,
Feast of the Rosary, 1506 The conductor Peter Philips notes that, "Further illustration of this is provided by the two ceremonial motets which frame the remaining pieces on this recording.
Optime pastor and
Virgo prudentissima have a grandeur that no other Renaissance composer could rival. The spaciousness is achieved partly by the wide overall scoring of the voices, and partly by Isaac's habit of holding the chant parts back for special moments, rather as Handel later rationed the use of the trumpets and timpani in his 'coronation' anthems. When the chant or chants enter (always in the middle two of the six voice parts), they do so with such solemnity that all the surrounding activity is quietened; and when they cease, the four outer voices immediately readopt faster-moving music. By alternating these two textures Isaac could build up to the final statements of the chant with an irresistible momentum." Rothenberg opines that the motet affiliates the reigns of two sovereign monarchs – the Virgin Mary of Heaven and Maximilian of the Holy Roman Empire. The motet describes the
Assumption of the Virgin, in which Mary, described as the most prudent Virgin (allusion to
Parable of the Ten Virgins), "beautiful as the moon", "excellent as the sun" and "glowing brightly as the dawn", was crowned as
Queen of Heaven and united with Christ, her bridegroom and son, at the highest place in Heaven. Rothenberg notes that, "In Isaac’s compositions Mary becomes the figurative mother who crowns Maximilian, just as King Solomon's mother had crowned him." The antiphon and the motet evoke the
Song of Songs 3:11: "Egredimini et videte filiae Sion regem Salomonem in diademate quo coronavit eum mater sua in die disponsionis illius et in die laetitiae cordis eius" ("Go forth, ye daughters of Sion, and see King Solomon in the diadem, where with his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the joy of his heart.") Rothenberg notes that, in the painting
Feast of the Rosary by
Albrecht Dürer (considered by him to be a “direct visual counterpart” to the motet
Virgo prudentissima, mentioned below), "The most prudent Virgin thus crowns the Wise King with a rose garland at the very moment when she herself is about to be crowned Queen of Heaven." Bubenik agrees with Rothenberg's assessment and points out that in the painting one can also see a lute. Other than Dürer's
Feast of the Rosary, Rothenberg opines that the idea of the motet is also reflected in the
scene of the Assumption seen in the
Berlin Book of hours of Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian. Planchart notes that
Virgo prudentissima is "one of the composer’s most complex and extended works. It is also a self-consciously constructivist piece that looks back to the repertoire of tenor motets pioneered by
Guillaume Du Fay,
Johannes Ockeghem, and most prominently by Iohannes Regis" and "an extraordinarily impressive work with a seemingly inexhaustible amount of invention". The motet makes use of "an interplay of two basic textures and two kinds of motivic construction that are exposed in the first few sections of each pars and then fused in the concluding section, and to a judicious choice of which phrases of the
cantus firmus—an antiphon for vespers of the Assumption—he chooses to paraphrase in the free voices". Planchart also criticizes modern performances for ignoring the motet's mensural structure. and
Heiko Oberman comment that, "
Virgo prudentissima is one of the noblest compositions of its type written during the early Renaissance and it is the epitome of the paraliturgical motet." The book
Boston Early Music Festival & Exhibition notes that the motet is "monumental and unmistakably imperial in effect" while the work
O Maria, mater Christi (by the same composer) feels intimate and personal. ==References==