The beginning of the motet, containing the opening canonical acclamation and the first of the votive
interpolations, is shown in Ex. 13-3a. Again there is a teasing ambiguity between the old cantus-firmus
style and the newer paraphrase technique. Both of the duos that together make up the introitus contain
paraphrases of the Gregorian antiphon, first in the superius and then in the altus. When the tenor finally
makes its dramatic entrance, it, too carries a chant paraphrase, albeit in longer note-values as befits a
cantus firmus in the older tradition. But when the tenor intones the canonical chant, the other parts
immediately switch over to the trope, so that a kind of old-fashioned polytextualism sets in.
The most dramatic touch of all, of course, is the sudden introduction of the E-flat in the superius on
“Miserere,” dramatizing in the most tangible way the shift from the impersonal diction of the liturgical
chant to the personal voice of the composer. It is hard to ignore its affective significance in light of the
text, which speaks of the composer’s frailty and his fears. And so we have an early instance, and in this
unexpected context a shattering one, of major–minor contrast in what would become its traditional mood-
defining role. The association of the Dorian interval-species with woe and Lydian/Mixolydian with joy
was as old as the Marian antiphons themselves (as the contrast of Salve Regina and Regina coeli laetare
in Ex. 3-12 sufficed to indicate). But forcing the Dorian interval species into Lydian pitch space, as Du
Fay does here, was new and startling in a motet context (although, minus the “straightforward symbolism”
of affect, we encountered it two chapters back in Ex. 11-25, Du Fay’s chanson Craindre vous veuil), and,
in a newly “middling” way, expressive. Du Fay here speaks to Mary as human to human, seeking a human
response (and getting it, at least, from his mortal listeners).
EX. 13-3A Guillaume Du Fay, Ave Regina coelorum III, mm. 1–29