The sixteenth century Spanish courts supported a thriving tradition of composer-performers on a number of musical instruments: vihuela, organ, and harp. By the time Alonso de Mudarra, canon of the Cathedral of Seville, published his Tres libros de musica en cifras para vihuela (Three books of music in tablature for the vihuela, 1546), the tradition was already well underway. Other early volumes include those of Luis de Milán (Valencia, 1536), Luis de Narváez (Valladolid, 1538), Enríquez de Valderrábano (Valladolid, 1547), Diego Pisador (Salamanca, 1552), and Miguel de Fuenllana (Seville, 1553). Each volume offered to the players' market a large compilation of solos, dance tunes, improvisations, and songs, and advertised both the musician and his patron. Mudarra thus took pains to introduce into the 77 pieces contained in his Tres libros de musica certain innovations: the first music ever published for guitar, some bolder chromaticism alongside more traditional fantasias and variations, and a new system for organ or harp tablature. At the same time, he demonstrated his mastery of all known vihuela genres in more traditional compositions, such as this pavan and galliard pair.

While this pavan and galliard share the same mode and some melodic similarities, they are not necessarily unique in doing so (though Mudarra did experiment with suites for vihuela among the other pieces in the publication). Rather, they represent a more traditional pairing of courtly dances, for which numerous Spanish composers wrote music (and from which the Elizabethan English learned the fashion). Consonant with his tradition, Mudarra even suggests a noble dedicatee for the pair: the unidentified "Alexander" of the pavan's subtitle. Also completely within the tradition, the opening pavan strides forth in a stately duple meter; this was the court's entry dance, a processional that might need strong accents and repeated sections. Yet though Mudarra includes the strong duple accents, he imposes over them an equally strong pattern of three measures per harmony, with eight such groups. The second dance expected is the galliard, a more lively triple-meter dance. Mudarra complies, and his galliard shares mode and overall harmonic character, clear-cut phrase structure, and even some melodic motives and textural alternations (fast ornamentation and thick chords). Cleverly, the composer also returns to the rhythmic complexity of the pavan: the galliard contains larger cross-rhythms that preserve the hints of ambiguity between duple and triple meter.

© Timothy Dickey, Rovi