Cancionero de Segovia facts for kids

The Cancionero de Segovia (which means Segovia Songbook) is a very old book of music from the late 1400s and early 1500s. It's like a treasure chest filled with Renaissance music! This songbook has many different songs and pieces by composers from Spain, France, and a region called Franco-Flemish (parts of modern-day Belgium, Netherlands, and France). Today, you can find this special book kept safe in the archives of the Segovia Cathedral in Spain.

The Music Book

This amazing music book was put together around the time Queen Isabella the Catholic was ruling Spain, between 1499 and 1503. After it was finished, it was kept in the library of the Royal Fortress of Segovia. Luckily, it was moved to the Segovia Cathedral at some point. This was a very good thing, because the Royal Fortress was destroyed by a big fire in 1862, and everything in its library was lost!

In 1922, a music expert named Higinio Anglés discovered the songbook in the Cathedral's archives. It was a very exciting find!

The book has 228 pages, called folios, and each page is about 29.1 cm by 21.5 cm. Unlike other music books from that time, it doesn't have a table of contents. Also, the songs aren't grouped by their type, like all the love songs together or all the religious songs together.

The songbook is split into two main parts:

• The first part, which goes up to page 206, has more than 150 pieces of music. Most of these are from the Franco-Flemish region.
• The second part, from page 207 to 228, starts with a note that says, "Here begin the Castilian works." This part has 40 pieces. Most of them (37) are in Spanish, two are in Latin, and one doesn't have any words.

The Songs and Pieces

In total, the Segovia Songbook contains 204 musical pieces. These pieces are written in five different languages: Latin (74), French (50), Spanish (38), Flemish/Dutch (34), and Italian (8). What's really cool is that 97 of these pieces are "unica." This means they are only found in this one book and nowhere else!

So far, experts have identified 27 composers who wrote music in this book. However, some pieces were written by unknown composers. Here are some of the composers whose music is in the book, with the number of pieces they wrote:

The Segovia Songbook has both religious and non-religious music. You can find different types of songs and pieces in it, like masses (religious songs), motets (another type of religious song), villancicos (Spanish folk-like songs), chansons (French songs), and instrumental pieces (music without singing). The music in the book ranges from very simple to very difficult to play or sing!

See also

In Spanish: Cancionero de Segovia para niños