On October 11, 2025, the V&A East Storehouse played host to a remarkable confluence of history, architecture, and music during the multidisciplinary event Focus On: Torrijos Ceiling. Standing directly beneath the magnificent wooden structures of the historic Torrijos Ceiling, singer Katerina García delivered a spellbinding five-song performance that bridged the twilight of the Middle Ages and the dawn of Modernity. The event celebrated the intricate art, craft, and historical context of the ceiling—a breathtaking artifact once designed to impress the elite gatherings of the Castilian aristocracy inside the Palace of Torrijos.
The day-long programme featured practical workshops, pop-up talks, object encounters, and contemporary responses designed to unpack the historical moment in which the ceiling was created. For García, the setting offered a rare acoustic and visual communion with the past. To honor the legacy of the artifact and test its acoustic resonance, she curated a specialized repertoire of Medieval and Early Modern songs. Each piece was carefully selected to illustrate the rich cultural intersections and cross-pollination that defined late-15th-century Iberia, a frontier territory suspended between distinct artistic, linguistic, and religious traditions.
The Historical Sources of Courtly and Popular Music
Music occupied a central place in the entertainment culture of the Castilian and Aragonese courts. Historical chroniclers and modern musicologists alike have extensively documented how the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragón—whose joint reign spanned from 1476 to 1504—surrounded themselves with vibrant collectives of poets and composers. This environment built upon a long, rich peninsular tradition of royal patronage, transforming the royal courts into multicultural and multilingual hubs. These spaces reflected the prestige-seeking ambitions of dynasties linked by transnational marriage alliances, drawing heavily on Catalan, Occitan, French, and Italian artistic influences.
The refined tastes of the monarchs inevitably shaped the entertainment practices of the high aristocracy, including the household of Gutierre de Cárdenas and Teresa Enríquez, lord and lady of the Palace of Torrijos. Among the most prestigious literary and musical figures of this courtly milieu were Juan del Encina (1468–1529), a pioneering playwright and poet; Francisco de Peñalosa (1470–1528), a celebrated master of sacred and profane polyphony; and court chapel master Juan de Anchieta (1462–1523).
The primary documentary witness to this vibrant era is the Cancionero Musical de Palacio (Palace Songbook), discovered in 1870 by musicologist Francisco Asenjo Barbieri within the library of the Royal Palace in Madrid. Catalogued as manuscript MS II–1335 and fully digitized by Patrimonio Nacional, the collection has continuously captivated academics and musicians since its discovery. Compiled between the mid-1470s and the first two decades of the 16th century, the songbook comprises 458 sacred and profane musical pieces, predominantly polyphonic settings for up to four voices. While the lyrics are largely in Castilian, the collection also features Italian, Catalan, Occitan, Latin, Portuguese, and even two compositions in Basque, underscoring a remarkably international courtly environment.
Crucially, the Cancionero reveals a profound appreciation for popular musical forms and oral traditions alongside high courtly art. The most heavily represented genres are the villancico—literally meaning "song of peasants"—and the romance, the traditional Hispanic ballad. García leveraged these genres to bridge elite courtly culture with the broader Hispanic oral tradition. While the first three pieces of her performance represented courtly musical themes favored by royal power, the final two pieces shifted focus to the parallel orally-transmitted traditions shaped by the seismic political decisions of the era.
Specifically, the final two songs belonged to the Sephardic Jewish diaspora, whose communities were expelled from the Crowns of Castile and Aragón in 1492 by a decree signed by the Catholic Monarchs immediately following the conquest of Granada. In exile, Sephardic communities preserved Hispanic romances as vital cultural heirlooms while simultaneously composing new kantigas and komplas that merged inherited patterns with distinct diasporic identities. For her performance, García performed all five pieces with a solo voice, utilizing a sustained chord from a shruti box to anchor and amplify her vocals in place of traditional polyphony or choir accompaniment.
Exploring the Repertoire
The curated performance opened with Juan del Encina’s Más vale trocar plazer por dolores (It is better to trade pleasure for torment), catalogued as piece 201 in the Cancionero Musical de Palacio. Composed in the traditional villancico strophic form with a refrain, the four-voice piece explores a timeless dilemma: whether to lead a serene, loveless existence or succumb to the sweet, tempestuous passions and inevitable torments of love.
The second piece, Qués de ti, desconsolado? (What has become of you, bereaved one?), is a political romance also composed by Juan del Encina. Catalogued as piece 52 in the Cancionero, it celebrates the capitulation of Granada on January 2, 1492, portraying the Catholic Monarchs as instruments of Divine Providence. In a direct, dramatic address to Boabdil, the final Muslim King of Granada, the poet urges the deposed ruler to embrace the Christian faith to redeem his soul, utilizing sophisticated anaphora and semantic parallelisms characteristic of Castilian popular romance.
The third selection was the anonymous villancico zejelesco, Tres morillas máenamoran en Jaén (Three Moorish maidens captivate me in Jaén), found as pieces 24 and 25 in the Cancionero. Modeled on the zajal—an Andalusi strophic poetic form composed in dialectal Arabic—the song features eight-syllable verse stanzas structured in triplets ending in a refrain. The lyrics describe three Moorish maidens, Aisha, Fatima, and Mariam, traveling to Jaén to harvest olives and apples, blending sensual metaphors with the historical realities of the Christian-Muslim frontier. Its enduring popularity is evidenced by Federico García Lorca’s famous 20th-century adaptation and harmonization of the melody.
Shifting into the Sephardic tradition of North Africa, the fourth piece was the Romance de Abenámar. First published in 1595 by Pérez de Hita, the ballad recounts a fictionalized dialogue between the Nasrid sultan Yusuf IV ibn al-Mawl and King Juan II of Castile as they look out over the Alhambra in Granada. While the original Christian version personifies Granada as a captive beauty defended fiercely by her Muslim lord, the Sephardic variant strips away this metaphor to emphasize truth as a virtue and focus entirely on the architectural splendor of the city.
The performance concluded with Morena me yaman (They call me the Dark One), a traditional Sephardic wedding song (kantiga). Drawing inspiration from the Dark Maiden in the Song of Solomon, this piece traces its textual roots to an early Modern Castilian romance recorded in 1626. Its verses incorporate symbolic references to traditional Sephardic wedding ceremonies, including ornate bridal attire and the kiddushin, serving as a poignant final testament to Hispanic-Jewish intertextuality.
Under the soaring wooden architecture of the Torrijos Ceiling at the V&A East Storehouse, García’s performance temporarily transformed the modern museum space. The intricate carvings and latticework of the historic dome captured and amplified the vocals, creating an immersive acoustic environment that momentarily transported both performer and audience back to the complex cultural landscapes of late 15th-century Iberia.