El Canto de la Sibila, I: Leon y Castilla

Abstract

Brockett reviews "El Canto de la Sibila, I: Leon y Castilla," by Maricarmen Gomez Muntane.

Maricarmen Gomez Muntane, El Canto de la Sibila, I: Leon y Castilla. Madrid: Editorial Alpuerto, 1996. Pp. 77 + illustration, musical transcriptions.

The editor of the present book is one of the most successful of Spanish musicologists today, judging from Gomez Muntane's recent record of editions, ranging across ages of Spanish manuscript and printed collections, and her numerous articles reaching into the pages of this journal. Her twenty-eight-page Introduction treats the tenth-century origin, dramatization, vernacularization, and late cultivation of the "Song of the Sybil" in transpyrenean ritual practices beyond those of the Spanish March. Chief resources, appropriately used, are Higini Angles' La Musica a Catalunya fins al segle XIII (1935) and Richard B. Donovan's Liturgical Drama in Medieval Spain (1958).

Gomez edits the extra-Catalonian-Valencian witnesses of the famous prophetic praeconium of the Nativity in two formats: first, the texts with critical notes and source reference following each version, all concluded by a very serviceable bibliography; second, the edition proper in musical score. Her introduction deals with this and related quasiliturgical creations, notably the Pseudo-Augustinian Sermo de symbolo and the Ordo Prophetarum. She considers the case of ten text-music versions of the sibylline prophecy which she has edited in historical progression: I. Sigienza (Arch. Capit. 20, fol. 35^sup v^); II. Leon (Arch. Capit. 23, fols. 4^sup v^ -8^sup r^); III. Toledo (Arch. Capit. 48.10, fol. 40^sup r^-40^sup v^); IV. Madrid, B.N. 10069 (Cantiga No. 100), with El Escorial, B. del Monasterio B.I.2 (Song No. 12); V. Monastery of Silos (lost MS., accessed through a photograph in the private collection of J.M^sup a^ Lamana, fols. viii^sup v^-xiv); VI. New York, Hispanic Society of America, HC:380/897, fols. 101V-102r; VII. Madrid B. del Palacio Real II-1335, fol. ccl"; VIII. Sevilla, B. Colombina 7-1-28, fol. lxxxviii r; IX. Sevilla, B. Colombina 7-1-28, fols. ciiii ^sup v^ cv ^sup r;; X. Toledo, Arch. Capit. 21, fols. 29^sup v^-- sup v^ 30^sup r^. The last four versions are polyphonic: VII by Alonso de Cordoba, VIII anonymous, IX by Juan de Triana, and X by Cristobal de Morales (VII and IX edited by Angles, Table III). Included also, as discussed in the introduction, are the verses of Cristobal de Castillejo (c.1494 in Salamanca-c.1590 in Toledo).

In the Latin versions, I and II from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries respectively, there is disagreement, reflected in the testimonies from France and Catalonia, over the inclusion of the Doomsday fanfare Audite quid dixerit ("Hear what she will have said [at that last day]"). Also not unexpected is the fact that the thirteen standard verses of music that alternate with the refrain Judic signum: tellus sudore madescet ("The sign of Judgment: The earth will become moist with sweat"), observed in Gomez's transcriptions, are at variance among themselves. They trade quid pro quo at least four individual melodies.

Pivotal is the transfer of refrain and verses from Latin to vernacular, for not only is there a shift of language but also the sacred-secular aesthetic often mirrored in the language. A fascinating case in point -Version IV-is the "religious," but not even quasi-sacred, Cantiga from the court of Alfonso the Wise in Galician-Portuguese "[i]n which St. Mary prays for us to her Son on the Day of Judgment" (Madre de Deus). Gomez suggests that the king's knowledge of the verses may have resulted from his hearing the Pseudo-Augustine sermon at Toledo, but in any case their verses' paraphrase to a musical contrafact in Alfonso's collection proves his familiarity with the associated words and music. Lyrical mutuality is demonstrated in the accommodation of the music by the isosyllabic stereotype of the Alfonsine version. The longer or shorter line lengths of Latin have been reclothed in the uniform of an invariable syllable count, and the melody becomes a comfortable fitting stereotype. Musical notation, further, is needed for but one verse with the refrain, making it unnecessary for the scribe to "augment or diminish the number of notes," while the Latin exemplars' constant variations of syllable count require him to copy out the music's "verses" throughout. Alfonso's political connections with France could have brought not just Castilian and Leonese but even transpyrenean recognition to this cantiga along with its metrical text and metrical music belonging to what the author rightly describes as "the most important Marian musical anthology in vernacular idiom of the Middle Ages." By the sixteenth century, sacred-to-secular evolution had advanced to an ultimate stage, as proven by contrafacture, in Castilian Spanish, in a song in the Cancionero musical de Palacio (No. 374 in Angles' edition [1951]), VII in Gomez's edition). This is Alonso de Cordoba's Juisio fuerte sera dadol Mi quereros nunca mudadol Mi quereros.

Version V from a convent at Cuenca is another pivot in the transmission of the Cantus Sibyllae. Dating from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, it contains the traces of what may be considered a budding Toledan tradition reflected in Cristobal de Castillejo's free paraphrase of approximately the same length. (Gomez dates Toledo's Latin tradition-Version III-from around 1300.) Also, it enlarges the text to its greatest compass of eighteen verses, all in Spanish, following the opening announcement originally untranslated from Latin. Yet, quite the contrast is Version VI from Toledo (1585) with its meager five couplets. Regarding transmission in general, orality is thought to have played a key role.

The Toledan tradition is of greatest interest considering the Sibyl Song's prominence there. Its non-biblical pronouncement slipped under the heavy iron gate of the Inquisition, which suppressed all similar texts, to surface on the other side where it lasted for three more centuries. In Catalonia and Eastern Spain, by contrast, it fell from its more long-standing practice into desuetude after the second half of the sixteenth century. Toledo was, moreover, the seat of the cardinal metropolitan of the Spanish See who in 1506 was regent for the term of Charles V's minority and therefore held proven political and doctrinal sway.

Versions VIII, IX, and X attest to the polyphonic resonance of the reiterated Sibylline refrain in Toledo Cathedral, presumably accompanied by the organ, which must surely have been sumptuous. Like polyphonies at Elche (Elx) during productions of the Misteri of the Assumption, the Toledan music was also dramatic. It accompanied representations, but these were now not like the Procession of Prophets but more like declamations by a singing boy (later on a young cleric), who appeared in a woman's garb taking the Sibyl's role, flanked by sword- and torch-bearers. Gone are the singing prophets, which she at one time had introduced singly during the play, replaced by her ecclesiastically vested entourage, labeled "angels," also commented upon by Donovan. We learn from a Ceremonial manuscript printed at Toledo by Juan Rincon and Pedro Ruiz (Source VI) that villancicos de la fiesta along with the Ave regina coelorum, presumably in motets, varied the readings of Christmas Matins at which the Sibyl appeared at the allimportant sixth lesson. The continuity of the musical tradition is illustrated by Versions VIII and IX, copied around 1500, and X, dated 1549 leading toward the 1585 Ceremonial.

Taking the reader through the datable events of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Gomez provides a final visual summation, a depiction of the sibyl in traditional "oriental" dress published in a collection of Cathedral documents by Felipe Fernandez Vallejo in 1785. Reproduced on the cover and frontispiece, this illustration shows a wooden frame stage ascended by way of a covered staircase of six steps leading from the direction of the pulpit on the stage's left. A crowned Sibyl stands facing front between two "angels" with drawn swords over their right shoulders and halo wreaths; on the outside, two figures appear in surplices, with sleeves wrapped around both arms, which are worn over cassocks trailed by trains and with torches on staffs held by the inside hand. About the score, held face outward by the Sibyl so that the viewer can see that there are words and notes, Gomez writes the following: "It is a pity that the oblong gathering that carried the Sibyl's text and music, once belonging to the Toledo Cathedral Archive, is lost, since it probably treated of one of the copies that the Sibyl used in performance or possibly one of the originals that served those who instructed her." She, after all, was the one who had the changing verses to read while the responding chorus could easily memorize their refrain. Indeed, from this depiction of a static rendition of the entire song with score in the hands of the central character, one concludes, with Gomez, that the Sibyl's part was not intended here, if ever, to be memorized.

No statement on methodology is offered in this little book; one must hazard an opinion, therefore, that the ten sources collected and edited are not necessarily all there are, that the edition is not intended to be an inventory. Suspicion may thus be allayed that an unmentioned twelfth-century homiliary-lectionary at Calahorra Cathedral containing the Audite quid dixeritl Judic signum in its entirety (MS. without shelfmark, fol. 13^sup r^ is an omission that might render the edition incomplete. Without some disclaimer, one assumes-as by considering these sources "versions"-that the artifacts edited are representative ones.

Whatever its completeness, this edition's accuracy of textual, musical, and bibliographic analyses will serve Spanish-reading scholars well. Readers do need to be briefed, so that they may enter Gomez's analyses with facility, that the typesetter apparently lacked fonts for alpha, gamma, and delta, and autographed them d, g, and d; the corresponding Greek character for beta was, on the other hand, available. All told, this labor rewards its effort for filling the gulf empty of understanding existing around the Sibyl's activity, in and out of dramatic episodes, in medieval and post-medieval Spain.