This is the sixth volume that Eduardo Paniagua and his Early Music Group are publishing in the ambitious plan that aims at recording the over 400 existing Cantigas de Santa Maria. Gathered together here under the heading Caballeros and divided into two groups (I: honour, love, revenge, and conversion; and II: hunting, Celestine, and protection of Santa Maria) are 11 cantigas with the common denominator of narrating miracles related by knightly themes. Continuing in the interpretative style of his previous volumes, Paniagua does not agree to a more or less simple reconstruction, but in each case tries to evoke, by dint of imagination, the social universe that this represents or that the actual story tells. In this way a tourney is described in sound by means of instrumental interludes entrusted to aerophones and drumming percussion, the singing of strophes in dramatised form if the text calls for it, or the emphasising of some key verses in the narration by reciting instead of singing them.

Likewise highlighted is the importance given to the instrumental design, and not only by the broad and varied organological palette employed, which includes some peculiarities, but also by the presence of preludes and interludes performed with outstanding technical quality (some pieces, in fact, are performed "only" instrumentally). All these questions, and others that are very controversial, like the introduction in some pieces of simple polyphony in the form of a canon (something which Savall has already done in this same repertoire), are justified in the very comprehensive and carefully prepared booklet that accompanies the disc. Lively, vigorous, imaginative... these are adjectives which perfectly suit this version, the contribution of which is undeniable, of the Cantigas de Santa María. JESÚS MARTÍN GALÁN