Considerations on the Choir and Musical Liturgy of the Piedra Monastery between the 12th and 16th Centuries

Abstract

The Monastery of Santa María de Piedra was founded in 1195. Like most of the male Cistercian abbeys of the Crown of Aragon, it lost almost all of its artistic heritage in the 19th century. Although the information currently available is incomplete, there is enough to affirm that it had two choirs, one of monks and the other of converted brothers, both with wooden stalls. Regarding organology, in the reliquary altar piece where the Holy Doubt of Cimballa was venerated, painted in 1390, eight musician angels are represented, whose instruments allow an idea of the enrichment of the liturgy that was interpreted in Piedra. In 1496 it is recorded that Pascual de Mallén built a large organ. Of the musical repertoire, we only know the prose of a Hosanna, thanks to the epigraph that appears in the nimbus of one of the musical angels, the information collected in the Consueta of the 15th century, a manuscript preserved in the National Library, and an Antiphonary used in November, composed by Fernando Liñán in 1597, which is kept in the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña. The study of the choir and the musical liturgy of the Piedra Monastery between the 12th and 16th centuries is proposed.