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Scan 111
Grove's Dictionary of music and musicians, 1927
36 lines. Read by computer on 5 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 65. See the scan on archive.org.
1ALFIERI
3ALFIERI, THE ABBATE Pietro (b. Rome, June 29, 1801; d. there, June 12, 1863), was admitted in early life to holy orders; became a Camaldolese monk; and, for many years, held the appointment of professor of Gregorian music at the English College in Rome. He was an earnest student both of plain-song and polyphonic music, and published some useful treatises on these subjects, and some valuable collections of the works of the great polyphonic composers. (See ALLEGRI; IMPROPERIA). He died insane. one of two readings
4ALFIERI, THE ABBATE Pietro (b. Rome, June 29, 1801; d. there, June 12, 1863), was admitted in early life to holy orders; became a Camaldolese monk; and, for many years, held the appointment of professor of Gregorian music at the English College in Rome. He was an earnest student both of plain-song and polyphonic music, and published some useful treatises on these subjects, and some valuable collections of the works of the great polyphonic composers. (See ALLEGRI; IMPROPERIA.) He died insane. one of two readings
6The following is a list of his works:
81. Numerous articles on subjects connected with Ecclesiastical Music in the Gazzetta musicale di Milano, and other periodicals.
92. Excerpta ex celebrioribus de musica viris, J. P. A. Praenestino, T. L. Vittoria et Gregorio Allegri Romano. (Roma, 1840.)
103. Inno e ritmo Stabat Mater; e motetto Fratres ego, di G. P. L. da Palestrina. (Roma, 1840, fol.)
114. An edition of the Sistine Miserere, published under the pseudonym of Alessandro Geminiani. (Lugano, 1840, fol.)
125. Italian translation of Catel's Traité d'harmonie. (Roma, 1840.)
136. Accompagnamento coll'organo, etc. (a treatise on accompanying plain-song), Roma, 1840.
147. Raccolta di motetti di G. P. L. da Palestrina, di L. da Vittoria, di Avia e di Felice Anerio Romano. (Roma, 1841, fol.)
158. Ristabilimento del canto e della musica ecclesiastica. (Roma, 1843, 8vo.)
169. Notizie biografiche di Nicolo Jommelli. (Roma, 1845, 8vo.)
1710. Saggio storico teoretico-pratico del canto Gregoriano. (Roma, 1855.)
1811. Prodromo sulla restaurazione de' libri di canto ecclesiastico detto Gregoriano. (Roma, 1857.)
1912. Raccolta di musica sacra, etc, containing in 7 volumes a large selection from works of Palestrina. A full list of the contents was printed in earlier editions of this Dictionary.
21W. S. R.
23AL FINE (Ital.), 'to the end.' This term indicates the repetition of the first part of a movement either from the beginning (da capo) or from a sign & (dal segno) to the place where the word fine stands.
25ALFONSO DELLA VIOLA, see VIOLA.
27ALFONSO EL SABIO (ALPHONSO X.) (b. Toledo, Nov. 23, 1221; d. Seville, Apr. 4, 1284), King of Castille and León, married Doña Violante of Aragon, daughter of James the Conqueror, and ascended the throne on the death of his father, St. Ferdinand, in 1252. His sister Eleanor married Edward I. of England.
29Alfonso the Sage belongs to the history of music through his collection of 'Cantigas'—some four hundred poems in the Galician-Portuguese dialect, preserved, with musical notation, in two exquisitely illuminated MSS. in the library of the Escurial. An earlier and incomplete MS., formerly at Toledo, is now in the National Library at Madrid; while a third (at Florence) has a 5-line stave ruled for the music, although the notes were never filled in. The cantigas are popular religious songs—accounts of miracles and carols in praise of Our Lady—set or fitted to modal melodies of the time. They describe incidentally merchants of Paris and Flanders buying wool in England, German pilgrims on the road to St. James of Compostela; and include several well-known legends of the Blessed Virgin: how she took the place of a nun who ran away from her convent, or of a monk so enraptured by hearing a bird sing that he stayed listening to it for three hundred years, and how the finger of a statue closed on the ring which the unwise bridegroom had placed upon it (cf. the stories by Mérimée and Eichendorf).
31The cantigas have been more studied in their literary and linguistic aspects than from the standpoint of the music which accompanies them. The Chilean philologist Hanssen, however, pointed out that neither the metre of the verse nor the rhythm of the words was intelligible without the music. The method of counting syllables often fails to determine the metre, as is the case with much popular Spanish poetry; the number of syllables in a line often varies. The combinations of metrical feet are subtle, but are capable of a musical explanation, e.g. a 6/8 rhythm may take the place of a 3/4 rhythm in the same verse, while many of the poems show, on analysis, that the musical rhythm came first and the metre afterwards. Pierre Aubry, by applying the principles of the 'rhythmic modes' employed in deciphering other mensural music of the period, was able to give satisfactory interpretations of a number of the cantigas; but there remain many in which the musical rhythm has no apparent connexion with that of the words. The script, though clear as to the position of the notes, is often doubtful as to their duration (as is the case in the French chansonniers of the 13th century). It sometimes happens that when a melodic phrase is repeated in the course of the strophe, the value of the notes is altered; a breve becomes a long, or one ligature is replaced by another. The tonality of the cantigas belongs to an age of transition from the melodies of the troubadours. There is a certain feeling for firmness of tonality, and a tendency to employ only two modes: the Dorian (final D) and the Mixolydian (final G; sometimes written with a B flat). Examples of the ordinary major mode are also to be met with.
33The composers of the cantigas collected by Alfonso X. were greatly influenced by the later French troubadours, and Guirault Riquier (1224–92) is known to have spent some time at his court. Yet they preserve a certain indigenous character, especially noticeable in the construction of the musical strophe and the use of the refrain (estribillo); while the script, which differs slightly in the two MSS., indicates that the copyists were men of Spanish training. Collet and Villalba sought for parallels between the melodic formulae of the cantigas and those found in Spanish popular song, in Gregorian and Mozarabic chant, and in contemporary French melody. It is probable that many different poets and composers are represented in the collection, both for linguistic reasons and from the musical and poetical form which differs slightly in every cantiga.
35King Alfonso was not so much a poet and composer as an editor and a Mæcenas. Poets
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