THE TWO MANUSCRIPT SOURCES 48 & 242 FROM COIMBRA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE KEYBORD TENTO IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 16TH CENTURY

Abstract

The two manuscript sources P-Cug MM 48 & P-Cug MM 242 from the Coimbra University Library are the most important documents for the study of instrumental music in Portugal during the second half of the 16th Century. Both in score-format, their content is of a very eclectic nature, revealing also what was the musical practice in 16th Century Iberian peninsula, particularly in the field of sacred polyphony. It is important to stress that both sources are associated with Coimbra´s Santa Cruz Monastery, one of the most important 16th century portuguese musical centers. Both manuscripts include a large choice of motets copied from some of the principal editions published by Flemish, French and north Italian publishers. There are also chansons and instrumental genres such as ricercari, tientos/tentos and fantasias and some organ liturgical pieces, namely hymns and verses. A significant number of composers included in both manuscripts are some of the well known northerners, as for example Clemens non papa, Gombert, Crecquillon, Lassus and Buus, but also important Iberian authors such as Morales, Cabezón and Carreira. In what concerns keyboard music, these sources testify the relation between the compositional study of the motet form and his instrumental performance and the origins of the keyboard tiento/tento as represented principally by the works of Cabezón and Carreira. There is also another fundamental aspect surrounding this subject, which results from the inclusion in P-Cug MM 48 of the 10 Ricercari a quattro voci from Jacques Buus´s Libro primo of 1547. These works made a decisive influence in the development of the Iberian keyboard tiento/tento, as those two sources testify and which I will illustrate in this paper.