The Cantigas de Santa Maria are 420 poems with musical notation, written in the medieval Galician-Portuguese language during the reign of Alfonso X of Castile El Sabio (1221–1284). Traditionally, they are all attributed to Alfonso, though scholars have since established that the musicians and poets of his court were responsible for most of them, with Alfonso being credited with a few as well.
Galician–Portuguese, also known as Old Galician–Portuguese, Old Galician or Old Portuguese, Medieval Galician or Medieval Portuguese when referring to the history of each modern language, was a West Iberian Romance language spoken in the Middle Ages, in the northwest area of the Iberian Peninsula. Alternatively, it can be considered a historical period of the Galician, Fala, and Portuguese languages.
A chansonnier is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings of songs, hence literally "song-books"; however, some manuscripts are called chansonniers even though they preserve the text but not the music, for example, the Cancioneiro da Vaticana and Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional, which contain the bulk of Galician-Portuguese lyrics.
Martin Codax or Codaz, Martín Codax or Martim Codax was a Galician medieval joglar, possibly from Vigo, Galicia in present-day Spain. He may have been active during the middle of the thirteenth century, judging from scriptological analysis. He is one of only two out of a total of 88 authors of cantigas d'amigo who used only the archaic strophic form aaB. He employed an archaic rhyme scheme whereby i~o / a~o were used in alternating strophes. In addition Martin Codax consistently utilised a strict parallelistic technique known as leixa-pren. There is no documentary biographical information concerning the poet, dating the work at present remains based on theoretical analysis of the text.
Mendinho, also Meendinho, Mendiño and Meendiño, was a medieval Iberian poet.
Johan de Cangas was a jograr or non-noble troubadour, probably active during the thirteenth century. He seems to have been from—or associated with – Cangas do Morrazo, a small town of Pontevedra, Galicia (Spain). Only three of his songs survive. All three are cantigas de amigo and in each of them the girl mentions a religious site (ermida) at San Momede do Mar. These references to the sea may be symbolic as they are real, but they have earned this poet the designation of "singer of the sea". In the first text, a girl asks her mother for permission to go see her boyfriend at San Momede do Mar; in the second she informs her mother that the boyfriend did not come and she has surely lost him; in the third she asks her boyfriend to meet her there, and not to break his word to her again.
Cantiga de amigo or cantiga d'amigo, literally "friend song", is a genre of medieval lyric poetry, more specifically the Galician-Portuguese lyric, apparently rooted in a female-voiced song tradition native to the northwest quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula.
João Zorro was a late 13th century Galician or Portuguese minstrel at the court of Afonso III of Portugal, or as it is most likely at the court of Denis of Portugal. He is noted for his 10 cantigas de amigo about ancient sailors, written on the eve of the great voyages of discovery. Like most similar cantigas de amigo of his time, the musical notation wasn't recorded.
A cantiga is a medieval monophonic song, characteristic of the Galician-Portuguese lyric. Over 400 extant cantigas come from the Cantigas de Santa Maria, narrative songs about miracles or hymns in praise of the Holy Virgin. There are near 1700 secular cantigas but music has only survived for a very few: six cantigas de amigo by Martín Codax and seven cantigas de amor by Denis of Portugal.
Cancioneiro musical da Biblioteca Nacional or simply Cancioneiro de Lisboa is the name given to the manuscript CIC 60 which is kept in the Portuguese National Library, in Lisbon. It is one of the four Portuguese Renaissance songbooks of Portuguese music. It was produced between 1530 and 1550 and contains 72 folios sized 96x146 mm each. The current cover is from the 17th century. Some of the folios have suffered corrosion from the ink and the music in them can't be completely recovered.
The Cancioneiro da Ajuda is a collection of Galician-Portuguese lyric poems probably dating from the last quarter of the 13th-century. It is the oldest of the Galician-Portuguese cancioneiros with secular music.
The Pergaminho Sharrer is a mediaeval parchment fragment containing seven songs by King Denis of Portugal, with lyrics in the Galician-Portuguese language and musical notation.
The Cancioneiro da Vaticana is a compilation of troubadour lyrics in Galician-Portuguese. It was discovered c. 1840 in the holdings of the Vatican Library and was first transcribed by D. Caetano Lopes de Moura in 1847, sponsored by the Viscount of Carreira, and again by Ernesto Monaci in 1875.
In the Middle Ages, the Galician-Portuguese lyric, also known as trovadorismo in Portugal and trobadorismo in Galicia, was a lyric poetic school or movement. All told, there are around 1680 texts in the so-called secular lyric or lírica profana. At the time Galician-Portuguese was the language used in nearly all of Iberia for lyric poetry. From this language derives both modern Galician and Portuguese. The school, which was influenced to some extent by the Occitan troubadours, is first documented at the end of the twelfth century and lasted until the middle of the fourteenth, with its zenith coming in the middle of the thirteenth century, centered on the person of Alfonso X, The Wise King. It is the earliest known poetic movement in Galicia or Portugal and represents not only the beginnings of but one of the high points of poetic history in both countries and in Medieval Europe. Modern Galicia has seen a revival movement called neotrobadorismo.
The Cancioneiro Musical de Belém or simply Cancioneiro de Belém is a Portuguese Renaissance manuscript from the beginning of the 17th century.
Nuno Fernandes Torneol was a Galician-Portuguese trovador. He probably worked in the middle of the thirteenth century at the courts of Ferdinand III and Alfonso X of Castile. In "De longas vias, mui longas mentiras", the only cantiga de escárnio that he wrote, he mentions many Castilian place names. He is the also the author of the only known alborada in the Galician-Portuguese tradition: "Levad', amigo, que dormides as manhanas frías".
Bernal(do) de Bonaval(le), also known as Bernardo (de) Bonaval, was a 13th-century troubadour in the Kingdom of Galicia who wrote in the Galician-Portuguese language.
Cantigas de escárnio e maldizer (Portuguese), cantiga de escarnio e maldicir (Galician) or cantigas d'escarnho e de maldizer (Galician-Portuguese), are poems of insult, mockery and scorn – nearly always with comic intent - which constitute one of the three main genres of medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric.
Pero Rodrigues de Palmeira was a Portuguese troubadour. He belonged to the first generation of lyric poets in Galician-Portuguese. All of his works are lost. He is listed as the author of two songs in the index of the 16th-century Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional. This index was made by Angelo Colocci, but the pages where his songs would be are missing.
