Cancioneiro da Ajuda

The colouring of the musicians in the miniature was left incomplete.

Ajuda National Palace, in Lisbon, where the manuscript is kept.

The Cancioneiro da Ajuda (Portuguese pronunciation: [kɐ̃sjuˈnɐjɾu ðaˈʒuðɐ], Galician: [kanθjoˈnejɾʊ ð(ɐ) aˈʃuðɐ]; "Ajuda Songbook") is a collection of Galician-Portuguese lyric poems probably dating from the last quarter of the 13th-century. It is the oldest of the Galician-Portuguese cancioneiros with secular music.

Description

The Cancioneiro is kept in the library of the Ajuda National Palace, a former royal residence located in Lisbon. It consists of a parchment codex written in Gothic script by three hands and containing illuminated miniatures. Both the text and the miniatures remained unfinished and not a note of music was written in the space left for it. The whole codex contains 310 poems, nearly all of them cantigas de amor (male-voiced love songs, though a few are satiric and there are a few male/female dialogs).

History

The first (crude) edition dates from 1823, but a monumental critical edition, still a standard work, was published by the German-born Romance philologist Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos in 1904. An important paleographic transcription was published by American scholar Henry H. Carter in 1941.

References

• Carter, Henry H. 1941. Cancioneiro da Ajuda. A Diplomatic Edition. New York-London: Modern Language Association of America/Oxford University Press (rpt Milwood, N.J.: Klaus Reprint Co., 1975; rpt [with an introduction by Maria Ana Ramos] Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa de Moeda, 2007).
• Lanciani, Giulia and Giuseppe Tavani (edd.). 1993. Dicionário da Literatura Medieval Galega e Portuguesa. Lisbon: Caminho.
• Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Carolina. 1904. Cancioneiro da Ajuda. Edição critica e commentada. 2 vols. Halle a.S., Max Niemeyer (rpt com "Glossário" [=Michaëlis 1920], Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional - Casa de Moeda, 1990).
• Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Carolina. 1920. "Glossário do Cancioneiro da Ajuda". Revista Lusitana 23: 1–95.
• Ramos, M. A. et al.. 1994. Fragmento do Nobiliario do Conde Dom Pedro & Cancioneiro da Ajuda. Edição Fac-similada do códice existente na Biblioteca da Ajuda. Edição realizada com o apoio da Sociedade Lisboa 94 Capital Europeia da Cultura. Lisbon: Edições Távola Redonda.
• Ramos, Maria Ana, and António Resende de Oliveira. “Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, in Lanciani and Tavani 1993: 115–118.

External links

• Article (large) on the Cancioneiro da Ajuda (in Galician).