Luogo e data di registrazione		Münstermuseum, Basel (Svizzera) - novembre 1975
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Gerd Berg / Johann Nikolaus Matthes
	Prima Edizione LP		EMI Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 163-30 125/26 - (2 lp) - durata 57' 18 / 51' 03" - (p) 1976 - Analogico
	Prima Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - CDM 7 63431 2 - (2 cd) - durata 57' 18" / 51' 03" - (c) 1991 - ADD
	Note		-

INTRODUZIONE
Court Music and Villancicos The song-book called the Cancionero de Palacio may have been prepared at the royal court of Ferdinand or at that of the Duke of Alba. It belongs to an important medieval tradition: the attempt to collect an entire repertory either as a monument for posterity or as an expression of pride in the repertory for its own sake. Several hundred pieces are unique to this source; many composers are named only here; and otherwise unknown formal details give important and interesting information about the early history of the tradition. Not that it is the only source for Spanish music at the time; the earlier manuscript at Seville and the later ones at Segovia, Elvas and Barcelona also contain small selections of the repertory. But from those traces nobody could have guessed the enormous range and vitality of the Spanish song tradition as represented in the Cancionero de Palacio. Of the 450-odd surviving pieces in the Cancionero de Palacio, the great majority are in villancico form, a musico-poetic scheme which is more condensed and economic than any of the other forms employed in European art-song at the time. Its main virtue is its clarity, for the simple contrast of refrain (estribillo) and verse (mudanza) allows of enormous flexibility in the details. Two other cancioneros included here given even broader scope to the variety of the villancico. The Cancionero de la Colombina at Seville belonged to Ferdinand Colombus, the son of the explorer, and is the earliest source for the repertory; indeed, it is the first known surviving manuscript of Spanish polyphony since the small Llibre Vermell of around 1400. The Colombina manuscript shows that French and Italien polyphony were also known there, but through all the years the line of melody, the passion and anguish of the figurations and the formal clarity retain their identity. The Cancionero de Uppsala is so named only because the single surviving copy is in the University library of that city: the book was printed at Venice in 1556 and its contents are Spanish. The curiously mixed collection shows the development of the villancico tradition after the Cancionero de Palacio: the musical sections are longer here and there is a proclivity for four-part writing (whereas the earlier villancicos were characteristically in three parts), a move away from the homophonic declamatory style so favoured by Encina and his contemporaries, and a move towards a more carefully wrought polyphony. Con qué la lavaré? shows this style at its best. The other form heavilyy represented in the Cancionero de Palacio is the romance: a long narrative poem, or a section of one, set to music in simple four-line stanzas. There is less purely formal fascination here, of course, for the music was devised primarily with a view to the clarest possible projection of the text; but the long historical tradition evident behind such settings is one of Spain's unique contributions to our understanding of medieval Europe. It was perhaps inevitable that the romance should have been heavily embellished in performance, as accounts of the time describe: simple syllabic melodies repeated many times over homophonic chords demand and even stimulate resourceful musical and mimetic invention on the part of the performer. Though such techniques were not unique to Spain, it may well have been because of the strength of the romance tradition that methodical embellishment in written musical sources seems to have its roots in Spain. The principles of embellishment go far for the dance patterns whose chordal schemes imply no particular melody: Mudarra’s Romanesca is based on a chord sequence that is repeated three times with different embellishments around it; the three Ortiz recercadas equally reflect a simple chordal pattern with a series of florid divisions for viol. From Notes (c) David Fallows, 1976 Sephardic Romances It is no small wonder that the Sephardim, or Spanish-speaking Jews, have continued to perpetuate aspects of medieval Hispanic culture up to the present era, almost five centuries after their expulsion from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1506. While historical sources abound with testimonies of a vibrant Jewish presence on the Peninsula, there is hardly any documentation that attests to a purely Jewish tradition of secular music. Certainly the Jews, apart from their sacred liturgy, enjoyed a secular heritage, which comprises a rich and appropriate musical repertoire to celebrate all phases ofthe life cycle (birth, childhood, adolescence, courtship, matrimony, death, etc) as well as to commemorate the sabbath and certain religious holidays with semi-liturgical song. Recent scholarship has concentrated upon the Sephardic diaspora as a laboratory for studying the relics of the rich Iberian past. In studies dealing primarily with the extant oral tradition, much emphasis has been given to the Romancero, the corpus of Spanish balladry: richly endowed with archaic texts, some of which date back to the 14th century, the ballads employ a great variety of tunes as vehicles for their performance. From Issac Levy`s four-volume collection Chants judeó-espagnols (London/Jerusalem, 1953-73), HESPÈRION XX have selected twelve items of outstanding musical, literary and aesthetic interest. Their aim has been to provide a proper context for the performance ofthe reflect melodies and texts, one which would coincide musical practices before the expulsion.
EMI Electrola "Reflexe"