La música y los músicos, objetos exóticos para configurar la imagen del caballero y su casa

Zusammenfassung

During the reigns of Juan II and Enrique IV the Castilian nobility used music as a tool to identify their established ideals in one of the most interesting moments in the development of taste for exoticism and sensuality in Europe, when the sophistication of courts was measured even at an international level by attention to and perception of how to awaken the senses. In the most exclusive areas, descriptions are careful to mention their ability to play, sing or dance, private inventories collected musical instruments, and chamber records list numerous organists, comperes, harpists and chamber singers . Meanwhile, in the public arena we find references to exchanges of musicians between the court of the king and his lords, Castilian knights who enjoy musical experiences on their travels (which would never dare to tell if they occurred in Castile), or to musicians found in noble Castilian society who were highly regarded in distant courts. As an essential element in the demonstration of a life of luxury, musicians were represented in the patterns of crockery and textiles, and dressed to match the furniture of chapels where they performed. They would have been dressed in outlandish costumes designed to highlight their foreign origin, and even required to teach slaves to sing, at the height of the culture and its growing to associate music with the notion of luxury