the altus and bassus treat the final phrase of J’ay pris amours to a fully exposed point of imitation (Ex.
13-13b). This reference, one must assume, was meant to be heard and recognized, and to color
retrospectively the whole motet. Josquin’s ostensibly secular song-paraphrase within the ostensibly
sacred genre of the motet, though novel in method and effect, was not really a new idea. It was only the
latest manifestation of what by the fifteenth century was already a fairly ancient practice—the fusing of the
popularized sacred and the sacralized secular—whose tradition reaches back some four hundred years,
all the way to the original Salve Regina chant, cast in the form of a canso, a courtly love song to the
Virgin.
EX. 13-13A Josquin des Prez, Christe, Fili Dei (loco Agnus Dei in cycle Vultum Tuum deprecabuntur), mm. 1–11Thus it would be a mistake to regard this fusion of sacred and secular as an “essential” (meaning an
exclusive) trait of the burgeoning “Renaissance.” Its significance is far more inclusive than that,
suggesting that categories and oppositions we may be inclined to regard as hard and fast—sacred vs.
secular, spiritual vs. temporal, high vs. low, literate vs. oral—were never quite as firm or constant as we
might like to pretend.
EX. 13-13B Josquin des Prez, Christe, Fili Dei (loco Agnus Dei in cycle Vultum Tuum deprecabuntur), mm. 28–end