BATALLAS, DANZAS Y OTROS DUELOS

Music by Antonio de Cabezón, Luis de Narváez, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Dario Castello, Andrea Falconiero, Josquin des Prez, Tilman Susato... ***** In the fifteenth century the first fencing treatises appeared in Spain, setting out the rules for handling the sword in duels. Alongside them, dance treatises left precise instructions on how to carry out a dance challenge and emerge victorious. Courtly education and etiquette included both disciplines, and mastering them meant social advancement. Under the reigns of Carlos V and Felipe II, Spain became the foremost world power. And up to Fernando II, the Habsburg empire gave rise to a flourishing of music and to its dissemination with the rise of the printing press. It was a music that portrayed, naturally, dances, fencing schools, victories and retreats. Beyond the battlefields, the music of the empire never broke free of French influence: the songs of Josquin de Pres, Orlando di Lassus or Nicolas Gombert and the dances of the Valois and Bourbon courts are very much present in the compositions of Antonio de Cabezón or Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, and show how no duel on land could prevail over the crossing and exchange of cultural elements in a Europe that was open and eager for novelty.