| Remarks: |
This brief Ave Maria survives as a late addition to the Chigi Codex, a lavishly illuminated manuscript prepared for a Burgundian nobleman and now one of the irreplaceable treasures of the Vatican Library. A free setting of this Offertory text, the motet is composed without reference to any
known chant melody. As one expects in the music of Ockeghem, the sonic texture is characteristically
dark, yet strikingly beautiful.
The four voices sing mostly in their lower registers (Ockeghem was known to have a powerful bass voice) and freely surge and soar, avoiding obvious motives or patterns of repetition;
the whole coheres
with a mystic power and intensity. |
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View Sample Score |
