New polyphonic fragments from 15th-century Spain: a preliminary report

Abstract

HE discovery of fragments of polyphony from the 14th and 15th centuries can make a significant contribution to our understanding of music from that period, especially in countries where, as is the case with Spain, the surviving musical sources are few.1 A number of fragments of early sacred music from eastern Spain have recently been discovered and studied by Maricarmen G6mez,' but it is rare to come across new sources, however fragmentary, for secular polyphony of the 15th century. Such fragments are, by their nature, almost invariably found outside or divorced from their original context, turning up as stiffening for bindings or strengthening for spines, making it extremely difficult to establish their provenance or dating, let alone authorship. In this case three pieces, two of them incomplete, have been copied into the blank spaces of an existing text manuscript, and as yet it is only possible to draw some tentative conclusions. Their incomplete state and air of abandonment perhaps suggests that they were drafts of pieces that were reworked and polished elsewhere: the jottings, perhaps, of an amateur composer or the first attempt at notating a polyphonic piece by a young or untrained musician. We need to know much more about