What happens now if we accept the date that Thomas Noblitt’s physical evidence (specifically, the
watermark in the paper on which it was copied) assigned to Josquin’s Ave Maria ... Virgo serena?
Nothing very terrible. Quite the contrary: all at once it takes its place in a new and telling context, that of
the Milanese motetti missales. Compare it with the works of Gaspar van Weerbeke sampled in the
previous chapter (Ex. 13-7, Ex. 13-8), or especially with Compère’s Ave Maria (Ex. 13-9), and its
membership in their family becomes obvious. The reader may already have noticed, in fact, that Josquin’s
opening quatrain is based on the very same sequence melody that Compère appropriated in the altus of his
litany motet: a local favorite, no doubt.
Ave Maria ... Virgo serena thus stands revealed as belonging to the tradition of the Milanese “ducal