Rondeau and virelai: the music of Andalus and the Cantigas de Santa Maria

Abstract

Between the eighth and the thirteenth centuries the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula was dominated by its Arab and Berber conquerors and their direct political heirs. In this large and rich territory, called Andalus, an original mixture of Eastern and Western cultural elements gradually emerged. The southward expansion of the northern Christian kingdoms, beginning in the eleventh century, eventually displaced, circumscribed and debilitated Andalusian culture, which finally found in northwestern Africa its only stable refuge. Although the literary and artistic achievements of Andalus have long attracted attention, the place of music in medieval Andalusian culture has not lately been subject to close scrutiny. The present study, based largely on the analysis of Andalusian survivals in contemporary North African musical traditions, will attempt to identify what could have been the most typical musical forms of Andalusian song and evaluate their possible influence on the thirteenth-century Cantigas de Santa Maria and French secular song.