Quam Pulchra Es

The motet cycles known as motetti missales are among the most intriguing repertoires of late-fifteenth-century polyphony. This series features a new critical edition of the six cycles by Loyset Compère, Gaspar van Weerbeke, and Franchinus Gaffurius included in the Milanese Libroni and of the two anonymous cycles transmitted in the Leopold Codex (Munich MS 3154). For the first time this corpus is presented with uniform editorial criteria, facilitating the comparison of mensural choices and other compositional strategies. Furthermore, the introduction of each volume thematizes the peculiar characteristics of each cycle, in terms of textual choices, use of preexisting material, and musical design, allowing for a new assessment of the motetti missales that goes beyond the homogenizing stereotypes of earlier literature and accounts for the individual contributions of the various composers. The editors’ insight in this repertoire is the result of two interdisciplinary research projects financed by the Swiss National Fund and carried out at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in 2014–21. The cycle Quam pulchra es by Gaspar van Weerbeke (ca. 1452–1517) consists of eight four-voice motets on centonate Marian texts. Among the motetti missales cycles, it boasts not only the most concordances within the Milanese Libroni but is also the only one whose motets were copied in Librone [4], the latest of these codices. So far, none of the motets of this cycle has been found in other contemporaneous sources, suggesting a particular connection between this cycle and Milan.