Cantigas De Santa Maria

Ensemble: Ensemble Unicorn

Album: Cantigas De Santa Maria

Video: Alfonso el Sabio, Virgin Mary and musicians (XIII cent.)

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• This 2021 is the anniversary of the 800 years from the birth of Alfonso X El Sabio. To celebrate him, this year I'll share many versions of his Cantigas! This is the fifth video about it, you can find the others easily on the channel. 🌻 Alfonso X was born in 1221, he was King of the Romans, of Castile and León. His father was Ferdinand III, a liberal man called "the Saint" and the "King of religions" as during his reign he managed to make Christians, Muslims and Jews coexist in peace. His mother was Elisabetta Hohenstaufen, nephew of Frederick Barbarossa. From the sources that speak of his life we ​​know that in his youth Alfonso was surrounded by numerous paramours and politically helped his father in many military campaigns, but it was his love for Art that made him immortal with the nickname "El Sabio". In 1254 Alfonso endowed with many privileges the school of Salamanca, founded by his grandfather, and thanks to Pope Alexander IV, he obtained permission to make the school an international university allowing its graduates to teach anywhere, except Paris and Bologna. Alfonso tried to bring together all the knowledge of his time in the language spoken by his subjects by founding the School of Translators of Toledo; the Muslim and Jewish sages of his court translated ancient Arabic and Hebrew works into Castilian. His scientific, historical and literary work was fundamental; promoted the drafting and publication of a series of authoritative texts in various fields of artistic and scientific culture such as the Alfonsine Tables: astronomical tables capable of providing the positions of the Sun, planets, stars and the dates of eclipses. He was also an excellent poet and even the author of one of the first treatises on chess. However, it was Music that handed it over to legend thanks to the collection of the famous Cantigas de Santa Maria, monophonic songs of the XIII cent. now preserved in Madrid and Florence, containing an enormous number of compositions and representations of musical instruments and players. The outset of these compositions can be traced back to the troubadour art, which were so successful as to induce Alfonso X to use both the language and the form. Marian devotion was particularly in vogue in this century, the collection sees the participation of aristocrats and courtiers, bourgeois, friars, clerics and jesters of humble origins, but protected in the courts. King Alfonso himself composed cántigas, some of which incite poets and jesters to dedicate their efforts and inspiration to the “Santa Dama”. In addition to the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the Cantigas de Amigo, popular, melodious and melancholic, also spread in that period, showing some contact with the Mozarabic kharge in Arabic-Hebrew composed in the XI cent.. The work has great importance from a triple point of view: literary, musical and pictorial. Alfonso X inherited from his father Fernando III his musical chapel which brought together interpreters and composers of various cultures and who formed part of the alphonsine court, similar to his School of translators or scriptorium regio.

• 1 Prologo (CSM 60)

2 Por Nos De Dulta Tirar (CSM 18)

3 Instrumental (CSM 259)

4 Quen Serve Santa Maria (CSM 213)

5 Rosa Das Rosas (CSM 10)

6 Que Por Al Non Devess (CSM 295)

7 Entre Av'e Eva (CSM 60)

8 Instrumental (CSM 361)

9 Virgen, Madre Gloriosa (CSM 340)

10 Instrumental (CSM 206)

11 A Virgen, Que De Deus Madre (CSM 322)

12 Aquel Que De Volontade (CSM 249)

13 Epilogo (CSM 60)

• Composed By - Alfonso X “El Sabio”

Bass Drum, Idiophone (Lithophone), Goblet Drum (Darbuka) - Wolfgang Reithofer

Bass-Baritone Vocals - Colin Mason

Countertenor Vocals - Bernhard Landauer

Fiddle (Keyed Fiddle), Baglama (Saz), Daf, Shawm, Bagpipes, Recitation - Marco Ambrosini

Harp (Gothic Harp), Hurdy Gurdy, Bagpipes, Liner Notes, Recitation - Riccardo Delfino

Oud, Fiddle, Vihuela, Rebec, Gittern - Thomas Wimmer

Recorder, Gemshorn, Flute (Reed Flute, Bamboo Flutes) - Michael Posch

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