Missa de Beata Virgine (Josquin)

The Missa de Beata Virgine is a musical setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, by Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez. A late work, probably composed or assembled around 1510, it was the most popular of his masses in the 16th century.

The Missa de Beata Virgine is unusual among Josquin's masses in that the first two movements are for four voices, and the last three for five, with the fifth voice derived canonically. Like most musical settings of the mass Ordinary, it is in five sections, or movements:

It uses different plainsong chants for each movement, and is a paraphrase mass, one in which the original chants are elaborated, broken up, passed between voices, or sung in different voices simultaneously. The mass is one of only four that Josquin based on plainsong, and probably the second to last (the others are the Missa Gaudeamus, a relatively early work, the Missa Ave maris stella, and the Missa Pange lingua; all of them involve, in some way, glorification of the Virgin Mary). All of the chants in the Missa de Beata Virgine are in praise of the Virgin Mary, and the whole is a Lady Mass, the Votive Mass for Saturday, a type that was popular around 1500. Since music for two of the movements – the Gloria and Credo – appeared independently in Vatican sources, circulating in 1503 or before, it has been presumed that the mass was assembled later from several parts, and most likely the five-voice portions were composed around 1510. The first appearance of the whole mass was in Ottaviano Petrucci's 1514 book of Josquin's masses, his third such set; it has even been speculated that Petrucci himself may have put it together from an existing performance tradition. Most likely Josquin took the Gloria and Credo which he had already written, and then wrote a Kyrie to conform to the Gloria, and added a Sanctus and Agnus to go with the Credo, since the work's modal coherence suggests that he conceived at least the first two movements, and then the last three movements together.

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