Music in La Diana of Jorge de Montemayor

Abstract

W HILE buttressing their fondness for music with the authority of the ancients, Renaissance humanists explored new ways of elevating and exalting the word with the sound of music. With the sixteenth century, Spain, in particular, enters into its Golden Age of music and musical instruments, which declines in the following century as painting takes up the scepter of the arts. The Renaissance experiences the most glorious stages of Spanish music with such figures as Francisco Salinas, Antonio de Cabez6n, and the great polyphonists of the Sevilian and Castilian schools, Cristbbal Morales, Francisco Guerrero, and Tomas Luis de Victoria. One author who partook fully in the musical excitement of the time was Jorge de Montemayor, best known for his pastoral novel, Los siete libros de la Diana (Valencia, 1559). Living in a period called the most brilliant epoch in the history of European music, Jorge de Montemayor left his native Portugal and went to Spain to become a chapel singer, first in the court of Charles V, and then in that of Philip II. In the service of Philip II, notable patron of Spanish music, Montemayor was able to cultivate his voice and expand his knowledge of instruments to the point that he came to be held in singular esteem by the royal family, no small accomplishment for a foreigner in a choir made up exclusively of Spaniards, with the exception of the French composer Philippe de Monte who temporarily joined the choir between 1554-1555. Like the great musicians and singers of the court of Philip II, Montemayor had travelled extensively to many parts of Europe including Naples, the residence of the Spanish viceroys. These journeys represented an unquestionably fecund source of information on musical techniques and styles. Let us be