organized into decades (groups of ten) consisting of nine strophic narrative songs relating miracles
performed by the Virgin (often in the mundane context of contemporary daily life), followed by a hymn of
praise to her in a more exalted style.
FIG. 4-5 Le jeu de Robin et Marion as staged at St. Petersburg’s “Antique Theater” in 1907 (costumes and set design by
Mstislav Doboujinsky).
The opening song in the collection (the prologo), following the most venerable troubadour traditions,
is a poem about poetry, with a characteristic pious twist (Ex. 4-10). It is cast in the first person, which
implies (but certainly does not prove) that it was composed by Alfonso himself, who is known to have
been a poet. The melody takes the form of a very gracefully modified “bar,” in which the pes is given
dancelike open and shut cadences before opening out on the cauda. Most of the narrative cantigas are
dance songs with refrains, combining a verse structure similar to the Arabic zajal (though it is an open
question whether the cantigas were modeled on zajals or the zajals on cantigas) with music following a
modified virelai pattern, in which the refrain borrows its music from the “tail” (cauda) of the strophe. In
Spanish this form would be known as the villancico.
EX. 4-10 Porque trobar (canso)