List of Cantigas by length

This page presents a list of Cantigas ordered by length, from shortest to longest, where the length is calculated as the total number of sung (or spoken) syllables for all stanzas with all repeats of the refrain. Clicking on the incipit of any Cantiga takes you directly to its Resources tab, which provides some rough estimates of the time required to perform it in full.

See also the bottom of the page for some interesting statistics.

The first graph below is a simple chart of the lengths of the Cantigas in numeric order—i.e. Mettmann's numbering and mine, which is basically the same as the [E] manuscript (and with a few exceptions [T]). I have coloured the bars for numbers divisible by ten in red: these are mostly the Cantigas de Loor, and you can see that they are generally the shortest compositions. Cantigas with numbers divisible by five but not ten (i.e. 5, 15, 25 etc.) are coloured in green, and these are amongst the longest, especially in the first two hundred. Prologues A and B are on the left, in orange. The nine duplicated Cantigas aren't included, hence the gaps on the right.

Processing the raw length data a bit further we get the following histogram, which gives a good overall picture of the distribution of cantigas of different lengths. The x-axis shows the total number of syllables, to be read as ranges (or ‘bins’) 0–199, 200–399, 400–599 and so on, and the y-axis shows the number of Cantigas in each range of lengths. So, for example, there are just seven Cantigas with less than 200 syllables, and 92 that have between 800 and 999.

It should be clear that the most typical Cantigas are around 800 syllables in length when sung in full, which probably implies a performance time of something between five and ten minutes, depending on how ornamented the music is, how fast it is taken, and the number of instrumental interludes. If you are presenting a concert and want to pack in as much variety as possible, that might seem like a lot, and you may be tempted to stick to performing much shorter Cantigas as an easier way to keep the audience stimulated. But in doing that, you're likely to end up presenting a rather skewed picture of the true nature of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. So I would heartily encourage all performers to take the bull by the horns and perform at least some of the longer Cantigas in full, as they were meant to be. Don't forget that they are stories, after all, and who wants to listen to a story with bits missing?