A Historical Overview of Musical Worship & Culture in Sardinia 457
retable by the Master of Castelsardo, Madonna Enthroned with Angel Musicians
(before 1492), stands out among these iconographic examples.92
It is possible that secular songs circulated at the courts of the giudicati in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as they did at those of the lords from
Terramanna (Terra Magna, “big land,” namely Italy)—e.g. the Malaspina, the
della Guerardesca, the Doria. In particular, through the dynasty of Arborea Bas-
Serra, a knowledge of Catalan lyrics and music is also feasible. Overall, the con-
ditions for concrete contacts with international poetry and songs, including
those of troubadours, were present in medieval Sardinia.93 However, it is also
possible that songs from the oral traditions of local giudicati, together with ha-
giographic ones, circulated at major pilgrimage centers. But, like many of the
hypotheses contained herein, it is essential to state these assumptions with the
utmost scientific and historiographical caution.
Singers from the Iberian Peninsula arriving in Iglesias in 1326 and Bonaria
in at least 1346, during the first wave of Catalan-Aragonese migration, can be
documented.94 A pioneering example of Catalan enculturation at the be-
ginning of the fifteenth century is the hymn to Saint Georgius of Suelli, Ave
praesul suellensis, which was adapted from the hymn for Saint Severus, bishop
of Barcelona, Ave praesul Barchinonae.95 Conspicuous among the most sig-
nificant examples of Iberian cultural influences on Sardinia are the gosos/gog-
gius (connected with Catalan devotional songs: goigs), dedicated to the Virgin
Mary and the saints. Such songs were performed on the island at the end of
the sixteenth century, if not earlier, and they are still very popular today.96 In
Alghero, which was conquered by the Aragonese in 1354, The Song of the Sibyl
to the sound of a mandola (or a lute?). See also Faedda, “Aspetti di iconografia musicale,”
pp. 109–117.
92 Renata Serra, Pittura e scultura dall’età romanica alla fine del ‘500 (Nuoro, 1990), pp. 114–
119; Faedda, “Aspetti di iconografia musicale,” pp. 37–54.
93 Paolo Maninchedda, “La storia in forma di favola e il trobar perdut,” in Società e cultura nel
Giudicato d’Arborea e nella Carta de Logu: convegno internazionale di studi: Oristano, 5–6–
7–8 dicembre 1992, ed. Giampaolo Mele (Nuoro, 1995), pp. 155–170. On the troubadours and
music, see Elizabeth Aubrey, The Music of the Troubadours (Bloomington, 1996). See also,
Franco Alberto Gallo, Musica nel castello: trovatori, libri, oratori nelle corti italiane dal XIII
al XV secolo (Bologna, 1992).
94 Mele, “La musica catalana,” pp. 187–191.
95 Giampaolo Mele, “Ave præsul Suellensis. Note codicologiche e storiche sull’innografia per
S. Giorgio di Suelli e S. Severo di Barcellona,” in Studi in onore di Ottorino Pietro Alberti, eds
Francesco Atzeni and Tonino Cabizzosu (Cagliari, 1998), pp. 85–113.
96 Giampaolo Mele, “Il canto dei “Gòsos” tra penisola iberica e Sardegna. Medio Evo, epoca
moderna,” in I Gòsos: fattore unificante nelle tradizioni culturali e cultuali della Sardegna,
ed. Roberto Caria (Mogoro, 2004), pp. 11–34.