Strange song for that image? Well, maybe, maybe not. The Cantigas de Santa Maria are a collection of pilgrim songs from medieval Spain, so maybe the bus stop, the road and the motorbike are not completely off.
I had a time, about 12, maybe 15 years ago, when in my voyage through musical history I had arrived at a point where I couldn’t easily go back any further. Those pilgrim songs, the songs of the troubadours, the original Carmina Burana, they all lack reliable notation. All performances are speculative. In the early fourteenth century, with the advent of Ars Nova and its notation capable of denoting rhythm, that all changed, but still, think of all the controversies about how to perform Mozart, and that although Mozart employed a rigid notation system. What could we possibly expect from the thirteenth century?
Any earlier than the troubadours and music stops being interesting to me anyway. Gregorian Chant? Sorry, it bores me to death and I find nothing that differentiates one song from the other. I admit, I didn’t try hard though 🙂
The Song of the Day is “Santa Maria, Strela do Dia” by Jordi Savall. It’s not a bad version and it’s available in my collection, as digital download and on YouTube.