CSM Cantiga 276 Lyrics: Quena Virgen por sennor tevér †Cantiga 276Only four stanzas of this cantiga (5, 6, 9 and 10) properly fit the music as written. The others, including the first, have one syllable too many in the last two lines for the number of notes and ligatures provided, with the same text in both [E] and [F] (the latter with no musical notation, of course). It appears from [E] that the music scribe was once again determined to make the vuelta match the refrain exactly, despite the fact that the last two lines of the first stanza comprise nine natural syllables, and the last line of the refrain has only eight. The scribe therefore wrote a single plica .oron above the -çoso of viçoso (see E1 on the Music tab), presumably with the conscious intention that the ligature be broken into separate notes to accommodate this word, as well as similarly placed words in seven other stanzas (caudéla, deanteiro, esse and so on).

Note that I'm diverging from Elmes here, who transcribes the music as if the ligature .ra written over the vi- of viçoso were broken instead; but given his rhythmic interpretation, this puts unnatural stress on the final syllable of viçoso, rather than the penultimate as would be expected. Also, Elmes' comment that the lyrics for all twelve stanzas "have three syllable words in the same position" is not correct; it is true of seven stanzas at most.