Page "Cantigas de Santa Maria" Paragraph 9

The Cantigas are preserved in four manuscripts: To ( códice de Toledo ), T, F ( códice de Florencia ) and E ( códice de los músicos ).

E is currently held in El Escorial and contains the largest number of songs ( 406 Cantigas, plus the Introduction and the Prologue ); it contains 41 carefully detailed miniatures and many illuminated letters.

To, the Toledo codex now kept in the National Library in Madrid, is the earliest collection and contains 129 songs.

Although not illustrated, it is richly decorated with pen flourished initials, and great care has been taken over its construction.

The T and F ( Florence ) manuscripts are sister volumes.

T contains 195 surviving cantigas ( 8 are missing due to loss of folios ) which roughly correspond in order to the first two hundred in E, each song being illustrated with either 6 or 12 miniatures that depict scenes from the cantiga.

F follows the same format but has only 111 cantigas, of which 7 have no text, only miniatures.

These are basically a subset of those found in the second half of E, but are presented here in a radically different order.

F was never finished, and so no music was ever added.

Only the empty staves display the intention to add musical notation to the codex at a later date.

It is generally thought that the codices were constructed during Alfonso's lifetime, To perhaps in the 1270s, and T / F and E in the early 1280s up until the time of his death in 1284.