11 - Making a motet: Josquin’sAve Maria … virgo serena

Summary

The quest for facts about Josquin des Prez's Ave Maria virgo serena narrows down to study of the work itself - its words and its musical content. The words in particular demand attention especially when aligned with known biographical, liturgical, political, or historical facts. The text of Josquin's Ave Maria is seemingly unique to Marian motet; no composer before Josquin is known to have set precisely these words, nor has the text as a whole been found in any independent literary source. There are good reasons for believing that Josquin began work on his motet by pondering the opening of Regis's Ave Maria. Regis had discovered that the first segment of the plainchant melody can be superimposed on itself to generate fuga (imitation) that answers at the unison. If discoveries can still be made about pieces as familiar as Josquin's Ave Maria, then vast possibilities surely remain for probing the inner workings of fifteenth-century polyphony at large.