Los seys libros del Delphin, Valladolid 1538

Los seys libros del Delphin, Valladolid 1538

Los seys libros del Delphín is one of the most renowned books of vihuela music of the sixteenth century. It is the only surviving vihuela music by Luis de Narváez. Also a composer of vocal polyphonic music, Narváez enjoyed considerable fame in his own time and was associated both with Spanish royalty as well as the leading noble houses of the Spanish kingdom. His fame is attested by the fact that eighteen of the works in Los seys libros del Delphin were reprinted in Spain and the Low Countries, or copied into manuscripts in England. Since the modern revival of the vihuela, Narváez’s music has become well known both on original instruments and in transcriptions for classical guitar, especially his sets of variations on “Guárdame las vacas” and his haunting version of Josquin’s “Mille regretz”, that he presents as the “Canción del Emperador.”

Published in Valladolid in 1538, Los seys libros del Delphin was the first book of instrumental tablature to be printed in Castile. Its title reflects similar beliefs in the power of music demonstrated in Luis Milán’s El Maestro (Valencia, 1536), the only vihuela music published prior to Narváez’s book. Whereas Milán’s book recalls the figure of Orpheus, Narváez draws on another mythological figure, the lyre player Arion. Kidnapped by pirates on his return from Sicily, Arion’s singing attracted the attention of a school of dolphins. To avoid being murdered by the pirates, he jumped into the sea and was miraculously rescued by one of the dolphins who brought him safely to shore, once again showing the power of music to defeat adversity. Despite this humanistic connection, Narváez’s book is very different to Milán’s El Maestro in nearly all other respects. The two books represent quite distinct currents of instrumental practice from the 1530s. In purely physical terms, the two books are very different in size, and the fundamental differences in their tablature notation indicate that they belong to different practices. More than anything, however, it is the musical difference that is the greatest point of demarcation.

Narváez was a trained polyphonist and was schooled in the composition of imitative counterpoint. In his petition to Charles V for licence to publish Los seys libros del Delphin he tells, moreover, that he had collected music by other instrumentalists, especially Luis de Guzmán, and Francesco da Milano which Narváez claims was unknown in Spain at the time. No music by Guzmán survives, but there are evident stylistic affinities between Narváez’s music and that of the divine Francesco in the fluidity of their counterpoint and the spaciousness of their musical textures.

The six books that make up the Delphin are devoted to different repertory genres, as if individual chapters of a book. The first two contain fourteen fantasias, the following one is a collection of intabulations of works by Josquin, Gombert and Richafort, and the last three deal respectively with variations on hymn tunes, villancico melodies and harmonic formulas, together with some songs for vihuela and voice and a basse dance. These are the oldest known variation writing in Western music history. The first book, the libro primero, comprises a cycle of eight extended fantasias presented in order of mode. The smaller fantasias of the second book show Narváez’s remarkable ability as a creator of elegant idiomatic compositions combining a clear musical rhetoric as well as contrapuntal craft. The majority of the fantasias from both books are polythematic imitative works, and show an affinity with the Italianate style of Francesco and his contemporaries. Two of the fantasias (6 and 7) are monothematic, based on the themes fa ut mi re and ut re mi fa mi,respectively. Another fantasia is essentially chordal, “de consonancias”. Most of the fantasias can be seen to be based on a tripartite model: exposition — extension — conclusion. Most commence with an imitative theme in a gradually expanding texture. Internal episodes that make up the “extension” develop the initial musical motion using a variety of resources, especially imitation of shorter melodic motives, free counterpoint, or the sequences that are a very strong feature of his personal style. Conclusions are characterised by repeated material, followed by brief codas. The fantasia that opens the volume is a parody that draws from Josquin’s chanson Adieu mes amours and Tu per ton temps by Gombert.

The libro tercero or third book contains intabulations of mass sections by Josquin, Gombert and Richafort. The libro quarto is dedicated to two extended sets of variations on the hymn tunes O gloriosa Domina and De sacris solemnis,contrapuntal variations on Gregorian melodies with varied configurations of voices and meters. Narváez describes the works of the quinto libro as “romances y villancicos” to sing and play, and with counterpoints to some of them. These are the three variations on Si tantos halcones and the six on La mi cinta dorada and five more as accompanied songs. The sexto libro comprises variations on grounds such as the twenty-two on Conde claros, four on Guárdame las vacas, three on a variant of the passamezzo antico, plus a closing basse dance. The only surviving pieces of vocal polyphony by Narváez are his motets De profundis clamavi published in the Quartus Liber cum Quatuor vocibus: Motteti Del Fiore(Lyon: Jacques Moderne, 1539) and the five-voice O salutaris hostia in the Quintus Liber Mottetorum ad Quinque, et Sex, et Septem Vocem (Lyon: Jaques Moderne, 1542).

Five copies of Los seys libros del Delphin are known to survive. Two are in the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid. One previously was part of the Biblioteca Real (call number R/9741) while the second copy (R/14708) came from the collection of Francisco Asenjo Barbieri. The other copies are in the British Library in London (K.2.h.11), the Biblioteka Jagiellonska in Krakow (Mus. ant. pract. N70) formerly from the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, and the Library of Congress in Washington (M140.N3). A whereabouts of a further copy reported by Rubio Piqueras as being in the Biblioteca Provincial de Toledo (now the Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha) in 1922 is unknown. Not all the exemplars are identical. There is evidence of minor corrections being made during the printing process, presumably as the author came to the workshop to check the proofs, as was generally specified in Spanish printing contracts.

Given the high quality and accuracy of the original print, the task of making this new edition nearly five hundred years later has not presented great difficulties. The original text contains only a small number of errors. Changes to the musical text are indicated in the edition itself by footnotes on the tablature pages, so that players can review them easily and decide whether or not to observe them. We have limited the changes to ciphers that are obviously erroneous. There are others that are possibly incorrect, but that do not disturb the musical logic. These have been left unaltered. All verbal text is presented using the original orthography, modernised only in accordance with standard Castilian practice, by the addition of accents and the capitalisation of proper nouns.

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