EX. 15-5C Adrian Willaert, Benedicta es, coelorum regina, mm. 144–50But this observation, even as it puts distance between the two settings of Benedicta es, links
Willaert’s with the opening of Josquin’s Ave Maria, the model of models. That is the work with which
Willaert’s Benedicta es (like most of his other motets) has most in common. There is the same varied
pairing of voices, the same canny deployment of the texture so that tuttis are rare and climactic. That
texture, in consequence, is airier and simpler than Gombert’s or Clemens’s, and for that reason all the
closer to Josquin’s.
Texting is more often on the semibreve than on the minim, and it is more nearly syllabic (hence more
intelligibly declaimed) than in the work of Willaert’s immediate predecessors. There are even
suggestions, at times, of Josquin’s rhetorical use of homorhythm for emphasis. Willaert was famed for his
attention to declamation. Zarlino included a famous, nearly unprecedented set of declamation rules in his
treatise that is widely presumed to reflect Willaert’s explicit teaching.
Where Willaert is nevertheless recognizably a “post-Josquin” composer is in his use of harmony. The
obvious giveaway is the final chord of the piece, a full triad approached plagally—even now the most
typical sort of “Amen” cadence (see Ex. 15-5c). Note that Willaert’s spacing of the final chord, with the
intervals progressively smaller as the pitch ascends—octave, major third, minor third reading up—
corresponds to the theory of the senaria (six-as-perfect-number) as set forth by Zarlino. Were there a fifth
part, it would certainly take the D between the Gs, so that the intervals of the senaria would line up even
more completely: fifth, fourth, major third, minor third. (A sixth voice, theoretically, would go an octave
below the low G, but in practice it is freed by the limitations of human vocal range to double one of the
existing Gs.)
There is also the more disciplined and regular handling of dissonance—more regular not only than
Gombert’s or Clemens’s, but even more regular than Josquin’s. As one example of a dissonance that might