha occupies a
particular place in Spanish music for his
ensaladas,
which were published by his nephew,
Mateo Flecha the Younger
, and some of which were adapted by the vihuelists. Flecha the
Younger was also a composer and produced a number of
madrigals.
Joan Brudieu
, by birth a Frenchman, was music director at Urgell for forty
years and died there. In 1585 he published a collection of
sixteen madrigals, five of which are to Catalan texts, and in
addition has left a very fine Requiem.
Among the many collections of secular polyphony, including
works by composers of all the three main schools, is that
published in Venice in 1533 under the title of
Villancicos de diversos autores,
better known as the
Cancionero
of Upsala, because the only known extant copy was found in the
library of that city. Among collections preserved in other
libraries, the National Library of Madrid and those of several
Italian towns, the most important is the one that forms part of
the collection of the dukes of Medinaceli.
Instrumental and keyboard music
In this field the Spanish composers made an early and
distinguished contribution. Although virtually no music has
survived from the 15th century, there is plenty of evidence to
indicate the widespread cultivation of instruments which we must
postulate to explain the glories of the 16th. The Spaniards were
above all distinguished in music for the string vihuela and the
organ.
The vihuelists represent a tradition unique to Spain,
composing as they did for an instrument hardly cultivated
elsewhere. There is now no doubt that the plucked vihuela so
frequently referred to in Spanish musical records is in fact a
guitar with six courses of strings. It was used for courtly music
while the four-stringed version was the popular instrument. Of
the extensive body of music composed for it during the 16th and
17th centuries, some of the best occurs in the first printed
collection. This was the
Libro del musica de vihuela de mano intitulado El Maestro,
published by the aristocratic composer,
Luis Milán
, at Valencia in 1536. Milán (1500-c.1561) describes the
pieces, which include a number of
villançicos
and fantasias, as for beginners but their polish and elegance
assure their composer a high place in the history of instrumental
music. In all some ten volumes of 16th-century vihuela music by
Spanish composers have been preserved. Besides Milán they
include
Enriquez de
Valderrábano
,
Diego Pisador
,
Alonso Mudarra
,
Luys de Narváez
,
Miguel de
Fuenllano
--another blind musician--and
Esteban Daza
. Publications by
Venegas de Henestrosa
,
Santa Maria
and
Cabezón
also contain compositions for vihuela.
The repertory consists of works for accompanied solo
voice--Spanish and Portuguese romances and
villançicos,
together with Italian sonnets and chansons; there are also
several settings of classical Latin texts, which are among the
first indications of Renaissance accompanied monody. The purely
instrumental pieces are either transcriptions of polyphonic works
-- Spanish or Franco-Flemish -- or else of dances,
tientos
(preludes), fantasias and
diferencias
(variations). The
diferencias
are particularly interesting inasmuch as they constitute the
first examples of the theme-and-variations genre which became so
important in later instrumental music. Towards the end of the
sixteenth century the vihuela was largely replaced by the guitar,
which with the addition of a fifth string had acquired new
artistic possibilities. The modification is traditionally
attributed to Vicente Espinel, poet and musician (1551-1624),
whose first treatise,
Guittara Espanola
(1583) was republished many times right up to the end of the 18th
century.
Although little has survived, its quality is such as to put
the Spanish school of organists in the forefront of European
composition. The
Libro de Cifra nueva
by
Venegas de Henestrosa
, published in 1557, contains works by leading Spanish and
Italian composers, and the
Declaración
by the theorist Juan Bermudo contained organ music by Spanish
masters. The greatest of Spanish organists was
Antonio de
Cabezón
, court musician to Charles V and Philip II; his works were
published posthumously by his son Hernando, who succeeded him to
the Chapel Royal. Cabezón was born in 1510 at Castrojeriz
and died in Madrid in 1566. Blind from birth, he started his
career at the age of eighteen as musician to the empress; he
travelled Europe as a member of her household and this gave him
the opportunity to meet all the best musicians of his day. His
style, which was better adapted to the organ than that of most of
his contemporaries, makes use of all the technical possibilities
of counterpoint, while remaining essentially instrumental in
character. Its grandeur and inventiveness have led to its
comparison with the work of J. S. Bach himself,
To a later age one of the most valuable contributions by a
Spaniard to instrumental music must be the
Tratado, de glosas ... en la musica dc violones,
published in Rome in 1553 by
Diego Ortiz
. In his book, which is rich in musical examples, Ortiz gives
detailed treatment of the highly important art of ornamentation
and improvisation as applied to the music of bowed stringed
instruments.
Portugal
In comparison with Spain, research on old Portuguese music is
still relatively slight. In the collection of chansons in the
Biblioteca Publia Hortensia, Portugal possesses a pendant to the
Spanish collection of 15th and 16th-century music. Gil Vicente
(1465?-1536?), who was active as a writer for the theatre from
1502, is credited with being the creator of the Portuguese
theatre and the originator of music for the stage. Unfortunately
his musical production has been lost and we only have his notes
for stage directions and a few popular songs, preserved from
other sources, which he introduced into his plays. Apart from the
chronicler Damião de Goes (1501-53), whose three motets
have been preserved, the greatest Portuguese polyphonists belong
to the school of Manoel Mendes, musical director in his native
town of Evora, where he died in 1605
His pupils Duardo Lobo, Filipe de Magalhaes,
Diego Dias Melgaço and Soares Rebello were to become well
known in the following century. Grigorio Silvestre de Mesa
(1522-70), a distinguished composer, was organist at Granada
Cathedral. He also led a flourishing school of vihuelists (the
Milán volume contains three Spanish villancicos and three
in Portuguese dedicated to Prince Don Joao), but little is known
of their work.
Composer´s bibliography and music
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