What’s the Motive? Thematic Considerations and Queestions of Symbolism in Josquin’s Missa de Beata Virgine as Further Revealed Through the Music of Morales

Much of course has been written about Josquin’s Missa de Beata Virgine and, in what concerns this paper, the famous sesquialtera passage in the superius at ‘Qui cum Patre’ in the Credo and the general contrapuntal complexity of this passage is frequently highlighted and commented on. The conceivable raison d’être of this passage, however, may still be open to interpretation. In his classic Spanish Cathedral Music in the Golden Age (1960), Robert Stevenson was the first to propose that this use of sesquialtera was for symbolic Trinitarian purposes, an interpretation he relates to a similar use of blackened (triple-time) notation in the Christe of Morales’s Missa Mille regretz and in further works by Josquin. This and further aspects of symbolism in the music of Josquin have since been thoroughly explored by Willem Elders, although there exists some hesitancy in embracing the Trinitarian interpretation of the ‘Qui cum Patre’ passage in current literature.
Springboarding from a consideration of the thematic and contrapuntal contexts of the sesquialtera passages in both Josquin’s Beata Virgine mass and Morales’s Missa Mille regretz, this paper presents a yet further set of intriguing connections between these and other works by the two composers. Combined with questions of motivic interplay and recall, these involve important structural and compositional decisions that were evidently made for symbolic purposes, serving to underline the meaning (usually Trinitarian or Christological) of the texts being set. In his insightful interpretation and emulation of Josquin, therefore, Morales acts as a vital historical witness for interpreting Josquin’s musical exegesis.