"Mya Senhor Velida"



        Malandança rises out of the farthest reaches of the land where the Way of Saint James comes to an end. And it rises up as an echo of music, word, flesh and stone.

        The members of Malandança understand medieval music as an area in which the interpretation and research are interdependent issues. Worthless is the one without the other.

        In the recent decades the interest for early music has allowed us to recover ancient musical styles that were believed lost. Thanks to contributions from many performers, musicologists and historians over the years, the break in the performing tradition of styles such as baroque music was partially saved.

        This process of bringing back to life a music style  (many different styles, in fact) involves several factors: at first, the original scores, with all the information coming straight from the composer; then writings, treatises, annotations, letters with reference to musical events or any news on how to make music , and the context were it was made. And, of course, the musical instruments wich, with its virtues and defects, are the great teachers of the performers.

        In the case of medieval music, the disruption in the tradition is very wide. Eight hundred years separates us from the “orchestra” in the “Pórtico de la Gloria”; during this time so meny things happened, so many artistic and bellicose events, so much light and so much fire, so it is difficult to twenty-first century humans to imagine the music Alfonso X heard in some festivity, or in his tent, after a battle, or the consolation brought to him by the music of  minstrel, laying sick in bed, hugging the book of The Miracles of Santa María.

        From the research made by the undersigned, alone and in the company of others, on the medieval instruments captured in stone in the “Pórtico de la Gloria” of the Catedral of Santiago de Compostelana, and in the Palace of Xelmírez, a world was open, not only of sonorous instruments, rather one of ideas and voices from what we thought of as the far-off Middle Ages. Faced with that mystical and architectural splendor, we can only recall the other splendor, invisible: the music.

        Taking these instruments as maestros, we have been able to reconstruct their interpretive technic, their expressive possibilities and their capacity for virtuosity, in short, the sonorous ideal of a refined Medieval court. The Cantigas of Alfonso X, written in Galician-Portuguese, fruit of a specific culture: the Middle Ages of the northwest of the Iberian peninsula, where they would find their way, thanks to the long road of Saint James, the troubadour traditions from all over the Christian world and where even echos of the nearby Islam would arrive, this would be the ideal music so that our voices and strings might sound.

         We united the troubadours’ music (who, imagining Paradise, invented love) to words (which created the world) and to images (which show us all). In this job Malandança played in festivals and concert halls were medieval music sounds: “Auditorio de Galicia”, “Festival de Música Antigua de Sajazarra”, “Festival Internacional en el Camino de Santiago”, “Festival de Música Antigua de La Laguna”…

        Following the program “Unha noite na Corte do rei Afonso” the band released a recording with the same title (ed. Clave Records) performing “Cantigas de Santa Maria” by the King Alfonso X "The Wise".

"Mya Senhor Velida"


Recordare                                                                          Anonymous                                                                                                Antiphon for the Offertoriy in the Festivity of Mary Mediatrix


Cantigas de amigo                                      Martin Codax


Ondas do mar de Vigo

Mandad'ey comigo

Mia irmana

Ai Deus se sab'ora

Ai ondas!

Quantas sabedes amar



Medieval Dances                                                               Anonymous

British Library Add. 29987

and Bibliothèque Nationale ms franç. 844


Saltarello

Quinta stampie real

Trotto

Saltarello

Lamento di Tristano

Rotta



Lay de Notre-Dame                                               Ernoul "Le vieux"

Bibliothèque Nationale ms franç. 12615


Paulina Ceremuzynska:

Xurxo Varela:

Francisco Luengo:

Manuel Vilas:

César Árias

José do Pico

Malandança

are:

Conductor: Francisco Luengo

Quantas sabedes amar

Fragment

Lay de Notre Dame

Fragment