Cancioneiro de Elvas


The Cancioneiro de Elvas is one of the four Renaissance songbooks of Portuguese music from the 16th century - along with the Lisbon Songbook, the Belém Songbook, and the Paris songbook. It is one important source of secular music from the Iberian Renaissance.
The songs are composed in Portuguese and Spanish languages.

General description

The Elvas Songbook was found in 1928 in the library of Elvas, by the musicologist Manuel Joaquim. It was copied in the 16th century and is divided in two parts:
The musical part of the songbook has been studied and transcribed by three musicologists - Manuel Joaquim, Manuel Morais and Gil Miranda.

Dating of the Songbook

There are no dates in the manuscript, therefore it is impossible to know the precise date of compilation. However, some factors can help us to narrow the time frame:
Thus, we can conclude that the Elvas Songbook was copied between the decades of 1560 and 1570, approximately.

Composers

There is not a single reference on composers in the songbook: all works are anonymous. However, if we compare this songbook with other Iberian songbooks, it is possible to establish concordances and thus know which are the composers of 7 works from the 65 compiled. They are: