Tarazona 5: A Reassessment

The manuscript Tarazona 5 has had, for a number of reasons, only a minor role in our understanding of Spanish church music in the Renaissance. It deserves a reassessment. The source consists of three sections. Two are in the same hand and share some paper; these have traditionally been dated to 1517–21, when Juan García de Basurto, who contributed a Requiem, was serving at Tarazona cathedral. A look at the rest of the music, however, suggests a later date, almost certainly the 1530s or 1540s. The third part is later still, from the 1550s or 1560s. With these datings and an updated inventory as a basis, the article goes on to consider the original purpose and character of the three sections; the light they shed on two sixteenth-century inventories of the Tarazona cathedral library; the possibility of lost manuscripts that were part of the same project; the source’s attributions to Peñalosa, only one of which proves to be at all plausible; and the significance of sacred polyphony that was more useful then than it may be imposing today.