Salve Regina

This piece, less well-known than the composer’s five-voice setting of the same text, is likewise based on a paraphrase of the familiar plainsong antiphon. Unlike the five-voice version, this one is cast in two strictly canonic voice-pairs -a contrapuntal achievement worthy of both contemplation and awe. While one might ask if the present edition really requires four pages of biographical and musical commentary, and while any editor’s particular decisions about musica ficta will surely differ in detail from his reader’s opinions, one can be grateful that this music can still be made available to us, across half a millennium, and in a time of treacherous profit margins. No, it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, and yes, this antiphon is, strictly speaking, proper in the season before Advent, but it could offer lovely counterpoint to our annual rehearing of the Annunciation story.
THE JOURNAL of the ASSOCIATION OF ANGLICAN MUSICIANS
Volume 20, Number 7, September 2011