Quam Pulchra Es by John Dunstable
For some reason I've been thinking about the Song of Songs. That thought led me to investigate the ones I've sent our in our Friday Motet series. Turns out there have been four of them, by Victoria, Lassus, Lupi and good ol' Anonymous. Not on the list to date is John Dunstable (1390-1453) and his 'Quam pulchra es', the first Song of Songs motet I ever sang or conducted, and a small masterpiece of the transition period from the (musical) Medieval to the Renaissance.
The piece is scored for three voices, and is mostly homophonic, without the pervasive imitation of the high Renaissance style. It perfectly sets its steamy text to music which is also steamy--hard to define this, but not hard to hear.
The text is a good example of a wasf, a textual form in the Song of Songs in which one of the lovers describes and praises the other in metaphorical terms, often moving up (or down) the beloved's body. In this case, the wasf is spoken by the young man about the young woman; she responds with a most intimate invitation.
In case this all sounds strange to you coming from the Bible, I'm including below the introduction I wrote for our 2016 Sacred Realms concert, in which the Green Mountain Consort performed diverse settings from the Song of Songs. It provides some context for today's motet. If you want to explore further, the translation by Ariel and Chana Bloch mentioned at the end might be a good place to start.
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Welcome!
“No one in Israel ever disputed the status of the Song of Songs…for the whole world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the holiest of the holy.”
Rabbi Akiva (d. 135 CE)
High praise!—and certainly well-deserved. Even in translation, the Song of Songs is one of the most gorgeous collections of lyric poetry we have, right up there with Petrarch’s Canzoniere and the sonnets of Shakespeare.
But the first question which arises for many people is: How did this love-story get into the Bible? As Ariel and Chana Bloch point out, “The name of God is never once mentioned. Nor is there any reference to Israel’s history. The joy of the two lovers, the human body as an object of admiration, the beauty of nature appreciated for its own sake—all seem out of place in the Bible.”
The short answer is that we do not know exactly how most of the books of the Bible became canonical. In the case of the Song of Songs, its misattribution to Solomon, one of Israel’s legendary kings, may have played a role. An allegorical interpretation of the Song as concerned with the love between God and the people of Israel certainly had a part. Or perhaps the Song of Songs was simply too beloved by too many people not to be included in the canon.
We are so lucky that it’s there! The story, told not in narrative form but in a series of vignettes, of two young lovers in the springtime—discovering each other, reveling in their pastoral surroundings, extolling the beauties of nature and of each other, waiting eagerly for the next opportunity to meet—is so fresh and at the same time so familiar that, for all its personal detail, it seems to express an archetype, a universal human experience which speaks to us directly across great expanses of time and space.
Renaissance composers adored the Song of Songs. Our program is drawn from a vast repertoire of musical settings, covering the entire period, and extending back into the late Medieval period and forward into the early Baroque. We have organized the program around recurrent themes in the Song of Songs (including aspects of love, nature, urgency, strength, fecundity), highlighting these with sometimes diverse settings.
Our composers drew their texts from three sources: The Vulgate Bible, originally translated and assembled by St Jerome in the late 4th-century; the Luther Bible, translated from Greek by Martin Luther and first published in its entirety in 1534; and the King James Bible (1611). Our work on this program has been greatly enriched by several annotated translations directly from the Hebrew, including those by Ariel and Chana Bloch, Robert Alter, and, above all, Marcia Falk, whose translation is absolutely inspiring, and whose commentary is indispensable.
For some reason I've been thinking about the Song of Songs. That thought led me to investigate the ones I've sent our in our Friday Motet series. Turns out there have been four of them, by Victoria, Lassus, Lupi and good ol' Anonymous. Not on the list to date is John Dunstable (1390-1453) and his 'Quam pulchra es', the first Song of Songs motet I ever sang or conducted, and a small masterpiece of the transition period from the (musical) Medieval to the Renaissance.
The piece is scored for three voices, and is mostly homophonic, without the pervasive imitation of the high Renaissance style. It perfectly sets its steamy text to music which is also steamy--hard to define this, but not hard to hear.
The text is a good example of a wasf, a textual form in the Song of Songs in which one of the lovers describes and praises the other in metaphorical terms, often moving up (or down) the beloved's body. In this case, the wasf is spoken by the young man about the young woman; she responds with a most intimate invitation.
In case this all sounds strange to you coming from the Bible, I'm including below the introduction I wrote for our 2016 Sacred Realms concert, in which the Green Mountain Consort performed diverse settings from the Song of Songs. It provides some context for today's motet. If you want to explore further, the translation by Ariel and Chana Bloch mentioned at the end might be a good place to start.
-----
Welcome!
“No one in Israel ever disputed the status of the Song of Songs…for the whole world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the holiest of the holy.”
Rabbi Akiva (d. 135 CE)
High praise!—and certainly well-deserved. Even in translation, the Song of Songs is one of the most gorgeous collections of lyric poetry we have, right up there with Petrarch’s Canzoniere and the sonnets of Shakespeare.
But the first question which arises for many people is: How did this love-story get into the Bible? As Ariel and Chana Bloch point out, “The name of God is never once mentioned. Nor is there any reference to Israel’s history. The joy of the two lovers, the human body as an object of admiration, the beauty of nature appreciated for its own sake—all seem out of place in the Bible.”
The short answer is that we do not know exactly how most of the books of the Bible became canonical. In the case of the Song of Songs, its misattribution to Solomon, one of Israel’s legendary kings, may have played a role. An allegorical interpretation of the Song as concerned with the love between God and the people of Israel certainly had a part. Or perhaps the Song of Songs was simply too beloved by too many people not to be included in the canon.
We are so lucky that it’s there! The story, told not in narrative form but in a series of vignettes, of two young lovers in the springtime—discovering each other, reveling in their pastoral surroundings, extolling the beauties of nature and of each other, waiting eagerly for the next opportunity to meet—is so fresh and at the same time so familiar that, for all its personal detail, it seems to express an archetype, a universal human experience which speaks to us directly across great expanses of time and space.
Renaissance composers adored the Song of Songs. Our program is drawn from a vast repertoire of musical settings, covering the entire period, and extending back into the late Medieval period and forward into the early Baroque. We have organized the program around recurrent themes in the Song of Songs (including aspects of love, nature, urgency, strength, fecundity), highlighting these with sometimes diverse settings.
Our composers drew their texts from three sources: The Vulgate Bible, originally translated and assembled by St Jerome in the late 4th-century; the Luther Bible, translated from Greek by Martin Luther and first published in its entirety in 1534; and the King James Bible (1611). Our work on this program has been greatly enriched by several annotated translations directly from the Hebrew, including those by Ariel and Chana Bloch, Robert Alter, and, above all, Marcia Falk, whose translation is absolutely inspiring, and whose commentary is indispensable.