The Flower of Paradise

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 J. 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 these devotional forms and the words and music of secular love songs of the period. The Flower of Paradise examines 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 devotion 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 will open up new ways of thinking about the history and development of secular and sacred music and the Marian tradition for scholars, students, and anyone with an interest in medieval and Renaissance religious culture.

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