Alonso de Mudarra's 1546 publication Tres libros de musica en cifras para vihuela (Three books of music in tablature for the vihuela) apparently was intended to cement his place within the thriving tradition of Spanish Renaissance instrumental music. He includes music both traditional and innovative, in nearly every genre in which he and his contemporaries composed for the vihuela and harp (and even the guitar). At the same time, however, he included a stunning series of songs for voice and vihuela. The series includes more traditional romances, villancicos, and canciones (whose authors include Boscán and Garcilaso) cheek to jowl with Latin songs of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, sonnets in both Spanish and Italian (among them works of Petrarch and Sannazaro); he further includes early Psalms in Fabordón technique. Mudarra, still in his mid-thirties, rose to the head of a very talented Spanish class with this complete publication.

Despite a technical mastery over his instrument that is patently obvious in his works for solo vihuela, when setting a text such as Claros y frescos rios, Mudarra employs almost severe restraint upon the instrumentalist. His vihuela accompaniment is so sedately restricted to supporting chords that one critic sees in this piece a precursor to Florentine monody. The ears of Mudarra's courtly audience could thus be more easily drawn to follow the simply elegant melody that he casts for the text. That text comes from a letter of Juan Boscán Almogáver, the famous and progressive poet from the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. The text simply sets up certain contrasts: the clear plains upon that one can run naturally, to the deserts and mountains that hinder the desolate poet; the birds that may sing victorious in the trees, and the harsh and sad sounds he must utter. The composer does not exactly mirror this pair of contrasts, but rather writes music that builds in melodic intensity through them. The first pair of phrases both are set to the same, relatively simple and arched melody, which lies in a fairly compressed range. The third large phrase begins with the same music, but breaks the pattern with a striking leap upwards through an augmented interval. The final couplet not only gets the most extended music, but it descends into a harsher lower voice for the singer, mirroring the poet's discordant sounds.

© Timothy Dickey, Rovi