Customer Reviews

Cantigas de Loor: Alfonso X el Sabio

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This is an outstanding resource for early musicians. Cunningham walks you through the history of the Cantigas and King Alfonso, the cultural, poetic and musical environment which they emerged from, discusses pronunciation, and both the challenges of deciphering the music and the historical attempts to do so. It's comprehensive and scholarly, yet accessible to lay folk. It could be improved if more of the songs were analyzed in more detail, but there are a number which are broken down and discussed note for note so you can see how he reached the conclusions he did in creating a modern transcription. This allows you to do so yourself from the remaining manuscripts. This doesn't have full sheet music for all the Cantigas, but it does have about 40 and gives you the tools to decode the rest.