What’s the Motive? : Thematic Considerations and Questions 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 its general contrapuntal complexity is frequently highlighted and commented on, although the possible raison d’être of this passage may still be open to interpretation. In his classic Spanish Cathedral Music in the Golden Age (1960), Robert Stevenson proposed 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 other works by Josquin. This and further aspects of symbolism in the music of Josquin have since been thoroughly explored by Willem Elders. Some hesitancy in embracing the Trinitarian interpretation of the ‘Qui cum Patre’ passage, however, may be expressed 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 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 conceivably made for symbolic purposes, serving to underline the meaning (mostly Trinitarian or Christological) of the texts being set. In his insightful interpretation and emulation of Josquin, therefore, Morales can perhaps be seen a vital 'historical witness' for interpreting Josquin’s creative exegesis.