From Anchieta to Guerrero: The Salve Regina in Portuguese Sources and an Unknown Early Spanish Alternatim Setting

Abstract

The series of about a dozen Salve Regina settings (some fragmentary) copied in sixteenth-century polyphonic manuscripts preserved in Coimbra University Library has thus far not received detailed investigation. With the exception of just two settings attributed to composers at the royal Augustinian monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, all are anonymous. However, analysis of the styles and textual variants found in a small handful of settings has not only revealed concordances of Salve Regina settings by Anchieta and Guerrero but also one or two more that were likewise clearly imported from Spain, whilst the remainder would appear to be of (local) Portuguese origin. It is likely that these Spanish settings would originally have been intended for performance at the special Salve services, which were a distinctive feature of Marian devotion at such major institutions as Seville and Palencia Cathedrals as well as the Castilian royal chapel from around the last two decades of the fifteenth century onwards. This study focuses especially on an anonymous alternatim setting copied with a fragment of Anchieta’s Salve into the manuscript P-Cug MM 7, which demonstrates close connections with some of the very earliest Spanish settings, including those of Anchieta, Rivaflecha and Escobar. It is a cantus firmus setting seemingly based largely on the Sevillian version of the chant as recorded in the later (1565) Breve instrucción (the only known source for the Salve Regina chant used at Seville cathedral in the sixteenth century).