EX. 3-12B Marian antiphon, Salve, ReginaSalve Regina is dark. Like so many late Dorian chants it covers the combined (or “commixed”)
plagal-authentic ambitus, but its tessitura favors the lower end. (Its official assignment to mode 1 was
due, most likely, to the repeated cadences of the concluding acclamations—O clemens: O pia: O dulcis—
on A.) Although there are no real melismas, there is a great deal of melodic parallelism; indeed, the first
two main phrases (“Salve Regina... ” and “Vita dulcedo... ”) are nearly identical. This last, it turns out,
is a common feature of many medieval songs, although it is not found in many chants. (It should not be
confused with the paired versicles of a sequence, because the first line of a sequence was the one line that
was not usually paired.) Compare the melody in Ex. 3-13. This is a canso, a song of “courtly love.” Its
language is Provençal, then the language of what is now central and southern France. The composer,
Raimon de Miraval (d. ca. 1215), was a troubadour, that is, a member of the first school of European
poets to use for creative purposes one of the then “modern” languages of Europe. Their line began with
Guillaume IX, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers (1071–1127), a younger contemporary of
Adhemar, the putative author of the Salve Regina. Like Adhemar, Guillaume took part in the Crusades, as