Manuscript Évora, Biblioteca Pública, Cód. CLI/1-3: Its Origin and Contents, and the Stemmata of Late-Sixteenth- and Early-Seventeenth- Century Portuguese Sources

Abstract

Manuscript Évora, Biblioteca Pública, Cód. CLI/1-3 is a small volume made up of two originally independent manuscripts datable respectively to c.1615 and c.1575, which were bound together sometime in the seventeenth century. The second part of the volume contains what is possibly the oldest, most persistent and widely-circulated of Holy Week series of responsories in extant late-sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Portuguese sources of polyphony. The first part is dominated by the works of Manuel Mendes, a composer whose considerable reputation rested especially on his abilities as a teacher, but whose works are among the most widespread pieces in Portuguese and American colonial manuscripts in the years around 1600. In this paper I will determine the origin of Évora Cód. CLI/1-3 by following the steps of Mendes’s career, and establish the relationship between this source and several other important manuscripts as to the transmission of two exemplary pieces through the study of variant readings and the rates of agreement of the sources in the points of variation, proposing a general stemmata for pieces in late-sixteenth and earlyseventeenth- century Portuguese sources of polyphony.