The Evolution of Cantiga 113: Composition, Recomposition, and Emendation in the Cantigas de Santa Maria

THE EVOLUTION OF CANTIGA 113: COMPOSITION, RECOMPOSITION, AND EMENDATION IN THE CANTIGAS DE SANTA MARIA Stephen Parkinson Linacre College, Oxford The belated resurgence of interest in textual problems of the Cantigas de Santa Maria (hereafter CSM) has led to a number ofinsights which have yet to be implemented in editorial terms.1 Following the work of Martha E. Schaffer ("Epigraphs", "Marginal Notes", "Los códices", "The 'Evolution'") and David Wulstan ("The Compilation of the Cantigas"), MS E2 is no longer viewed as the culmination of the learned king's Marian project, but as a more hastily compiled reference volume produced as an insurance policy against the probable incompleteness of the Mariai rico (T+F),3 which was itself die product 1 An early version ofthis paper was presented as "Cantiga 113: the evolution ofan unsfngable cantiga" at a meeting ofthe Oxford University Portuguese Graduate Seminar in 1997. 1 am grateful for the comments ofparticipants at the seminar, for later discussions with Manuel Pedro Ferreira, Martha Schaffer, Alison Campbell, Rip Cohen, and David Wulstan, and for the observations ofLa coránica's reviewers. Additional work for this article was made possible by the project Collection, Composition and Compilation in the «Cantigas de Santa Maria» funded by grant F/08736/B ofthe Leverhulme Trust, and by its continuation funded by the Modern Humanities ResearchAssociation and the Research Development Fund ofOxford University. I am particularly grateful to Deirdre Jackson for work on the sources of Montserrat miracles. 2 The conventional sigla for the manuscripts are: E = Real Monasterio de S. Lorenzo del Escorial, B.1.2 (còdice de los músicos); T = Real Monasterio de S. Lorenzo del Escorial, TLl (codice rico); F = Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, Banco Rari, 20; To = Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 10069. Wulstan ("Compilation" 183 note 2) argues for E, e, f, and To. 3 While it is now accepted that T and F are two parts ofa single project, there is no conventional label for their conjunction, and any term based on códice is inappropriate for two separate codicological entities. I have previously followed A. Santiago Luque in referring to the two manuscripts as the códices ricos (Parkinson "Layout and Structure"). La corónica 35.2 (Spring, 2007): 227-72 228Stephen ParkinsonLa corónica 35.2, 2007 of a two-stage evolution, being first conceived as a new collection of 200 cantigas (T, the códice rico) based on the expansion ofthe original To collection and only later extended to contain 400 items. Walter Mettmann's tentative admission that readings from T/F and To may be preferable to those of E goes a small way in this direction.1 The textual divergences between To and the other manuscripts often have the quality of rewriting rather than recopying (Valeria Bertolucci Pizzorusso). Rather than being copied from a single source or from each other, the manuscrijjts have all the signs oí being assembled from loose sheets derived directly or at several removes from schematic exemplars (Manuel Pedro Ferreira "Stemma"), with the insertion of refrains and the compilation of epigraphs being left to scribes or comjiilers (Schaffer "Epigraphs", Parkinson "False Refrains"), and with textual elements such as the amount of refrain repeated, and the choice oflong or short, lines being partly determined by considerations of layout (Jesús Montoya Martínez "Texto", Parkinson "Layout and Structure"). The amount of rewriting and emendation involved in the production of the manuscript versions of texts cannot be underestimated . Cantigas 219 and 252 have been shown to stem from the same working version of a miracle, with minor changes ofcontent and some brutal remodelling of phrases and rhyme schemes (Parkinson "Two for the Price of One"). In cantiga 267 (Parkinson "Para unía nova ediçâo das Cantigas de Santa Maria: duas leituras novas"), the original incipit A^tì que Deus près carne efoi déla nado aj^pears in three different scribal forms, all wrong, resulting from various combinations ofmetrical and grammatical incomprehension.3 The relationshiji between text and music is also being refocused. Music may provide clues to textual organisation, but the relative jjrecedence oftext or music is an open question, to be resolved sejiarately for each cantiga. The...