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Abstract
Music in Iberian early modern theater presents the complex challenge of recovery and coherent contextualization, especially in PreLopean theater. Diego Sánchez de Bajadoz deserves more attention not merely because some of his works operate as proto-zarzuelas but also because his drama pertains to a declining cycle in the trajectory of Spanish sacred theater. This essay will focus on how Diego Sánchez utilized music to intensify and inspirit sacred scripture to reclaim its luster, particularly in Farsa del juego de las cañas, alternating villancicos, coplas, hymns, singing, and dancing that bridged Iberian primitive and early modern musical thought, dramatic structure, and performance practice.
Notes
1 For more information on the history of the Duke of Feria and his patronage of Diego Sánchez de Badajoz see Wiltrout, 16–18.
2 Like his older contemporaries Juan del Encina, Lucas Fernández, and others, he may have come in contact with Gil Vicente during travels to Evora (Wiltrout 70).
3 Wiltrout suggests Diego Sánchez may have had new Christian blood in his veins, which would explain why his post as priest was at a lowly Talavera parish and not in mighty Badajoz cathedral, since the cathedral was one of the first to adopt a statute of “pure blood” for all its members. However, this decree did not prevent his plays from being performed. The playwright travelled the eighteen kilometers from Talavera to Badajoz to participate in festivities and to direct and act in the plays he composed (72).
4 For Pérez Priego, farsas dialogales are based mostly on free and monotonous dialogue (e.g., between a shepherd and a friar) that present the theme and slowly reveal secondary issues with limited characters. Allegorical farsas are centered on sustained metaphor based on words (i.e., poetic discourse), or allegory developed from sacred historical characters, and figurative farsas are those involving creative yet faithful dramatic ecounting of biblical narratives from the Old and New Testaments, including its sacred characters (Farsas 29–37).
5 Alberto del Río asserts that the characteristic in “cenobite theater” of bringing performers and audience together in song at the end of pieces is a relevant precursor to the villancico’s role in Spanish sixteenth century theater (78–79).
6 Ordo Prophetarum was a medieval liturgical drama popular in its time, which was performed as part of the rites associated with Christmas Eve and narrated in the various predictions of the Messiah’s coming. The characters included those associated with biblical prophets but also pagan personages or those from Classical Antiquity (Pérez Priego, Farsas 235n7).
7 Subsequent quotations of verses from Sánchez’s Farsa del juego de las cañas are followed by parenthetical citations containing line numbers only. The introductory stage directions, which precede all numbered verses, are referred to by the page number in the Pérez Priego edition.
8 Juego de las cañas: “Fórmase de diferentes quadrillas, que ordinariamente son ocho, y cada una consta de quatro, seis u ocho caballeros, según la capacidad de la plaza. Los caballeros van montados en sillas de gineta, y cada quadrilla del color que le ha tocado por suerte. . . . El juego se executa dividiéndose las ocho quadrillas, quatro de una parte y la mitad de otra, forman una escaramuza partida, de diferentes lazos y figuras. Fenecida ésta, cada quadrilla se junta aparte, y tomando cañas de la longitud de tres a quatro varas en la mano derecha, unida y cerrada igualmente toda la quadrilla, la que empieza el juego corre la distancia de la plaza, tirando cañas al aire tomando la vuelta al galope para donde está otra quadrilla apostada, la qual carga a carrera tendida y tira las cañas a los que van cargados . . . y así successivamente se van cargando unas quadrillas a otras, haciendo una agradable vista. Antes de empezar la fiesta entran los Padrinos de la plaza con muchos lacayos y ricas libreas, cada uno por diferente parte” (“cañas” in Autoridades, also qtd in Pérez Priego, Farsas 239n85).
9 From the hymn Sacris Solemniis (Solemnity of the Holy Body and Blood of Christ) “Let ancient rites depart / and all be new around / in every act and voice and heart.”
10 From Psalm 127 in the Book of Psalms: “Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.” The idea that “without God, all is in vain.”
11 From Isaiah 40:3, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord / Make straight in the desert / A highway for our God.”
12 Both define the folía as a dance-song, but Covarrubias emphasizes, “[Una] dança portuguesa, de mucho ruido; porque ultra de ir muchas figuras a pie con sonajas y otros instrumentos, llevan unos ganapanes disfraçados sobre sus hombros unos muchachos vestidos de doncellas, que con las mangas de punta van haciendo tornos y a vezes bailan, y también tañen sus sonajas; y es tan grande el ruido y el son tan apresurado, que parecen estar los unos y los otros fuera de juyzio” (28). Correas, on the other hand, sustains that folías were what later came to be known as seguidillas: “Parece que antes [las seguidillas] se comprehendían en el nombre de folías con las otras coplillas sueltas que no pasaban de 4 versillos, i las que se quedaban en menos, como cabezas de cantares” (Correas 272–73).
13 This song also appears in Fernán González de Eslava’s “Ensalada de las adivinanzas” in his Coloquios espirituales (Weber, “Gil Vicente” 151–62).
14 Perhaps a variation of Pandero: “un instrumento muy usado de las moças los días festivos porque le tañe una cantando y las demás bailan al son: es para ellas de tanto orgullo, que dize el cantarcillo viejo: ‘Mas quiero panderico, que no saya’. Entiéndese ser instrumento muy antiguo. Al principio debió ser redondo, después los hizieron quadrados; y guarnecense con sendas pieles adelgaçadas en forma de pergaminos; dentro tienen muchas cuerdas, y en ellas cascabelitos, y campanillas que hazen resonar el instrumento como si fuese muchoa: y por ser de aquellas pieles pudo tomar nombre de pan, que vale todo, y des os, cuero. Este le tañe con ambas manos, como lo insinúa Ovidio libr 3 de Arte amandi; debaxo de el nombre de Laula, que era una especie de pandero” (Covarrubias 264).
15 Atambor: “de Guerra, o caxa vide supra. Atabal. Iusto Lipsio de milicia Romana. . . refiere como algunas Naciones han usado en la guerra de los tympanos: y un lugar de Menandro histórico, que dize así: . . . Persuadese a que estos tympanos de los Abaros, que otros llaman Hunos, no eran como los que ahora usamos en la guerra, porque los ponían dentro de las caxas campanillas, como hazen a los panderos. Ni estos atabales, ni los de los indios, ni los que refiere Plutarco de los Partos serian como las caxas de atambores, que hoy día se usan en la guerra, con dos hazes, y un sonido, que parece encienden los coraçones de los soldados para pelear; de manera que, que los demás que tienen una haz, serán atabales, o atabalillos, y los que tienen dos en plano, que son de placer, y regozijo, que tañen las mujeres, y se llaman panderos. Los atabalillos, a cuyo son bailan en las aldeas con el sonido de la flauta, tamboriles dirase dellos en su lugar” (Covarrubias 153, emphasis mine).
16 (E) Estribillo, (M1) Mudanza 1, (M2) Mudanza 2, (M3) Mudanza 3, (V) Vuelta. All indicate the probable structural parts of the villancico.
17 Also qtd. in Pérez Priego, Farsas 254n400.
18 Coro: Nisi Deus custodierit civitatem frustra vigilat qui custodit eam” (448–49), comes from Psalm 127 in the Book of Psalms: “Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.” The idea that “without God, all is in vain.”
19 “Canto de órgano” refers to polyphonic singing (Spiess 28, González Lapuente 102).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
J. Yuri Porras
J. Yuri Porras is professor of Spanish at Texas State University. His field of specialization is Early Modern Iberian Literatures and Cultures. His publications center on music-text interrelations, semiotics, and performance in Iberian drama from the Renaissance to nineteenth-century zarzuela.