ABSTRACT
En memoria d’Alixandre is a romance and one of a number of ballads in the Palace Songbook to extol the Catholic Monarchs’ victories during the Reconquest of Granada. The language, verse forms, and musical style used in Juan de Anchieta’s songs place them in the specific court context of the time of the Catholic Monarchs; their creation and function was similar to that of other European courts of the time. The villancico, disparaged earlier in the fifteenth century for its rustic origins, was thematically very diverse, including poems of courtly love as well as bawdy ditties and popular dance songs. The success of song as part of courtly entertainment in the second half of the fifteenth century was almost certainly heightened by the introduction of literary and musical puns and coded messages, often full of sexual innuendo, and/or making oblique reference to individual members of a closed circle of the elite.
