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The Polyphonic Songs Attributed to Pedro de Escobar

2019; Volume: 6; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

0871-9705

Tess Knighton,

Medieval Iberian Studies

This brief assessment of the nineteen songs attributed to Pedro de Escobar, all, with the exception of one Christmas villancico, in the Palace Songbook , attempts to place them in context in terms of the sources in which they were copied, their texts and their musical style. Although much work remains to be done on the structure and dating of the Palace Songbook , it is possible, through musical analysis, to posit that some songs can be considered to have been copied earlier and others later, probably from the later 1490s into about the middle of the second decade of the sixteenth century. Three songs were particularly widely diffused, notably in Portuguese sources of the latter part of the sixteenth century; only one is found in a non-Iberian source and would seem to have a particular connection to Juan del Encina, whose style is adopted and imitated by Escobar in his songs. These songs embrace a fairly wide range of themes, reflecting the content of the Palace Songbook as a whole, from the popular cosaute- style songs which was often performed in semi-improvised contrapunto as part of court entertainment, to the more elaborate villancico in the Encinian mould, with occasional hints of imitation and attention to the meaning of the words. Popular elements are introduced in a variety of ways, notably in Escobar’s Virgen bendita sin par , which cites a popular song that is preserved in a number of different guises, in the manner of Ambrosio Montesino’s devotional songs sung ‘al tono de’ a well-known melody. Finally, one song is assessed for possible biographical clues, and a hint towards the triangulation of the whereabouts of Encina, the poet-vihuelist Garci Sanchez de Badajoz and Escobar before he was called to serve at Seville Cathedral in 1507.