Essai sur la musique religieuse portugaise au moyen âge (1100-1385)by Solange Corbin

Essai sur la musique religieuse portugaise au moyen âge (1100-1385) by Solange CorbinReview by: Albert T. LuperJournal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring, 1955), pp. 50-54Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/829593 .

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50 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

(p. I18), or that proof that Franco fol- lowed a prescribed custom in generating his melodies can be found by examining works of composers who wrote after Franco's death (p. iI3), but these points may well be a reflection of the author's enthusiasm for his subject, for he writes in a very gracious and sympathetic manner and does nothing to underestimate Mexico's musical past.

Also, one may wonder whether, in a

comprehensive history of this sort, the author is justified in devoting such a pro- portionately large space (i8 pages) to a detailed discussion of the music of Franco, who is known through works written between 1575-85 during his Mexico City Ca- thedral chapelmastership, while the works of a near successor, Francisco L6pez y Capilla, who left more music than Franco (he wrote eight Magnificats rather than two as listed in Dr. Stevenson's repertory list on p. I04) are scarcely mentioned. The fact that the music of L6pez y Capilla, as well as that of Juan de Lienas (i6th cen-

tury) was not easily available for study when Music in Mexico was written may be an explanation and also an indication of what remains to be done. It should be noted here too, incidentally, that Dr. Stevenson's

repertory list (pp. 1o3-4) does not mention the quantity of anonymous or unidentified

compositions housed in the Puebla archives. The study of Neo-Hispanic music will be enlarged in time, also, when it includes material from Guadalajara and when the "studies in progress" to which the author refers are completed.

If the perspective of music in colonial Mexico still remains somewhat clouded, one can say the opposite for the 19th-century period, as Dr. Stevenson treats it in his next chapter. Here he makes clear various trends and developments that have led to the contemporary scene, and in both this and the last section of his book he dis- cusses the works and styles of important composers. Here, too, as in earlier chapters, his comparisons of musical situations and accomplishments in Mexico with con-

temporaneous events in other parts of the world help bring into focus the role music has played in Mexico's cultural life.

For those who are interested in pur-

suing further studies in the history of Mexican music Dr. Stevenson's book will

provide a basic manual and guide. His

bibliography is up-to-date and augments the section on "Mexico" of Gilbert Chase's A Guide to Latin American Music, and the many fresh ideas and musical illustra- tions which he presents throughout his work will undoubtedly help stimulate a more active concern and a greater appreci- ation for the music of our southern neigh- bor.

STEVEN BARWICK Western Kentucky State College

Solange Corbin. Essai sur la musique religieuse portugaise au moyen dge (1100oo-1385). Paris: Soci6te d'Tdition "Les Belles Lettres," 1952. Collection Portugaise publi6e sous le patronage de l'Institut Frangais au Portugal, 8"me volume. xl, 436, [3] PP. i8 facs., I table. THIS IS THE MOST thoroughgoing study that has yet appeared concerning medieval

Portuguese music. Indeed, it is one of the best ever written on any aspect of the music history of this westernmost country of Europe. But having said that much, I must go on to note that it is also, indi-

rectly, an indictment of the unfortunate state of Portuguese musical research to-

day, for it should have been written by a native scholar rather than by a guest from another country. I should like to return to this point at the conclusion of the present compte rendu.

The work is the product of a study trip of almost a year made to Portugal by Mlle

Solange Corbin [de Mangoux] in 1942, sup- plemented by additional material that came to light during a period of several years after that time. The original draft, completed in

1944, was accepted in fulfillment of a de-

gree requirement by the Section des Sci- ences Historiques et Philologiques de l'icole Pratique des Hautes ttudes in Paris, where Louis Halphen and Mario Roque di- rected her studies. The war and post-war economic situation caused a publication de-

lay, so that eight more years passed before the work was issued in its present form. M.



REVIEWS 51

Pierre David, a French professor at Coim- bra University to whose studies in liturgics the author has taken frequent recourse, supplies a Preface that is admirably con- cise in summarizing the principal argu- ments of the author's mdmoire.

The book's official delimiting dates, II oo- 1385, mark the period extending from ap- proximately the beginning of Portugal as a separate nation to the end of its first (Burgundian) dynasty. It is during this time that the formation of the nation took place, along with the colonization of the territories gradually conquered from the Moors. Fortunately, Mile Corbin does not confine herself to the less than three hun- dred years indicated by the title but ranges freely forward and backward as necessity dictates in tracing musical or liturgical developments.

The study is in two parts. Livre premier, consuming almost 4o percent of the text, is devoted to background material on the early growth of the nation, on the development of the Church in Lusitanian territory, and on influences literary, artistic, socio- logical, political, military, and religious. An attempt is made to distinguish the relative amounts by which Portuguese culture stems from native and other Hispanic tra- ditions on the one hand, and from relations established with other parts of Western Europe, especially with France after the

ith century, on the other. On first thought, the fact that such a large propor- tion of the text is devoted to "stage setting" might appear to leave the book somewhat unbalanced. For the casual reader, perhaps this criticism has some justification; for the student who really penetrates the subject, however, it will be seen that this first section is essential to the comprehension of Part II, because of the many cross cur- rents and interrelations between church and state, between the establishments of the secular and the regular clergy, between neighboring principalities as they were finding their definitive boundaries, and between purely musical elements and liturgical ones, which cannot properly be separated in a study of medieval religious music.

This last point should be particularly noted, for Mlle Corbin is first of all a

liturgiologist, thus once again emphasizing the importance of this auxiliary musicological discipline. The author examines anew the character of the rite of the ancient See of Braga (in the North of Portugal) and decides in favor of its being a local "use" within the Romano-Frank liturgy, rather than a continuation of the Hispanic' liturgy, as some scholars have thought-at least from the late iith century. When the Hispanic rite was suppressed in io8o, the liturgical books that replaced the older ones came largely from France (Aquitaine, Cluny, Tours).

Perhaps there is a slight tendency to over-emphasize the role of French factors in this development, though that may be considered pardonable in view of the author's nationality, background, and spon- soring organizations. Yet it is also true that France was the most important musical nation at that time, that Portugal's first royal house stemmed from a French count, and that a considerable number of leading figures in the early development of political and religious institutions came also from France. Of paramount importance in the growth and dissemination of Portu- guese culture was the work of the monastic and other religious orders-at first the Cluniacs, mostly in the northern section of the country, bringing with them the

1 Following the studies and reasoning of M. Pierre David, Mile Corbin advocates discard- ing the terms Visigothic and Mozarabic, and substituting Hispanic, to denote the Christian rite held in common by all the churches in the Iberian Peninsula before the late i ith century. According to this theory, the Hispanic Liturgy is one of the primitive forms of the Occidental Latin rite; it existed before the intrusion of the Visigoths and remained essentially the same after their conversion. Furthermore, the use in this connection of the term Mozarabic (which was created to designate the Christians who "lived among the Moors") implies a differ- ence between the free Christians of the North of Spain and those who lived under the Moors in the South, whereas the liturgical customs of the two groups were virtually identical. Therefore, Hispanic was the rite practised throughout the Peninsula before its suppres- sion by Gregory VII in io8o, just as Gallican is the term applied to the Christian liturgy in France before Charlemagne's recension (see pp. 2-3, 128-9). The present writer concurs in this view, with its implied extension to include Hispanic Chant, thus doing away with an un- necessary terminological dichotomy.




Aquitanian notation. In the 12th century were implanted the influences of the regular canons of Saint-Ruf of Avignon, with the establishment of the Santa Cruz monastery at Coimbra, a foundation that retained its importance as late as the I6th and i7th centuries when it was a center for the production of polyphony. The most per- vasive influence of all was that exerted by the Cistercians, with the great Alcobaga monastery and its many satellite establishments for both men and women. By the

i3th century the liturgical customs of the

country had become fixed (within the Roman frame), and an individual "Portu-

guese" notation appeared-a dialect of the basic Aquitanian. (More concerning this below.)

The remainder of the text is devoted to Livre second, consisting of a detailed

musico-liturgical study of a considerable

portion of some 85 listed plainsong manu-

scripts in Portuguese libraries, together with supporting data from a variety of sources both inside and outside the coun-

try. The manuscripts, dating from the i ith to the 16th century, range in size from

single leaves from broken codices and frag- ments recovered from bindings, to com-

plete sets of related liturgical collections. Most of them are reported publicly here for the first time. The importance of these discoveries for the history of Portuguese music cannot be over-emphasized: no

longer can the Portuguese writers fall back on the chronic complaint that almost noth-

ing remains to testify to religious musical

activity in Portugal during the Middle

Ages. And Mile Corbin has by no means exhausted the possibilities, even in the archives where she worked. She continually calls attention to additional fonds that are known but have not been explored; besides, much more must exist in other public, private, and ecclesiastical libraries, in monasteries and official archives. Such a situation urgently demands a complete in-

ventory of depositories throughout the

country, to be made by trained personnel under competent supervision.

Perhaps the outstanding revelation in the book is the "Portuguese" notation. In this

system one staff line is employed, with

square (Aquitanian type) neumes for the

notes, except that where a half tone is in- volved, an oblique, lozenge-shaped neume is used for the lower of the two tones com- prising the half-step, i.e., for b and e. This is a completely diastematic method of notation, for the scribes were generally very careful to "height" the neumes. The system appeared in the I2th century and was employed continuously until the late i4th, with some scattered use even in the I5th century.2

Besides the sections on manuscript de- scription and paleography, Book Two con- tains also chapters devoted to (i) documents testifying to performance practices, activities of singers and choirmasters, and the use of music books; (2) characteristic pieces in the Portuguese "use"; and (3) the poetical compositions in the liturgy. These sections are packed with interesting and newly-discovered data, accompanied by frequent suggestions for new lines of approach. From among the many matters discussed, a few will be singled out for mention here.

On polyphonic music: There are almost no surviving documents from before the I6th century, which leads the author to assume that this art was but little practiced during the Middle Ages. The only example she encountered is a palimpsest at Arouca that may have contained a 2-voice composition. On the other side of the ledger, however, is a will dated in 959, in which a list of ecclesiastical books left in a legacy includes the mention of a book of organum. After considering other possibilities of identification for a work thus entitled, Mile Corbin concludes that it is a musical collection, containing perhaps two- and three-part pieces. This is remarkable testi- mony to the diffusion of early polyphony in the extreme western part of Europe so soon after the appearance of the earliest written examples, though the supposition that it contained real three-part compositions seems hardly tenable-the Calixtine Codex itself did not appear until 18o years later. In the course of her searches, the au-

2 This system has parallels in certain French and Spanish notations. See Paldographie musicale, Tome XIII, and Dom G. Sufiol's Introduction a la paldographie musicale grd- gorienne (I935), PP. 261ff.



REVIEWS 53 thor sometimes located examples of Renais- sance polyphony or later compositions, not previously noted.

On secular vocal and instrumental music: Again, no documents have been found dating from before the I6th century and containing any notated music of this type (though there are a considerable number of references to the practice). The author points out that the Martin Codex songs are purely Galician and post-date by more than a century the political separation of Portugal and Galicia. In a footnote she has something to say also concerning the well-known French chansonnier at Oporto (Ms. 714 of the Porto Municipal Public

Library). She reveals its provenance, say- ing that it had belonged to the Monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, though it reached Portugal from Venice only in 1712 and thus had no connection with i5th- century Portuguese music.

On tropes, sequences, other poetical pieces: Troped chants are extremely rare in Portugal, probably because of the aus- tere Cistercian attitude toward this class of piece. (A few examples exist in Porto and Coimbra.) Also largely absent from Portu- guese texts is the liturgical drama. These omissions are somewhat offset by the preva- lence of rhymed offices, such as the set entitled In cantica canticorum (which con- tains, amongst others, the famed respond Stirps Jesse).3 Also of interest are the Por- tuguese versions of the Sibylene Prophecy, in the investigation of which Mlle Corbin

amplifies appreciably the material given by Anglks in La Mzisica a Catalunya fins al segle XIII (Barcelona, p935, pp. 288ff.).

To round out her production the author appends i8 facsimile plates and a detailed classification table of Portuguese music manuscripts from before the i6th century. Included here are holdings from Aveiro, Braga, Coimbra, Guimaries, Lisbon, Ponte de Lima, Porto, and Viana do Castelo. Typically Gallic is the omission of an in- dex, but there is a detailed Bibliography, and this reader found it a refreshing ex- perience to encounter and peruse it at the beginning of the book rather than at the end.

Though some of the points enumerated earlier may appear to emphasize the nega- tive aspects of the subject, there is much of a positive nature in Mlle Corbin's study, serving to enlighten us on an aspect of musical scholarship that has been neglected heretofore. It is to be hoped that continued investigations will gradually fill in many of the gaps that remain. Which takes me back to the point I broached in the beginning, concerning the state of musicological activity in Portugal today.

Portugal must stand alone, among the countries of Western Europe, in not pos- sessing a single professionally trained mu- sicologist nor a university chair of music or institute for musical research. Neither has she produced a monuments series or published any considerable body of documents and serious studies concerning her heritage of music, which, though it may not loom so large as that of some other nations, is of respectable proportions and worth.

This is not to say that the bibliography of Portuguese music is entirely blank.4 The lexicographical and other writings of men such as Vasconcellos, Vieira, and Lambertini at the close of the last century and in the early years of the present one are well known. In some respects, their activities may be considered the counterpart of those of Barbieri, Pedrell, and Mitjana, though on a more modest scale. But unlike the situation in Spain, this early Portuguese

3 On page 373 the author speaks of a I6th- century setting of the Stirps Jesse text by M. Correa. This composer is the racionero Manuel Correia del Campo, a 17th-century Portuguese musician born about 1593 and active at Seville Cathedral (see E. Vieira, Diccionario biogra- phico de musicos portuguezes, Vol. I, pp. 173-8). The error stems from Angles's mis- dating of a manuscript at Seville (see Anuario musical II [I971], pp. 33-34). At least two Portuguese composers represented in this codex, Correia and Manuel Cardoso, did their work in the 17th century.

Mlle Corbin is mistaken also in stating (p. 308) that Duarte Lobo's plainsong manual, Liber processionum et stationum ecclesic Olysiponensis (Lisbon, 1607), is without music. Probably the error is due to the fact that the final draft of her book was made in France from incomplete notations and without im- mediate access to the documents she had ex- amined some years earlier.

4For a summary review of the principal his- torical writings concerning Portuguese music, see this JOURNAL VI (1950), pp. 93-112.




scholarship failed to develop a continuation. Virtually the only Portuguese music historian of the decade following the First World War was Luiz de Freitas Branco, whose principal efforts, however, have been channeled into composition and journalis- tic reviewing. In the early 1930's Santiago Kastner-not a Portuguese citizen-settled in Lisbon and began delving into the history of Iberian keyboard music. At about the same time Mairio de Sampayo Ribeiro, an amateur scholar and musician, and Manuel Joaquim, an army bandmaster, began to turn out occasional monographs and a few transcriptions of i6th- and 17th- century Portuguese music. In the main their work has been sound and has represented a genuine contribution to knowl-

edge, though their studies oftentimes are marred by details that betray a lack of

professional training. With only occasional contributions of varying quality from other writers, these two men have labored

virtually alone in upholding the torch of

Portuguese musical scholarship. Joaquim, especially, has proved indefatigable in

searching certain of the provincial archives and as a result has made some real discoveries, among them the Elvas Can- cioneiro and the church music of the Viseu choirmaster, Estviio Lopes Morago. His most recent publication is the sumptuously produced analytical catalog5 of the manu-

script and printed collections of music re-

maining at Vila Viqosa, the ducal seat of the House of Braganqa, where the famed music library of King John IV was housed before it was transferred to the Royal Palace at Lisbon.

But when Joaquim and Sampayo Ribeiro

finally lay down their pens, who will take their p'ace, even on a semi-professional level? How can this national apathy toward musical scholarship be brought to an end? One can only hope that, very soon, some

young, promising Portuguese scholar will feel the call and obtain the opportunity to

acquire a sound musicological training abroad, or else that the University of

Coimbra or an official body such as the Institute for Advanced Studies will em-

ploy an established foreign scholar to settle in the country and there train a school of

investigators. Meanwhile, we must feel

grateful for the continuing devoted efforts, against severe financial and other handi-

caps, of Joaquim and his few colleagues, and for the occasional contributions of

foreigners such as the author of the mono-

graph reviewed above. ALBERT T. LUPER

State University of Iowa

5 Vinte livros de mi•sica

polif6nica do Paco Ducal de Vila Vigosa. Catalogados, descritos e

anotados por Manuel Joaquim. ... Obra man-

dada executar pela Fundae.o da Casa de

Braganqa e % sua custa impressa. Lisbon, I953.

Georg Muffat. "Armonico tributo" 1682. "Exquisitioris harmoniae in- strumentalis gravi-jucundae selectus

primus" 1701. Concerti grossi. Zweiter Teil. Bearbeitet von Erich Schenk. (Denkmdiler der Tonkunst in Oster- reich. Wien, 1953. Band 89.) xxxi, 122 pp. GEORG MUFFAT'S WORKS for several instru- ments comprise the two Florilegia, published in the Austrian Denkmiiler, Vols. 2 and 4, by Professor Heinrich Rietsch, and the Concerti Nos. 2, 4, 5, Io, II, and 12

from the Exquisitioris harmoniae instru- mentalis in Vol. 22, to which also several selections from Armonico tributo were added. Erwin Luntz, the editor of Vol. 22, intended to edit the remainder of these works, but since he died in 1949, the task was finished by Professor Erich Schenk. Luntz had published only a few of the sonatas from Armonico tributo-and these in incomplete form and without realization of the figured bass. Luntz also had published only those six concerti grossi from

Exquisitioris harmoniae that were arrange- ments of the chamber sonatas in Armonico tributo. Through Schenk's publication the

complete works of Muffat are now available. A comprehensive introduction by Professor Schenk summarizes the extensive literature on the composer, who claimed to have introduced both the Lully and the Corelli styles to Germany. I have proved in my monograph on Die Wiener Tanz- komposition in der zweiten Hiilfte des 17. Jahrhunderts that Muffat's claim is not

justified, since I found in the St. Mauritius



Documents

Essai sur la musique religieuse portugaise au moyen âge (1100-1385)by Solange Corbin