Musica Temprana - In Terra Aliena (Uk) [CD]

The album In terra aliena (In foreign territory) includes songs that tell of exile and longing for the land that had to be abandoned due to war, expulsion and other dangers & threats. The songs also testify to a different kind of exile, the alienation that the unfamiliar new environment brings. Migration is off all times, and certainly not just a phenomenon of the present. This album's music addresses the mindset of people from another time, the 16th century. In 1492, Columbus arrived in America and Spain conquered the Nazare dynasty of Granada, putting an end to the Muslim rule on the peninsula. In that same year, the Jews were driven out of Spain or forced to convert to Christianity. All this caused Muslims and Jews to flee to the north of Africa. Roman Catholics from Castile and Aragon left for America. Large numbers of seafarers and invaders were never to return to the peninsula. Given all this, we can say that there were enough reasons for poetry, and consequently song, to introduce a new leitmotif, namely 'in foreign territory'. Those who are exiled, loose everything familiar and loved in one fell swoop. The same thing happens to anyone who knocks on a closed heart in vain: a lonely journey from everything to nothing. These are just some of the subjects of the songs recorded in the famous Spanish and Portuguese songbooks of the period such as the Cancionero Musical de Palacio and Cancionero Musical de Lisboa. On the album In terra aliena gems from these songbooks by composers as Juan del Encina, Francisco de Penalosa, Pedro de Escobar as well as anonymous composers, all of whom excellently expressed in sound the theme of alienation and the fragility of life 'In foreign territory'.