Cantiga de amigo - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Cantiga de amigo or Cantiga d'amigo (Old Galician-Portuguese

Galician-Portuguese

Galician-Portuguese or Old Portuguese was a West Iberian Romance language spoken in the Middle Ages, in the northwest area of the Iberian Peninsula. It was first spoken in the area bounded in the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and the Douro River in the south but it was later extended south...

spelling), literally a "song about a boyfriend", is a genre

Genre

Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...

of medieval erotic lyric poetry

Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...

, apparently rooted in a song tradition native to the northwest quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula

Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...

. What mainly distinguishes the cantiga de amigo is its focus on a world of female-voiced communication. The earliest examples that survive are dated from roughly the 1220s, and nearly all 500 were composed before 1300. Cantigas d' amigo are found mainly in the Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti, now in Lisbon's Biblioteca Nacional, and in the Cancioneiro da Vaticana
Cancioneiro da Vaticana
The Cancioneiro da Vaticana is a compilation of troubadour lyrics in Galician-Portuguese. It was discovered c. 1840 in the holdings of the Vatican Library and was first transcribed by Ernesto Monaci in 1875....

, both copied in Italy

Italian Peninsula

The Italian Peninsula or Apennine Peninsula is one of the three large peninsulas of Southern Europe , spanning from the Po Valley in the north to the central Mediterranean Sea in the south. The peninsula's shape gives it the nickname Lo Stivale...

at the beginning of the 16th century (possibly around 1525) at the behest of the Italian humanist Angelo Colocci

Angelo Colocci

Angelo Colocci of Rome, papal secretary of Pope Leo X and a Renaissance humanist at the collegial center of literary and artistic classicism, assembled a collection of antiquities in his villa beside the Aqua Virgo.- Biography :...

. The seven songs of Martin Codax

Martín Codax

Martín Codax or Martim Codax was a Galician medieval jogral , possibly from Vigo, Galicia in present day Spain. He may have been active during the middle of the thirteenth century, judging from scriptological analysis...

are also contained, along with music (for all but one text), in the Pergaminho Vindel, probably a mid 13th century manuscript and unique in all Romance philology.

In these cantigas the speaker is nearly always a girl, her mother, the girl's girl friend, or the girl's boyfriend. Stylistically, they are characterized by simple strophic forms, with repetition, variation, and parallelism, and are marked by the use of a refrain (around 90% of the texts). They constitute the largest body of female-voiced love lyric that has survived from ancient or medieval Europe. There are eighty-eight authors, all male, some of the better known being King Dinis of Portugal (52 songs in this genre), Johan Airas de Santiago (45), Johan Garcia de Guilhade (22), Juião Bolseiro (15), Johan Baveca (13), Pedr' Amigo de Sevilha (10), Johan Zorro (10), Pero Meogo (9), Bernal de Bonaval (8), Martim Codax (7). Even Meendinho, author of a single song, has been acclaimed as a master poet.

The cantiga de amigo have been said to have characteristics in common with the Mozarab

Mozarab

The Mozarabs were Iberian Christians who lived under Arab Islamic rule in Al-Andalus. Their descendants remained unconverted to Islam, but did however adopt elements of Arabic language and culture...

ic kharajat
Kharja
The kharja , also known as jarcha in Spanish, is the final refrain of a muwashshah, a lyric genre of Al-Andalus written in Classical Arabic or Hebrew....

, but these may be merely coincidences of female speaker and erotic themes.

Samples

Below are two cantigas d’amigo by Bernal de Bonaval (text from Cohen 2003, tr. Cohen 2010).

Bernal de Bonaval 7

Rogar vos quer' eu, mha madre e mha senhor,

que mi non digades oje mal, se eu for

a Bonaval, pois meu amig' i ven

Se vos non pesar, mha madre, rogar vos ei,

por Deus, que mi non digades mal, e irei

a Bonaval, pois meu amig' i ven

I want to ask you, my mother and my lady,

That you not speak ill of me today, if I go

To Bonaval, since my boy is coming there.

If it doesn’t upset you, my mother, I will ask,

By God, that you not speak ill of me, and I’ll go

To Bonaval, since my boy is coming there.

Bernal de Bonaval 8

Filha fremosa, vedes que vos digo:

que non faledes ao voss' amigo

sen mi, ai filha fremosa

E se vós, filha, meu amor queredes,

rogo vos eu que nunca lhi faledes

sen mi, ai filha fremosa

E al á i de que vos non guardades:

perdedes i de quanto lhi falades

sen mi, ai filha fremosa

Lovely daughter, look what I’m telling you:

Do not talk with your boyfriend

Without me, o lovely daughter.

And, daughter, if you want my love,

I ask you that you never talk with him

Without me, o lovely daughter.

And there’s something else you’re careless about:

You lose every word you talk with him

Without me, o lovely daughter.

Samples

See also