University of Leeds International Concert Series' Summer Festival 2023
November 2021 marks the 800th anniversary of the birth of Alfonso X El Sabio, the petitioner and patron of the composition of the Cantigas de Santa María and possibly the author of some of them.
On the occasion of this commemoration, the duo formed by Manuel Vilas (harp) and Paloma Gutiérrez del Arroyo (singing) proposes an atypical programme: The performance of the longest of these cantigas, number 115, in which a boy born in Rome and promised by his mother to the Devil since his conception, travels to Paris, Armenia and Syria, seeking remedy against o Demo, who announced that he would come to take him away on his fifteenth birthday ("Ao quinzeo en meu sẽo o levarei sen falla, sen baralla d'outre e sen perfía"). The adventure of this boy narrated by the cantiga concludes, like so many others, with a miracle worked by the Virgin.
The programme alternates singing and declamation in medieval Galician-Portuguese subtitled in Spanish, accompanied by the medieval harp, and the miniatures with which the different scenes of the story were illustrated are gradually revealed to the audience.
For the work of understanding and pronunciation of the text, the duo has been assisted by the specialist Ricardo Pichel Gotérrez (philologist and researcher associated with the universities of Alcalá de Henares and Santiago de Compostela).
This is a different experience to that of a normal medieval music concert, as we embark from beginning to end on a story narrated in an ancient language: a Marian miracle recorded in several books of medieval miracles, whose news reached the court of Alfonso in the 13th century, who decided to put it into verse and music. The public thus becomes an audience at the court of Alfonso X, where this, the longest cantiga, was probably performed one evening.
Paloma Gutiérrez del Arroyo, specialising in medieval music with the greatest performers and researchers of these repertoires, Paloma Gutiérrez del Arroyo has performed on European stages as a singer and psaltery player, mainly with the ensembles of which she is co-founder: Puy de sons d'autrefois, ensemble Oiet, and in collaboration with ensembles in Spain, France and Italy such as Ars Combinatoria, Malandança, La Reverdie, La Frottola, Contrafacta, Rosace, Dialogos and Le Jardin des Délices, and in duo with singer Catherine Schroeder and multi-instrumentalist Bill Cooley, and with actors Philippe Borrini and Carole Visconti.
Manuel Vilas Rodriguez was born in Santiago de Compostela, where he began his musical studies. He studied ancient harps from the 12th to the 18th centuries in Madrid with Nuria Llopis and in Milan with Mara Galassi. He has collaborated with numerous groups and as a soloist in the most important festivals in Spain, Germany, Cuba, USA, Ecuador, Czech Republic, Austria, Portugal, Switzerland, Paraguay, France, Bolivia, Belgium, Argentina, Chile, Holland, etc... as well as giving conferences, courses and masterclasses in San Sebastian, Santiago de Chile, Zaragoza, Amherst (Massachussets-USA), Santiago de Compostela, Havana (Cuba), etc.
