Galician-Portuguese lyric

In the Middle Ages, the Galician-Portuguese lyric, sometimes called trovadorismo in Portugal and trobadorismo in Galicia, was a lyric poetic school or movement. All told, there are around 1680 texts in the so-called secular lyric or lírica profana (see Cantigas de Santa Maria for the religious lyric). At the time Galician-Portuguese was the language used in nearly all of Iberia for lyric (as opposed to epic) poetry. From this language derives both modern Galician and Portuguese. The school, which was influenced to some extent (mainly in certain formal aspects) by the Occitan troubadours, is first documented at the end of the twelfth century and lasted until the middle of the fourteenth, with its zenith coming in the middle of the thirteenth century, centered on the person of Alfonso X, The Wise King. It is the earliest known poetic movement in Galicia or Portugal and represents not only the beginnings of but one of the high points of poetic history in both countries and in Medieval Europe. Modern Galicia has seen a revival movement called Neotrobadorismo.

The earliest extant composition in this school is usually agreed to be Ora faz ost' o senhor de Navarra by João Soares de Paiva, usually dated just before or after 1200. Traditionally, the end of the period of active trovadorismo is given as 1350, the date of the testament of D. Pedro, Count of Barcelos (natural son of King Dinis of Portugal), who left a Livro de Cantigas (songbook) to his nephew, Alfonso XI of Castile.

The troubadours of the movement, not to be confused with the Occitan troubadours (who frequented courts in nearby León and Castile), wrote almost entirely cantigas (although there were several kinds of cantiga) with, apparently, monophonic melodies (only fourteen melodies have survived, in the Pergaminho Vindel and the Pergaminho Sharrer, the latter badly damaged during restoration by Portuguese authorities). Their poetry was meant to be sung, but they emphatically distinguished themselves from the jograes who in principle sang, but did not compose (though there is much evidence to contradict this). It is not clear if troubadours performed their own work.

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