“For the Wit of the Double Entendres”. New Perspectives on the Relationship between Music and Poetry in Seventeenth-century Spain

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to knowledge about the relationship between music and poetry in seventeenth-century Spain, by studying a specific case. The work in question is an anonymous piece preserved in the Libro de tonos humanos (1656) and whose text was written by Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza. Although this work has been analysed in previous studies, this article highlights some of its unknown aspects, such as the figurative meaning it conceals, its extensive use of double entendre and the way in which this is manifest in music. It also demonstrates that these procedures can be extrapolated to other works from this songbook, making their identification useful for future studies about the tono and the villancico. Finally, various hypotheses are formulated about the possibility that there are veiled references in the text to specific situations and people from Hapsburg Madrid.