Cancionero de Palacio - The Manuscript

The Manuscript

The first ten folios are not numbered; the remaining folios are numbered from 1 to 304. Based on the index of works included in the beginning of the manuscript, it originally had 548 works. Many folios have been lost, reducing the number of works currently in the manuscript to 458.

The manuscript was written by 9 different people and in all received 11 successive additions:

• The first addition happened in the first years of the 16th century, most probably after 1505, as a result of the reorganization of the Court's musical chapel ordered by Ferdinand II of Aragon, one year after the death of Queen Isabella. This is the most numerous addition and its works are the most representative of the circumspect and expressive style characteristic of the reign of the Catholic Monarchs.
• The next four additions were supposedly made between 1505 and 1510.
• The next two were made around 1515.
• The 8th addition was possibly made in 1516, right after the death of Ferdinand II.
• The 9th happened between 1516 and 1517.
• The 10th addition, from folios 293 to 304, consisted of a tiny cancionero written in a different kind of paper which was incorporated to the body of the main manuscript. The works contained in it are not listed in the original opening index, and two of its works were already present in the Cancionero. It possibly originated in the chapel of Joanna of Castile, in Tordesillas.
• The last addition was made between 1519–1520, when the chapel of the Catholic Monarchs had already moved to other location.

By the end of the 19th century the manuscript was found in the Royal Library of the Royal Palace of Madrid by composer and musicologist Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, who transcribed and published it in 1890 with the title "Cancionero musical de los siglos XV y XVI" (Musical songbook of the 15th and 16th centuries).