Editing Music of Spain (section)

==Medieval period==
[[File:Cantiga flute.jpg|thumb|left|''Cantigas de Santa maría'', medieval Spain]]
[[File:Codex Las Huelgas.gif|thumb|right|[[Codex Las Huelgas]], a medieval Spanish music manuscript, circa 1300 AD.]]
[[Isidore of Seville]] wrote about the local music in the 6th century. His influences were predominantly Greek, and yet he was an original thinker, and recorded some of the first details about the early music of the Christian church. He perhaps is most famous in musical history for declaring that it was not possible to notate sounds, an assertion which revealed his ignorance of the notational system of ancient Greece, suggesting that this knowledge had been lost with the fall of the Roman Empire in the west.{{Citation needed|date=July 2013}}

The [[Moors]] of [[Al-Andalus]] were usually relatively tolerant of Christianity and Judaism, especially during the first three centuries of their long presence in the Iberian peninsula, during which Christian and [[Jewish music]] continued to flourish. [[Music notation]] was developed in Spain as early as the 8th century (the so-called Visigothic [[neume]]s) to notate the chant and other sacred [[Christian music|music of the Christian church]], but this obscure notation has not yet been deciphered by scholars, and exists only in small fragments.{{Citation needed|date=July 2013}}  The music of the early medieval Christian church in Spain is known, misleadingly, as the "[[Mozarabic Chant]]", which developed in isolation prior to the Islamic invasion and was not subject to the Papacy's enforcement of the [[Gregorian chant]] as the standard around the time of [[Charlemagne]], by which time the Muslim armies had conquered most of the Iberian peninsula. As the Christian [[reconquista]] progressed, these chants were almost entirely replaced by the Gregorian standard, once Rome had regained control of the Iberian churches. The style of Spanish popular songs of the time is presumed to have been heavily influenced by the music of the Moors, especially in the south, but as much of the country still spoke various Latin dialects while under Moorish rule (known today as the [[Mozarabic language|Mozarabic]]) earlier musical folk styles from the pre-Islamic period continued in the countryside where most of the population lived, in the same way as the Mozarabic Chant continued to flourish in the churches. In the royal Christian courts of the reconquistors, music like the [[Cantigas de Santa Maria]], also reflected Moorish influences. Other important medieval sources include the [[Codex Calixtinus]] collection from [[Santiago de Compostela]] and the [[Codex Las Huelgas]] from [[Burgos]]. The so-called [[Llibre Vermell de Montserrat]] (red book) is an important devotional collection from the 14th century.{{Citation needed|date=July 2013}}