Cancionero Sablonara

Among the Spanish sources from the first third of the seventeenth century, the Cancionero de la Sablonara holds a very special place. It was prepared between 1625 and 1626 for a German noble, Wolfang Wilhelm, who held, among other titles of nobility, those of count palatine and duke of Neoburg and who had visited the court in Madrid between October 1624 and May 1625. This aristocratic music lover showed enthusiasm for the secular vocal music he heard at the court and, at the end of his trip, requested an anthology for his personal pleasure; it was compiled and copied with great care and beautiful calligraphy by Claudio de la Sablonara, main scripter-copyist-of the Royal Chapel. The collection contains seventy-five pieces, including the best songs that are sung in this court, according to the compiler. This important source, preserved at Munich's Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, features poems in Spanish and Italian metric forms. There are fewer examples of the latter: merely eight compositions written in liras [six-verse stanzas] and one sonnet. The Castilian forms, on the other hand, are represented by five romances [ballads] without a refrain, twenty-nine with a refrain, eighteen letrillas [lyrical poems], eleven romances with a lyrical poem at the end, two series of seguidillas, and several decimas [ten-verse stanzas].