Holding History / Embracing Life

This morning, I rose early, caught the metro to the bus station, and rode the bus back to El Escorial. At the monastery, I by-passed the tourist entrance and walked around the immense quadrangle of the monks´ quarters to a door where, at 10:00 sharp, a guard allow three of us to enter. My bag and camera (darn it!) were placed into a locker by an attendant, and I rounded the winding stair to the fourth floor where the private reading room is. Volume One of the "T" manuscript of the Cantigas de Santa Maria was waiting for me on a silk pillow with a silk-covered page weight at my disposal. It was a leather-bound book about three inches thick, 15 inches wide, and 22 inches tall. Its pages are made from vellum--the treated skin of an animal, usually a calf or a sheep. Let me give you a little background. The Cantigas were collected at the court of the scholar-king Alphonso El Sabio ("the Wise") in the latter half of the 1200s. There are exactly four manuscripts of the Cantigas dating from Alphonso´s reign. The "To" manuscript held in a library in Toledo contains only about 100 of the Cantigas and is considered an early, incomplete edition. The "F," held in Florence, is a late, hastily complied version with many omissions and poor art work. The "E" version, also called "codice de los musicas," is fairly complete, but with few illustrations and is at the El Escorial library. And then there´s the "T" version, the gem of them all. This one has 400 songs with complete, illustrated text, musical notation, and framed drawings (much like a modern comic book page) that illustrate the complete story narrated in the text of the song. The Cangtigas themselves are folk tales, miracle tales, and saints´ stories surrounding the Virgin Mary. The "T" manuscript represents the single, largest Medieval compilation of both folk literature and music that exists in the world. Were it to go on auction (someone at El Escroial just gasped!), it would probably draw something in the many tens of millions of dollars--it is difficult to access how much more. A partial Chaucerian manuscript from 1400 sold for $76 million in the mid-90s.

The "T" version represents one of humanity´s great books. Dating from about 1280, it probably had two illustrators that worked on the bulk of the art within. The detail of tiny figures, the gesture of their hands or expressions of hate, envy, or devotion in just their eyes reflects the high degree of skill that the artists must have had. Although the musical notation is present in a 5-bar staff, exactly how to play the Cantigas is a source of ongoing debate and experiment. Although the stories reflect the Christian heritage, both Muslim and Jewish artists and musicians worked on the compositions. Everyone agrees that most of the rhythmic patterns are Arabic, but no one can agree just which rhythms go with which songs. There were at least four basic Arabic patterns from the period, and these were subject to endless variation. Indeed, the attraction of the compositions for many musicians is the freedom to extemporize (as we know they did in the court of Alphonso at the church of Santa Maria la Blanca) around the basic notation. If you want to hear a modern interpretation, click on the website "Cantiga" that´s to the right of this blog, or go to www.cantigamusic.com.

I was allowed access to both the "T" and the "E" versions, but the former consumed most of my attention and time. In fact, I was promised one hour, but the curator allowed me to remain from 10 until the library closes to outside use at 2:00. So, I had four hours. I suppose there are many ways to think of the Cantigas. I did have millions of dollars at my finger tips, but I didn´t really consider that at the time. Yesterday, José Luís de Vallé, the director of the library, called these volumes "Spain´s greatest literary treasure," and I thought at the time that that was limiting their value. These songs are a window into three cultures; they are our distant, and hazy, memory of an active folk and court life that once flourished across Europe. They represent not only how Medievals worshipped, but also how they sang, played, danced, ate, loved, and related to a broader world of the supernatural than moderns imagine.

Oh, that´s all I did today. I arrived back in Madrid a little after four in the afternoon. I walked this beautiful city for one last evening before leaving tomorrow for Toledo. I found myself humming Cantiga 108 as I turned for the internet cafe to write this blog. In my old, junior high school Latin class, I once had to memorize Latin phrases; here´s the first one I ever learned: "Ars longa, vita brevis"--Art lives long, life is short. Good-night, Metroplex.