cançó

Term used to designate the text of a narrativesong or ballad in a large part of the linguistic area, probably originating from the troubadour cansó genre. On Majorca and in certain parts of the Ebre and Valencia Regions, it is called cançó llarga (long song), to differentiate it from the cançó curta (short song), or simply cançó, referring to texts with few lines. In north eastern parts of Catalonia and on Majorca, about a quarter of all ballads were sung multipart around a main melody, just as was the case with religious songs. The simplest formulation is the homorhythmic song in parallel thirds (rarely in sixths), which can occur throughout the whole song or only during the chorus. In the cadential chords, these thirds can appear as a triad chord in its fundamental form. The melodies of these songs are almost always tonal and in the major mode. In many cases, the main part is the lower of the two parallel ones and ends on the tonic, whereas the higher ends on the third degree of the scale. Nevertheless, the singers can perform either part separately as independent melodies. More sporadically, other procedures appear, such as drones or mobile drones, more usual in religious polyphony. Song in parallel thirds with a third voice singing an independent bass can be deduced from certain recordings, but it is much less common, in the same way that three-part parallelism at intervals of thirds and fifths in ballads is also hypothetical. Multipart singing was very common in this repertory, despite the limited evidence found in published song collections - the work of collectors convinced that popular song had to be simple and uncomplicated and therefore monodic. Marià Aguiló (1993:72) wrote a superb description of the way a group of men performed ballads in three voices, between about 1850 and 1868: “In Bruguera, the mayor and several villagers, all adults, sang countless old songs in a choir for me, all of them extremely good. Among them the Catalonian one: “Quien pudiese dormir, señora, una noche sin temor”. In those songs with a chorus, which constitute the majority, they select the three best voices to sing the romance: bass, tenor and treble, and then the middle voices and all those present who wish to sing the chorus in unison [...]. The effect they produce is extremely pleasing and solemn".