ABSTRACT
Sacred songs in the vernacular—whether referred to as chançonetas, ensaladas, villancicos, cantadas or pastorelas—are counted as one of the largest corpus of music cultivated in Spain, and, to some extent, in Portugal as well as the areas of influence of both countries, from the 15th to the 19th century. Form and style, both poetic and musical, changed, sometimes radically, over this period, to the extent that it is not easy to find parallels between a simple two-voice polyphonic song from the Cancionero Musical de Astudillo in the early 15th century and a large polychoral and polysectional cantata of the mid-18th century, not to mention the multiform ensaladas of the 16th century, the burlesque and sometimes transgressive jácaras, or the exalted, contemplative and almost mystical tonos a lo divino of the late 17th century.
