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Una de las claves esenciales en el pensamiento literario-musical de Vicente Espinel viene dada por su sensibilidad e inclinación hacia los textos poéticos destinados al canto y a la representación performativa, como se evidencia tanto en la pareja musical Liseo y Célida de Diversas rimas (1591) como en Marcos de Obregón (1618). Desde dicho prisma conceptual tendente a la hibridación artística entre literatura y música, este artículo aporta un análisis consagrado a la presencia de la melografía y el acompañamiento de vihuela y guitarra en el imaginario creativo de Espinel. Para ello, se atiende al humanismo musical hispalense, en el que se formó el autor de Ronda junto a Francisco Guerrero, y a la tratadística circunscrita a los instrumentos cordófonos, con especial atención a la Declaración de instrumentos musicales (1555) de Juan Bermudo. Por último, se tienen en cuenta otras relaciones intertextuales de calado que atañen a los vínculos estéticos entre Espinel y tres escritores de la Edad de Oro elogiados por él mismo: su discípulo Lope de Vega, Miguel de Cervantes y Luis de Góngora., One of the essential keys in the literary-musical thought of Vicente Espinel is given by his sensitivity and inclination towards poetic texts intended for singing and performative representation, as evidenced both in the musical couple Liseo and Célida in Diversas rimas (1591) as in Marcos de Obregón (1618). From this conceptual perspective tending to the artistic hybridization between literature and music, this article provides an analysis dedicated to the presence of melogra-phy and the accompaniment of vihuela and guitar in Espinel’s creative imagination. For this, it attends to Seville’s musical humanism, in which the author of Ronda was trained together with Francisco Guerrero, and to the treatises circumscribed to chordophone instruments, with special attention to the Declaración de instru-mentos musicales (1555) by Juan Bermudo. Finally, other important intertextual relationships are taken into account that concern the aesthetic links between Espi-nel and three writers of the Golden Age praised by him: his disciple Lope de Vega, Miguel de Cervantes and Luis de Góngora

Only two known 16th-century music books printed in the Iberian world were dedicated to women: El arte Tripharia (1550) by Juan Bermudo (c.1510–after 1559) and Arte de canto llano (1594) by Francisco de Montanos (c.1528–after 1595). The first one, dedicated to Isabel Pacheco, Abbess of the Santa Clara convent in Montilla (Córdoba), was addressed to her nuns. The second, dedicated to the noblewoman Catalina de Zúñiga y Sandoval (1555–1628), was a plainsong handbook consisting of only the first section of a previous work by Montanos, Arte de musica theorica y pratica (1592), which had been dedicated to Catalina’s husband, Fernando Ruiz de Castro, 6th Count of Lemos. El arte Tripharia has usually been taken as evidence to claim that Renaissance Iberian music treatises considered women as intellectually inferior learners, to be taught passively only the practical side of music. This article, in addition to questioning received opinion about El arte Tripharia, focuses on the connections (generally overlooked) between Montanos’s Arte de canto llano and Catalina de Zúñiga. Both the dedication by Montanos and the prefatory material of other books dedicated to Catalina de Zúñiga support the hypothesis that this noblewoman was not a passive receptor or a prospective user of Montanos’s book, but might in fact have commissioned the publication of this work to serve her own agenda as a religious patroness. I will argue that these two music handbooks dedicated to Isabel Pacheco and Catalina de Zúñiga were not conceived nor regarded at that time as books for ‘women’ as a category, relating these two cases to the wider debates about the role of women in the creation and transmission of culture and the representation of women in literature and art.