Mateus de Aranda: O Tractado de cãto llano (1533) — Notas de leitura

Abstract

Despite being available in facsimile since 1962, the plainchant treatise of Mateus de Aranda, the first musical tract to be printed in Portugal, has so far not attracted the attention it deserves. In this paper, which resulted from an undergraduate Seminar held at the Musicology Department of the FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa, the basic paleographical and conceptual instruments are presented which allow a contemporary reader to deal with Aranda’s musical theory. Included among other elements are a list of errata, an extensive textual commentary (including the identification of chants cited by the author), and annotated full transcriptions of the musical examples given by Aranda (whose monodic oeuvre had not been acknowledged in the secondary literature).