Los ecos de Manzanares CANCIONERO DE LA SABLONARA 17th Century Spanish Court Music La Boz Galana Los ecos de Manzanares Cancionero de La Sablonara, 17th Century Spanish Court Music

Gabriel Díaz c.1590-c.1631 Mateo Romero c.1575-1647 Anonymous Joan Pujol 1570-1626 1. Barquilla pobre de remos 4’32 6. Bullicioso y claro arroyuelo 3’09 12. De tu vista celoso 2’12 14. Llamaban los pajarillos 2’58 Romance for 4 voices (Tutti) for 2 voices (LA, SL, GB) Seguidillas with echoes for 4 voices Romance for 4 voices (Tutti) (LA, SM, SL, GB, LC) Diego Gómes c.1550-1618 Juan Blas de Castro 1561-1631 Flores de música, lisboa, 1620 2. En el valle del ejido 4’26 7. Desde las torres del alma 3’52 Manuel Rodrigues Coelho 1555-1635 Romance for 3 voices Romance for 4 voices (Tutti) 13. Susana grosada 5’41 Mateo Romero (LA, ES, SL, GB, LC) Instrumental (Tutti) 15. Romerico florido 3’06 Bernardo Clavijo del Castillo 1626 Folía for 2 voices (ES, SL, GB, LC) Álvaro de los Ríos 1580-1623 8. Ileno de 2º tono 4’01 16. Fatigada navecilla 3’13 3. Sin color anda la niña 3’56 Insrumental (LC) Romance for 4 voices (Tutti) Romance for 3 voices Ed. Madrid, B.N., Ms M1360 (ES, SM, Sl, GB, LC) Mateo Romero La Boz Galana Improvisation on 17th century patterns 9. Ricos de galas y flores 2’49 Lore Agustí soprano (LA) · Eva Soler soprano (ES) 4. Folías 4’33 Romance for 4 voices (Tutti) Samuel Moreno countertenor (SM) · Sebastián León baritone (SL) Instrumental (GB, LC) Guilherme Barroso & chitarrone (GB) Miguel de Arizo c.1590-c.1633 Louis Capeille Spanish double-harp (LC) Álvaro de los Ríos 10. Vistióse el prado galán 3’39 5. Pajarillos suaves 4’05 Romance for 4 voices Folía for 3 voices (LA, ES, SL, LC) (ES, SM, SL, GB, LC) Juan Blas de Castro 11. Ya no les penso pedir 4’13 Romance for 4 voices (Tutti)

Recording: 13-16 October 2018, St. Ottilien Church, Tüllingen (Lörrach), Germany Recording & mixing: Daniel Capeille Production assistant: Filipa Meneses Mastering: Bernard Slobodian, Small Mastering Studio (Montreal, Canada) Ensemble photo: Dirk Letsch Cover: Frans Snyders, Concert of Birds, c.1630, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg Manuscripts: from BSB Cod.hisp.2, fol. [III v] (page 4), fol. 46 v (page 11) p & © 2020 Brilliant Classics The Cancionero de la Sablonara is a collection polyphony to the new Baroque style: on the one hand, there are pieces of an almost made up of 75 polyphonic songs composed for madrigalesque character, with very elaborate contrapuntal and melodic imitation, and the Royal Court of Madrid during the first two on the other, completely homophonic compositions based on lively rhythms, dance decades of the 17th century. The manuscript is patterns and poems of a popular nature, such as the seguidillas. Many of the tonos of named after Claudio de la Sablonara, copyist this collection have melodies which undoubtedly come from songs for the theatre or and archivist of Madrid’s Royal Chapel, who well-known romances of the period. The texts used corroborate this, for they are also presented it to Wolfgang Wilhelm, Count of found in the ballad collections and autograph and printed songbooks. As a contrast Nuremberg and Duke of Bavaria, during his to the vocal pieces we have included some instrumental compositions from the same stay at Philip IV’s Madrid court from 1624 to period as the Cancionero de la Sablonara. 1625. Today the manuscript is kept in the State The devastating fire which levelled the Real Alcázar of Madrid in 1734 destroyed Library of Bavaria, which is why it is also called hundreds of musical works of which, unfortunately, we only have knowledge thanks the Cancionero de Munich. to catalogues and accounts of the religious and profane celebrations held at the The repertoire contained in this book could Madrid court. Having the good fortune of being abroad and thus surviving, the essentially be classified astonos humanos, Cancionero de la Sablonara is now a tremendously valuable source of the music that or secular polyphonic songs. These pieces was heard at the beginning of the 17th century in Spain, and that would give birth represent, without a doubt, the greatest to such a characteristic poetic-musical genre of Spanish music as the tono humano, Spanish profane vocal music of the period and which would endure until well into the 18th century. were composed by some of the most brilliant © Sebastián León musicians active in the Madrid court, such as the Flemish Mateo Romero (Mathieu Translation: José Luis Greco Rosmarin), Álvaro de los Ríos and Juan Blas de Castro, among others. Many of the texts on which they were composed were written by distinguished poets of Spain’s Golden Age, such as Lope de Vega, Luis de Góngora and Francisco de Quevedo. On the Banks of the Manzanares, the Madrid of the Habsburgs revealed its true Philip IV, a great lover of music and the dance, had in his service a number of countenance. The soul of the city – it was hardly more than a town – was not to singers, who accompanied themselves on the guitar, and instrumentalists. These be found in its fountains or palaces, but rather in its teeming youth. The young did musicians belonged to an institution called “Casa de Sus Altezas” (House of Their not flee in summer; they spent it at the stifling court, finding inspiration, during Royal Highnesses) which was originally led by the composer Álvaro de los Ríos. The that season, between the glare of the sun and an earthenware pitcher of cool water. music included on this recording is representative of the transition from Renaissance Travellers gathered for the spectacle: when the heat intensified, ladies and gents flung their garments to the ground and swam naked; riding in their carriages – another Behind that cloak of music and poetry they caught a glimpse of the youthfulness to passion of the Madrileños – they drove the horses into the water, spending thus the which they were forbidden access. Between the halls of the palace and the life of the night until daybreak discovered them all bedraggled. The river was as characteristic street one had to manoeuvre myriad stairs, reputations, rigours, an army of servants; of the city’s life as the out-door theatre, the speeding carriage, the night, the guitar but here we find that all of this was overcome thanks to a particular rallying cry, the and the folía (Spanish dance). Madrid was going through a period of the most novel most important rule of those years: one of the few unforgivable things in Madrid was delights, a mood that could sprout only there, in that plaza of the footloose, shaken to ask too little of life. We can hardly understand what we call the Golden Age if we by the dream of the New World and the encounter with disparate peoples. All of this do not attend to this lust for life, to which was often sacrificed one’s profession, safety was crystalizing into a new desire for freedom and insatiable amorous games. and even, in extreme cases, one’s honour. It was not unusual for the court musician In the Alcázar, above the huddled city streets, the King lived his youth feeling to be less a musician than a ladies’ man, gambler or swordsman. One might see a God’s gaze upon him. With the hope of his faith, he applied his energies to his duties; guitarist, in the employ of the Royal Chapel, leaving a brothel or he might be a man- he read, studied the languages of his vassals – Italian, French, Catalan – answering at-arms during a lustrum; poets spent the night with play-actors, and play-actors, missives from around the world. At the same time he nourished his private artistic with all their scandalous baggage, were to be seen at the Alcázar. vocation. He and his brothers – Prince Royal and Cardinal-Infante – prized the free The artists in the entourage of the King and his brothers brought with them this lifestyle of the Manzanares. After all, they were adolescents, as prone to sensuality as ambiguousness and this whiff of bohemianism; in fact, all of this gradually became any other, and felt the desire to be a part of the city’s mysterious pulse. In the King’s the very substance of the music. Claudio de la Sablonara handed this all to the own words: for a moment, they wanted to “free themselves of divinity”. From the princes transcribed on clean sheets of paper, so they might pass the time singing. palace, one could go directly down to the river, crossing a lush park. The cartographer The romances of the blind Juan Blas de Castro told the stories of the Duke of Alba, Pedro Teixera has bequeathed us prints of each and every tree on the path that led Lope and his friends, the lament of those who had risked everything for love and to the riverbank and which today bewitches us, for it contains all of its history, in lost it all in the end. The seguidillas embodied the agile rhythms of the criminals contrast to the flower gardens of Versailles. Arriving at the riverbank, instead of and the concubines, those pursued (seguidos) by the law. The new romances were undressing and participating in the nocturnal adventures – although they did indeed nothing more than the personal stories of the poets, of the anonymous youth of experience a bit of that – the House of Habsburg youngsters gave themselves over the Manzanares, somewhat elegantly attired. To risk everything for love, to mock to music. Philip, Charles and Ferdinand, the three painted by Velázquez, sublimated everything, to take pleasure in whatever, to swoon of jealousy on the banks of the their desires in art, perhaps knowing that through art they could live the lives they river; the King and his brothers imagined that life, so near yet so far, and in some would otherwise never live. way, made it their own. And not only theirs: copies of the songs left for Bavaria, When evening arrived, they would go through the doors – small panel doors – that Italy, Peru, and even to those places, miles and miles away from Madrid’s river, the led to the Cierzo Gallery. There, at the first great bay window overlooking twilit enchantment nevertheless reached. Madrid, the three brothers would sing, each accompanying himself on the . © Ignacio Rodulfo Hazen Translation: José Luis Greco La Boz Galana was created in 2011 in Basel, Switzerland, by singers and instrumentalists from Colombia, Brazil and France in Basel. The ensemble is particularly dedicated to the interpretation of Renaissance and Baroque Iberian and Latin-American repertoire. Recently they have been combining musical projects with research on the relationship of these musical styles with poetry and literature. The ensemble’s name (‘the gallant voice’), uses the orthography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; it’s an expression that could be used in poems to describe a song beautifully sung or a text gallantly proclaimed. The ensemble has performed mostly in France and Switzerland (Concerts du Conservatoire de Nantes, Festival Vochora, Festival du Mont Blanc, Festival de Froville, Les Goûts Réunis, and Les Musicales de Redon, among others), and recently in Colombia. Their first album, with and motets by the spanish composer Matías Durango, was released in 2015.

Thanks | Gracias | Danke

Filipa Meneses, Ignacio Rodulfo Hazen, Kirchengemeinde Tüllingen, Museum Kleines Klingental Basel, Männerchor Witterswil, Robert Flury, Serge Iseli, Salomé and Peter Oettli, Magdalena Reymond, Katharina von Arx, Pedro Nari, Michael Wachtl, Véronique Daniels and all the people who have contributed to make this recording possible. SUNG TEXTS 2. En el valle del ejido *1 3. Sin color anda la niña 5. Pajarillos suaves 1. Barquilla pobre de remos Romance or 3 voices Romance for 3 voices for 3 voices Romance for 4 voices Text: Luis de Góngora Pale is the maiden Gentle little birds Poorly-oared rowboat, In the valley of the commons, After having lost her lover, Subdue your voices, But rich in loveliness, (Manga never went to the dance!) Adversary of her own eyes, For they sound like As you transport Galatea Menga lost her beaded bracelet Her figure neglected. jealousy Parting the foam of the Tagus. On a Sunday evening. But are rather of love. Her lovely black eyes The night spreads its blanket The beads had not Rain Oriental pearls, Sweet little birds Across the face of the moon, The extremes she does, But, should one feel envy, In whom heaven To hide its rays, And as they were made of crystal, Each tear is an asp. Recognizes its harmony, The fisherman’s fortune. Tears of crystal little Menga wept. The flowers, their Expectant with absence, adornments, Prithee, blind darkness; Who has heard, young men, She is happy with no one: You who, when Silence, waters of the Tagus; Of such waste, The maiden dies of love Night takes its leave, Hush, oars; That one who seeks coral So as not to kill for love. Enliven the air For if the heavens hear us Should spill pearls? And all hearts, We are lost! The maiden sleeps not With your gentle voices Twenty search but are lost, From love, mother; Restrain your singing The fisherman saw in her brow, Which is not many, in such cases, Bestow sleep on her, breezes, For they sound like jealousy When not in her blond tresses That one lost makes twenty, That she may rest. But are rather of love. The jasmines of daybreak, When a fool makes a hundred. And the echoes of the Manzanares The most pure sunlight. Respond: See how the valleys When Bartolillo claimed “The maiden dies And verdant hills, Not in vain, then, Galatea, his reward, charmingly, For she is prepared to slay.” Have been bedecked in colours To the wings of Cupid for having found the beads And meanwhile the leaves By springtime, And the conch of his mother, on Menga’s lips. Frolic in the wind, And the sweet fountains, Does happily flee. The fountains laugh, Which flow silvery, Who has heard, young men,… The birds sing, Hardly recognize you Prithee, blind darkness… And the maiden, alone, For the way you now sing, Laments her ills. Restrain your complaints Oh Lord! How many pearls Which break through the air, The wind scatters! For they sound like jealousy But are rather of love. 6. Bullicioso y claro arroyuelo 7. Desde las torres del alma And the birds and fountains, And when a brook leaped, Seguidillas for 2 voices Romance for 4 voices Whether sad from envy, To enrich the plants, Or joyful from love, Flora desired the water to fall Boisterous and clear brook From the towers of the soul, Some laugh while others cry, And kiss her feet. Which splashes the white pebbles, Besieged by a thousand deceptions, And gazing at Jacinta With envy the nightingales Reason is calling All rejoice. Glad tidings, greenery, glad tidings!... Go leaping from branch to branch. The sleeping conscience. With such great impossibilities Lucinda, more lovely, To arms, to war! Disillusions, How little, so sad, they dare 11. Ya no les pienso pedir And as lovely, ungrateful, Love leads my tender years Think cowardly thoughts Romance for 4 voices May the fire sear you There. And harbour genteel desires! If the snow scalds. I will no longer beseech Who is able, like yourselves, For when April rebounds and More tears from my eyes, Celindo saw her Professed disillusions, Returns to the sad meadows, For they say they cannot And forgot his yearnings, To defend the fortress For you I die a thousand deaths, Cry so much and see so little. For such power have When the wall is so frail? While they twice live. Her sweet words. But to die from not seeing you For ten years it is besieged by And the birds and fountains… Is no weight on my shoulders Live long, Love, flattery, abuse, Because the soul is spirit Adored ungrateful one, Scorn, indulgences, jealousy, Love, iron and jealousy, lead. And may love bestow sight on you Falsehoods, offences and deceptions. 10. Vistióse el prado galán Even though you lack eyes. Romance for 3 voices I go searching for remedies, To arms, to war! Disillusions,… But always fearful Touch not your mouth, The elegant meadow dressed, Of hearing what many say, Even though it kills me; One Easter morning, That they have served few. More softly, my tongue, 9. Ricos de galas y flores In flowers, when she, Sing, for they sing: Romance for 4 voices Who all adorns, came visiting. My absence cured my ills, But as in my anger Boisterous and clear brook Rich in finery and flowers, Glad tidings, greenery, glad tidings! Remedies do not serve me, Which splashes the white pebbles, October and September For the water which bathes you I must be a danger. With envy the nightingales Follow April and May’s Was that which kissed Diana’s feet. Go leaping from branch to branch. Flowery, verdant meadows. Why search for remedies, The fields, feeling Oh heart? To Jacinta’s eyes The new light descending, Suffer, for they are not possible. The merry fields owe Came out to receive it The novelty of each day, With flowers, trees and streams. The adulation of each month. What does it serve to search Oh! Give me no more sorrows She who is the bright star 16. Fatigada navecilla For remedies in other’s ills? With your jealousy, Of our habitat, Romance for 4 voices It is the years which kill, For you will be my displeasure / …eyes, Flowers of true love Text: Luis de Góngora (?) Space and time you lose And not my paradise. She seeks, None of which you have, oh heart. And that of rosemary Languorous bark Which is blue and white, Which to the sea entrusts Suffer, for they are not possible. 14. Llamaban los pajarillos like the trusting hand And to the wind of hope and care, Romance for 4 voices of who picks it. Scant sail and much oar. Mercy, assistance, for Heaven’s sake! 12. De tu vista celoso *2 The little birds called The flowers For I am lost at port! Seguidillas with echoes for 4 voices The sun with sweet voices, Of richer colour Oh, I am lost! Who when seeing who calls She picks with the Gazing at you, jealous, Badly sleeping remembered. Tip of her discretion; Unfortunate bark, I spend my life, I, alone, sad amidst the music of all, But with more reason Fatigued sailor, For they give me a thousand vexations / … Weep loneliness and love. For this cruel flower, To the sea of love and beauty eyes Sometimes gives honey No more, for all is less. Which at so many gaze. So Amarilis protests And sometimes gives bitterness. At dawn’s first light, Hopes badly believed, You barely look yet steal Which from the field of his village As she desires Desires well understood, A thousand hearts, Dressed the mute shade. To cure that ill, All end up buried And as you depart / …you hurl Which to her mortal body In waves of silence. Arrows of love. And seeing that on the green branches From the soul approaches, The songs of the brooks Such great excellence Mercy, assistance, for Heaven’s sake!... My husband and yours Are echoed by the birds, thus she said and As the essence, called Nisa, Will go to the grove today, sighed: Bestows on us, And with these agreements / …assured [arrows guide it], Translation: José Luis Greco Are our designs. I, alone, sad amidst the music of all,… The maiden gathers, And from the love of her eyes, Why should you expect, my swarthy maid, Pearls/darts fell. Original Spanish sung texts are available at Faithful love, 15. Romerico florido www.brilliantclassics.com For you, of all women / ….are Folia for 2 voices The most changeable? Flowery rosemary T.N. A priest laying down The maiden gathers, *1: In the original of the 3rd line of the 1st stanza, ‘perdió sus corales’ translated literally means ‘lost her corals’. ‘Corales’ can refer to a beaded bracelet of that material or, as a double entendre, her virginity or innocence. Dead of cold, And from the love of her eyes, *2: In the original Spanish of this last poem, the word right before the slash (/) and the word right after it rhyme; a Said as he got into bed: /… “Mistress, Pearls/darts fell. lovely and witty aspect lost in translation. Come with me.”