The Flower of Paradise Marian Devotion and Secular Song in Medieval and Renaissance Music

There is a striking similarity between Marian devotional songs and secular love songs of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Two disparate genres--one sacred, the other secular; one Latin, the other vernacular--both praise an idealized, impossibly virtuous woman. Each does so through highly stylized derivations of traditional medieval song forms -- Marian prayer derived from earlier Gregorian chant, and love songs and lyrics from medieval courtly song. Yet despite their obvious similarities, the two musical and poetic traditions have rarely been studied together. Author David Rothenberg takes on this task with remarkable success, producing a useful and broad introduction to Marian music and liturgy, and then coupling that with an incisive comparative analysis of this devotional form with the words and music of secular love songs of the period. The Flower of Paradiseexamines the interplay of Marian devotional and secular poetics within polyphonic music from ca. 1200 to ca. 1500. Through case studies of works that demonstrate a specific symbolic resonance between Marian devotional and secular song, the book illustrates the distinctive ethos of this period in European culture. Rothenberg makes use of an impressive command of liturgical and religious studies, literature and poetry, and art history to craft a study with wide application across disciplinary boundaries. With its broad scope and unique, incisive analysis, this book is suited for scholars, students, and general readers alike. Undergraduate and graduate students of musicology, Medieval and Renaissance studies, comparative literature, art history, Western reglious history, and music history--especially that of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and sacred music--will find this book a useful and informative resource on the period.The Flower of Paradiseis also of interest to those with a particular dedication to any of its diverse subject areas. For individuals involved in religious organizations or those who frequent Medieval or Renaissance cultural sites and museums, this book will deepen their knowledge and open up new ways of thinking about the history and development of secular and sacred music and the Marian tradition.

David J. Rothenberg is Associate Professor of Music at Case Western Reserve University and the 2007 recipient of the Alfred Einstein Award of the American Musicological Society.

Tables
Music Examples
Figures
Abbreviations
A Note on Texts and Translations

1. Introduction: Devotion to the Virgin and Earthly Love
Sacred and Secular Realms
Symbolic Harmony in Medieval and Renaissance Polyphony
Liturgical and Devotional Framework
Foundations and Case Studies

2. The Assumption Story in Two Thirteenth-Century Motet Families
The Narrative of First and Second Assumption Vespers
The Flower, Christ, and Mary in a French Motet on Flos filius eius
Mary's Ascent to Heaven in a Bilingual Regnat Motet

3. Springtime and Renewal over the In seculum Tenor
Spring, Eastertide, and Mary
Springtime Dance, a Pastourelle Motet, and the In seculum Hockets
Intertextuality in an In seculum Motet Family
Into the Fourteenth Century

4. Guillaume Dufay's Vergene bella, the Cantilena Motet, and the Italian Lyric Tradition
Cantilena, Chanson, and Cantilena Motet
Theologizing Love in Italian Lyric
The Canzone and Vernacular Eloquence

5. Walter Frye's Ave regina caelorum in Musical and Visual Culture
Frye's Tenor as a Secular Cantus Firmus
Ave regina caelorum as the Song of Angels
Postscript: Earthly and Heavenly Music in a Painting of the Assumption

6. Mary, De tous biens plaine
"For the salvation of singers": Loyset Compère's Omnium bonorum plena and the Annunciation
De tous biens plaine in a Credo and an Agnus Dei
The Voice of the Virgin in Josquin's Victimae paschali laudes

7. Comme femme desconfortée and the Redemptive Power of the Virgin's Sorrow
Josquin's Stabat mater and Mary's Lamentation
The Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and Two Motets by Johannes Ghiselin
The Dormition and Assumption in Heinrich Isaac's Angeli archangeli
Hieronymus Vinders's Missa Stabat mater and the End of a Tradition

Works Cited