Genoveva Galvez (harpsichord, Clavichord) Luys Venegas de Henestrosa, Libro de Cifra Nueva, History of Spanish Music, Volume XVII.
Recorded by Hispavox and released 1973 by The Musical Heritage Society Inc. MHS 3315

Side 1: * * * 27’57”
I-TRES CANCIONES DE CRECQUILLON
00:00 1. Alix avoit aux dens 2′:08″
02:10 2. Je vous 2’47”
04:57 3. Ung gay bergier 3’00”:
II-TRES ROMANCES DE PALERO 3’40”
07:55 1. Pues no me querhs hablar 0’56” (clavichord)
08:51 2. Paseabdse el Rey moro 1’10” (clavichord)
10:01 3. Mira Nero de Tarpeya 1’36” (clavichord)
III-DOS PIEZAS DE PALERO
11:37 1. 0 Gloriosa (hymn) 2’52”
13:20 2. Verse in Mode V (Morales) Gloss by Palero 2’43”
IV-WORKS BY DIVERSE COMPOSERS –
14:33 1. Fantasia in Moae V (Narvaez) 2’12”
17:20 2. Fantasia in Mode III (Mudarra) 2’31”
22:03 3. Tiento in Mode VI (Soto) 2’36”
24:40 4. Tiento in Mode I (Vila) 1’09”
25:54 5. Five Variations on “Conde Claros” (Anon.)1’34”

Side, 2: * * * 26′ 00″
V-WORKS BY ANTONIO DE CABEZON
27:40 1. Tres on la Alta 2’19”
2. Tiento in Mode IV on “Malheur me bat” – 2’34”
3. Tiento in Mode I 3’00”
37:36 4. Pavana with gloss 3’22”
5. Romance: Para quien crié yo cabellos 1’54”
6. Fauxbourdon gloss: Die nobis Maria 0’59”
7. Three fauxbordons, simple and glossed (Cabezón/ Venegas) Mode II – Mode III – Mode IV 3’55”
VI-WORKS BY DIVERSE COMPOSERS
1. Faubourdon in Mode VII (Mudarra) 1’13”
2. Fantasia in Mode IV (Narvaez) 1’08”
3. Cancion: Revuillis vous (Janequin) 2’08”
50:40 4. Five Variations on “Las Vacas’~ (Anon.) 2’43”

Genoveva GALVEZ, Harpsichord and Clavichord (II/ I, V /7)

The Libra de Cifra Nueva para tecla, harpa y vihuela [Book of New Tablature for keyboard, harp and vihuela], edited by Luys Venegas de Henestrosa at Alcala de Henares in 1557, is the earliest printed collection of Spanish keyboard music that has been preserved. Its compiler, Venegas, had been a musician in Toledo in the chapel of the great Cardinal don Juan Tavera, governor of Castile. According to his own testimony, he already had the Libra finished in 1540, but during the · period that elapsed until its publication, the distinguished Toledan statesman died, so it was to be dedicated to his nephew don Diego de Tavera, bishop of Jaen. Those seventeen years of waiting for publication were due not only to the scarcity of music printer’s shops in Spain, a scarcity which made every kind of publication expensive and difficult, but also to the fact that Venegas had to withstand long struggles against envious musicians who were opposed to putting keyboard music into tablature, arguing that the mastery of polyphony which had cost them so much study and work, was made easy by it, and that such a broadening of the base of understanding would tend to give rise to dreadful rivalries. Venegas won out, but only so far as being able to publish one of the seven books he held in readiness for the printer. He is, if not the inventor, nevertheless, the first disseminator and panegyrist of the advantages of Spanish keyboard tablature, a numerically based procedure that would be used until the seventeenth century. Think of the quantity of keyboard music that must have gone to the grave with its creator previous to the discovery of this means for seeing and practicing polyphony in all its voices at one time, and for putting it in print to perpetuate it. The importance, then, of the single extant example in the world of this early publication, which may be found in the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid, is clear. Thanks to the transcription of this important document of Spanish instrumental music of the sixteenth century, a transcription that Higinio Angles made for the Spanish Institute of Musicology (La Musica en la Corte de Carlos V [Music in the Court of Charles V]), we have easy access to its study.
In this period (as is evident in the title of the publication) there existed no feeling for the characteristics and idiosyncracies of each instrument in its own right, but,instead, the important thing was the feasibility of playing polyphony on it, which placed an instrument, as in the case of the keyboard, harp or vihuela, in a higher category than other types; those that were merely melodic or rhythmic, namely, those played by the ministriles (chirimias, sackbuts, dttlzainas, bowed vihuelas – violas da gamba -, flutes, trumpets, atabales, etc.) had in great measure the task of ornamenting the basic sound of the polyphony.
In the Libra of Venegas, there is noticeable, on one hand, the enormous influence of the polished contrapuntal “techniques of the great Franco-Flemish musicians, techniques fashionable at that time in all Europe and already familiar on the Peninsula before the arrival of the Flemish musical chapels of the Emperor Charles.

#Clavichord #GenovevaGálvez