Cancionero de Segovia

The Cancionero de Segovia or Cancionero Musical de Segovia (CMS) (Segovia Cathedral, Archivo Capitular, s.s. [antiguo18]), also known as Cancionero of the Segovia Cathedral, is a manuscript containing Renaissance music from the end of the 15th century and beginning of the 16th century. It contains a wide repertoire of works by mainly Spanish, French and Franco-Flemish composers. It is kept at the Segovia Cathedral Archives.

The cancionero was compiled by the end of the reign of Isabel the Catholic, between 1499 and 1503. Afterwards it belonged to the Library of the Real Fortress of Segovia, from where it was transferred at an unknown date to the Segovia Cathedral. This was a fortunate move, because the Real Fortress was destroyed by a fire in 1862, along with its library and all things therein.

In 1922, the manuscript was found by Higinio Anglés in the Chapterhouse Archives of the Segovia Cathedral.

The codex contains 228 numbered folios of average size (291 mm x 215 mm), being the area written of 239 mm x 166 mm. Unlike other cancioneros of the period, it does not have a table of contents, neither are the works grouped by musical genre (romance, motet, etc.)

The cancionero is divided into two parts:

The codex comprises 204 works in total, in five different languages (74 in Latin, 50 in French, 38 in Spanish, 34 in Flemish/Dutch and 8 in Italian). Of them, 97 are unica, i.e., only found in this source. So far, 27 composers have been identified, but the authorship of a few works remain anonymous. Following is a list of the known composers, with number of works in parentheses:

The Segovia songbook contains both sacred and secular works. Among the genres found in it, there are masses, motets, villancicos, chansons and instrumental pieces. Their complexity ranges from very simple to very difficult.

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