Now for BB’ parts and now things are getting complicated. In the Anglés transcription the BB’ parts are identical, consequently both having an extra bar at the beginning. The “redundant” bar lies at the V chord level and the melody line begins at a C sharp, exactly as in the last bar of A and A’. Let us now assume that the first bar in Anglés’ transcription of B and B’ originally was meant to replace the last bar of A’ and act as a transition to B. Let us further assume that the same bar was intended also to replace the last bar in B and likewise act as a transition from B to B’. That will give us a B and a B’ part in the improvisation that closely resemble the B and the B’ from the presentation section.

So far we have an improvisation section that follows the presentation section as well in structure as in chord progression (2). It’s now easy to sense the basso ostinato governing the whole AA’ BB’ course of events. But there’s still something that doesn’t fit in C and C’.
C and C’ aren’t identical and last all together 9 bars in the Anglés transcription. As before, if we assume that the first bar of C in Anglés’ transcription originally was meant to replace the last bar of B’ and thus act as a transition to C, we have solved the problem with the uneven number of bars. But we aren’t done yet. In Anglés’ transcription the entire folía chord progression in the CC’ - parts seems to have been dislocated a pulse beat to the left!

Let us therefore assume that the transition from B’ to C ought to have the same dynamic character as the correspondent transition from A’ to B. That is in fact achievable by moving the entire CC’ parts a pulse beat to the right! Thus, the folía progression is, so to speak, set on place. Now the structure of C and C’ in the improvisation section corresponds closely to the same course in the presentation section.
Voíla!, we now have a dance piece with improvisations you’d actually be able to dance to.

Now, that we’re in it …
The pavanne structure with the repetition of its component parts strongly appeals to a shift in dynamics and timbre between the repetitions. In the recording from the Cathedral of Salamanca I’ve recorded the pavana as a duet between the two renaissance positives of the cathedral. Since I felt that each positive ought to have its own improvisation, I have composed an extra improvisation section. The first improvisation on the recording consequently has not been composed by Antonio – whoever he was - but is a new addition, written in Antonio’s style.

Yes, I’m aware of it. The eternal question concerning historical correctness arises again. In response to that I can only say that the current dissection and subsequent repair of Pavana con su glosa isn’t an attempt to come up with a musicological treatise. With the due respect for the work of Higinio Anglés I hasten to emphasize that I’ve not yet seen the original manuscript and therefor I cannot know WHEN in history things went wrong, or IF they have gone wrong at all. That will be another day.
This is exclusively my bid on an interpretation of the famous renaissance piece, from a purely musical point of view.

 
(1) The Folia chord the progression may vary slightly. Note that this particular progression is a musical palindrome
(2) In the improvisation section the progression V-i-VII-III-VII-i-V- (i) has been replaced by V-i-VII-III-VII-iv-V- (i)
Sources: La música en la corte de Carlos V, con la transcripción del “Libro de cifra nueva para tecla, harpa y vihuela” de Luys Venegas de Henestrosa (Alcalá de Henares, 1557) by Higinio Anglés

The dull sound from the belfry scarcely reaches the interior of the Cathedral. The strokes sound rather unreal.
I notice that this time just one stroke was heard, consequently there’s just half an hour left before the guardian will return and let me out into the noisy real world of Salamanca.
What am I doing here, alone in the old romance cathedral? Or almost alone. The earthly remains of several great Spanish musicians lie buried here underneath the stone floor where I’m sitting; Francisco Salinas, Juan del Encina and several others I do not know the names of.

Recording in the cathedral
Yes, what am I doing here? It’s a good question, one I have asked myself several times in the past week. The simple answer is that I’m doing a recording of early Spanish organ music on the two renaissance positives that stand, side by side, here in the historic cathedral of Salamanca.

The organ from La Capilla Dorada
My story begins with an article published some years ago in ISO Journal, a time paper from The International Society of Organ builders. This interesting article was dealing with a restoration of a 16th century positive, a small organ, that formerly belonged to the The Golden Chapel, La Capilla Dorada, in the new cathedral in Salamanca, Central Spain.
As a musician with a particular interest in Spanish renaissance music, my first thought was almost predictable: This was an instrument I certainly should try to play! Fairly few preserved renaissance organs exist in the world and it’s tempting for any musician occupied with 16th century’s pulse, phrasing and three-finger-technique to test the theories on such an instrument, that in matters of timbre, tuning and mechanics, differs markedly from the organs we normally have access to.

A real impossibility
I consequently addressed the cathedral’s management encouraged by the foreigners naive sense of reality, drew on some acquaintances who owed me a favor and finally got - what my Spanish organ colleagues denote as a real impossibility - an agreement with El Cabildo, the cathedral’s top authority, allowing me to do some recordings during 4 evenings, alone in the fabulous acoustics of the historic cathedral, alone with Francisco Salinas and Juan del Encina.

Juan del Encina and duo playing
Now that you’ve got the license, what will you be recording on such two organs? What have they been used for at the time when they were built?
It’s indeed an open question.
The main part of the pieces I have chosen to record during these late evening hours in the cathedral are organum works that not necessarily composed for organs, but because of their 4-voice character likely may have been performed by choirs and/or organ.
“Juan del Encina played on an organ!”, I can hear someone say. “Isn’t that too hypothetical?” I am fairly convinced that several of Encinas canciones have been the played on the positive in The Golden Chapel.

Due to the two positives’ symmetrical placing on either side of the altar, I have also chosen to record a few pieces as duets using both instruments, well aware that I probably will get both musicologists and early music fundamentalists on my back.
One of the duets is the famous Pavana con su glosa, normally attributed to Antonio de Cabezón. By the way, quiet a few well-chosen word could be said about this supposed ownership and the piece itself and I will do that some other time. For now I will simply point out that the music almost suggests duo playing, but listen for yourself.

Another duet is a popular song, No me digays Madre, compiled in the latter half of the 16th century by the organist Francisco Salinas in his heavily theoretical work which he, on top of everything, wrote in Latin: De Musica libri septem.
Also in this case I quickly run into trouble of a music historical sort: Francisco Salinas deals in the sixth book with prosody in text and music and gives some examples of popular music to illustrate his theories. One of these examples is precisely the song No me digays Madre, but Salinas only offers us what seems to be the chorus! Luckily there’s an anonymous tune notated on the previous page that likely may have been the melody for the verse part. That, of course, we cannot know for sure, but I have chosen to use it as such, despite of the uncertainty of its relationship with Salinas melody line. Maybe not completely correct from a musicologists point of view, but absolutely in accordance with the musical traditions of the period.

Back to reality
The storks on the cathedral’s roof are clattering, the pigeons cooing and dull strokes of the bell have now reached 10.
It has become time to let Francisco Salinas and Juan del Encinas in peace and to pack up the recording equipment for today.

 

The recordings from the Cathedral in Salamanca were released on October 4th 2009 on the CD “El Arte de Tañer” (the art of playing), together with a number of recordings made on the renaissance organ at Sønderborg Castle, Denmark..
Read more at the Discography page: El Arte de Tañer - parla09001
 

The popular music at the service of the Church

It wasn’t only in the Protestant part of Europe that the Church made use of popular music to support reforms and to advocate for religious doctrines. In beginning of the 17th century the Franciscan order in Spain worked determinedly on convincing the Holy See to raise the doctrine of “The Immaculate Conception”, La Inmaculada Concepción, to the level of Catholic dogma. Those efforts included both theological discussions, political lobbyism and social and popular mobilization, and in that latter context a simple religious song by the Sevilian composer and priest Bernardo del Toro (1570-1643) composed at Christmas time 1614 came to play a mayor role.
It is told that the composer gave a small party in relation with the traditional Christmas nativity scene and that the visitors, including the friend and poet Miguel Cid, arrived at the party with ’songs and verses’. In this festive gathering the song dedicated to the “Immaculate Virgin” arose:

Everyone in chorus

On January 23rd, in the year 1615, the song Todo el mundo was published as printed sheets and distributed all over the town of Seville. Already on 2nd February the same year the song was sung by the choir of the Cathedral and during the following months the melody and lyrics were taught to children as well as to adults, in schools and churches everywhere in Seville. On July 29th a large crowd marched through the streets of Seville, demanding the Holy See to recognize the teachings of “The Immaculate Conception” as a papal dogma. This public manifestation is perpetuated in a painting by the Spanish painter Juan de las Roelas (Valladolid, Museo Nacional de Escultura). In the painting one can observe that the children in the gathering crowd carry the printed sheets of the song in their hands.
In Seville the Todo el mundo - fever culminated around Christmas time 1616. By that time the song was sung in all the churches of the town. On December 8th a grand religious feast was held in the Cathedral with several dance and music performances. At the end of the celebration all the participants fell on their knees, facing the image of the Holy Virgin, and sang as in one united voice the famous chorus that everybody in Seville now knew by heart: “Todo el mundo a general”. (2)

Variations on Todo el mundo

In 1625 the Spanish baroque-composer Francisco Correa de Arauxo published a treatise on organ playing, in which one of the last pieces, Tres glosas sobre el canto llano de la Inmaculada, is a set of variations on the famous tune by Bernardo del Toro and Miguel Cid. The piece is remarkable in many ways. First Arauxo presents the original song in the shape of a chorus followed by a verse, with the principal voice placed in the tenor. Then the chorus is presented again, this time with the principal voice held by the soprano. Subsequently the variations rise in speed and level of difficulty. The variations run twice over the verse part while the third and last time, the quickest, over the chorus.

Spanish baroque pulse

Rhythmically viewed the song is composed on a basis of constant and regular alternations between duple and triple metre, that is between 6/8 and 3/4. This rhythmical principle of constant metre change had already been practiced for a long time in European popular music (Ex. the German psalm ‘Min største hjertens glæde’ recorded by Via Artis Konsort), but in Spain this particular rhythmical mould was used at the beginning of the 17th century with an often more pronounced and even dance like character, as it can be heard in the popular Spanish genre la jácara.

Todo el mundo, revisited

Arauxo’s melody is very similar to the original composed by Bernardo del Toro (3), thus we decided that we would not offend against any of the composers’ posthumous reputation by re-arranging the piece as a song using the original text, while at the same time keeping Arauxo’s variations.
Arauxo’s variations run over the exact length of both choruses and verses, but in the 2nd variation a line is missing. In the original song (as in the 1st variation) the last line of the verse is repeated where the lyrics read “sin pecado original’, but in the 2nd variation this repetition is absent. Unfortunately it’s impossible to know whether the missing line is due to a mistake in the publishing process, or whether Arauxo consciously omitted the repetition of the last line, but for the sake of wholeness we decided to add the missing line - with the lack of respect for original compositions that practitioners of early music must show from time to time, just as the musicians of the baroque era themselves so fully demonstrated. The variations on the second last line in this 2nd variation consequently do not originate from Arauxo’s hand.
You can listen to the result of the reconstruction here:

• First the chorus is sung, and right after that, the verse called copla.
• Then the chorus is played by the bass viol, followed by the 1st variation on the verse, played by the portative organ.
• Then follows the 2nd variation on the verse, played by the bas viol, and finally the song ends with the 3rd variation on the chorus, played by the portative organ with added vocal on the last part.

Listen to the piece and note how Arauxo’s variations elegantly play with the constant change between duple and triple metre.

We welcome comments on this article
Poul Udbye Pock-Steen

(1) Spanish organist and composer, possibly of Portuguese descent. Organist at the Church of S. Salvador in Seville from 1599 until 1636, then at Jaén Cathedral until 1640, finally at Segovia Cathedral until his death. His Libro de tientos y discursos de música practica, y theorica de organo, intitulado Facultad organica (Alcald, 1626) contains 62 tientos and seven other pieces, all for organ, introduced by a theoretical treatise and arranged in order of increasing difficulty, in a colorful baroque style, with bold dissonances and wayward figurations.
(2) In Spain The Feast of the Immaculate Conception still is celebrated on the 8th of December
(3) Bernardo del Toro’s song is a so-called canto llano, i.e. a song in a modal church tonality, Arauxo adds to the song an early baroque harmonization. The rhythmical alternation between two- and tripartite metre originates from the original tune by Bernardo del Toro.

Sources:
Alfonso de Vicente: Música, propaganda y reforma religiosa en los siglos XVI y XVII: cánticos para la “gente del vulgo” (1520-1620), Conservatorio Profesional de Música de Amaniel (Madrid), Studia Aurea 1 (2007)
Also following internet sources:
http://www.hoasm.org/IVL/Correa.html
http://www.galeon.com/juliodominguez/2001/cmc.htm