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• Ave Regina Coelorum / O decus innocenti

Ave Regina Coelorum / O decus innocenti

for 4 instruments.

This rather unusual work is based on the tenor part of a fifteenth-century classic, Walter Frye´s Ave regina coelorum (printed in EML 149). It appears in Petrucci´s Motetti C (Venice, 1504). Although the text “O decus innocentie” appears in the discantus, it does not fit the music particularly well, and the work seems more like an instrumental arrangement of Frye´s well-known original. Petrucci´s early motet collections do in fact include purely instrumental works, such as Ghiselin´s 4-part La Spagna (printed in Motetti A). Formally the present piece follows Frye´s model, with the repetition of the second half of the first section at the end of the piece. Harmonically the piece exploits the potential tonal ambiguity of Frye´s tenor, with many cadences on C: while many Bs in the discantus seem to require flattening, there are plenty that must stay as B naturals, because of the movement of the bass. A relatively unusual feature of this work is the range of the altus, which overlaps with the cantus: this alone may indicate that the piece was conceived instrumentally.
The original note values have been quartered, which has resulted in a rather more “black” note-picture than we are perhaps used to, but brings out, I think, the essentially elaborate nature of this music. Editorial accidentals appear in the usual way, printed small above the stave, applying to the one note only; original accidentals are taken as applying to the whole bar. The text in italics under the tenor part is taken from the original Walter Frye Ave Regina.