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• Ave Maris Stella, 5 settings from German sources

Ave Maris Stella, 5 settings from German sources

c. 1500 for 4 voices or instruments.

These five settings of the hymn Ave maris stella, are taken from three substantial German manuscripts of around 1500: Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 1494 (so-called Apel Codex), MS 3154 of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich (so-called Leopold Codex), and MS mus. 40021 of the Staatsbibliothek (Preußischer Kulturbesitz) in Berlin. In all five settings the plainsong melody (given below) appears to some extent in all parts, though not surprisingly it is the discantus and tenor parts that have it in its most recognisable form; even in the Hofhaimer setting, where the lowest part is most obviously the cantus firmus, there are cadential elaborations. In the Agricola setting the discantus and tenor parts are in strict canon. Modally speaking the opening of the Ave maris stella melody sets the composer an interesting problem: whether to keep the characteristic B natural on the third note, or to flatten it; both solutions are found here, together with an alternative, rather unusual one - Hofhaimer avoids the problem altogether by changing the third note to a C.
In this edition the original note values have been halved. Editorial accidentals are shown in the usual way, that is printed small above the stave; these apply to the one note only. The original accidentals are taken as applying to the whole bar. In no. 1 the flat in the key-signature disappears a few bars before the end in the source, and there does seem to be a shift in tonality: here we have used naturals in parentheses. The setting by Agricola is in fact only the first section of his work: it originally has a secunda pars in three parts. All editorial text underlaid appears in italics.
In a liturgical setting the polyphonic settings would have been used for the even-numbered verses (2, 4, 6), with the remaining verses sung to plainsong (see below). In the sources for the present pieces the scribes have been rather casual about which verses to underlay. Only in the Agricola are the proper three verses underlaid, and even here they are not complete (the added text is in italics in the edition). As there is a possibility that some of these settings may have been conceived for instruments (especially the Hofhaimer version) we have not added the normal even-numbered verses. Also we assume that in a complete rendering of the hymn performers may want to make their own decisions about which settings to use, and in which order. Of course, these pieces all work well as instrumental numbers in their own right.