stanza, poised as it is between the chordal and the canonic, is a little miracle of textural balance and a
locus classicus of the artful simplicity (or “natural” artistry) humanists prized as evidence of genius—the
“poet born not made.” It exemplifies to perfection another ubiquitous Latin maxim popularly ascribed by
the humanists to Horace: “art lies in concealing art” (ars est celare artem).
EX. 14-6C Josquin des Prez, Ave Maria ... Virgo serena, mm. 20–28The fifth, climactic stanza (“Ave praeclara,” Ex. 14-6d) is set in the most traditional texture to be
found in Josquin’s motet, one that we observed first in the chansons of the previous generation: the
“structural pair,” superius and tenor, are in strict imitation throughout, phrase by phrase and at a fixed time
interval, while the “nonessential” voices, altus and bassus, supply fanciful nonimitative counterpoints. It
is also the most heterogeneous texture to be found in the motet, and gives rise, in the nonessential voices,
to the most ornate (albeit still relatively modest) melismatic tracery to be found anywhere in the motet.
The suitability of the melodic ascent in the structural pair to the meaning of the word “assumptio” is self-
evident, just as the floridity of the nonessential pair matches the word “glorificatio.”