The great surge in Marian devotion in the European late Middle Ages fueled new liturgical feasts such as the increasingly popular Seven Sorrows of the Virgin. Beyond the liturgy, a plethora of confraternities devoted themselves to her advocacy. In painting, innumerable altarpieces portrayed the Virgin and Child, the Assumption of the Virgin or the crowning of the Virgin. In the realm of music, the system of patronage by princes (themselves calling for her clemency) helped foster the composition of votive Marian Masses, and large groups of settings of the Magnificat canticle for the celebration of daily Vespers. In the Continental manuscript sources of the fifteenth century, musical institutions began collecting complete sets of eight or sixteen Magnificats in all eight musical modes. The choirbook, dating from the 1460s and 1470s, of the chapel of the Dukes of Burgundy, though, contains only two settings, one anonymous and one by the jewel of the ducal musical crown, Antoine Busnois. Busnois may only have written this one Magnificat setting, in the sixth tone, but in it he far outshines the compositional efforts of both older contemporaries (such as Dufay or Binchois) and younger (such as Gaspar van Weerbeke).

The Magnificat text, which comes from the Gospel of Luke, is Mary's response to the angel Gabriel's annunciation (Luke 1:46-55), and has been sung as the canticle which closes the Office of Vespers since the Rule of St. Benedict in 525. Traditional plainchant performance involves alternatim practice, where two halves of the choir will alternate singing the ten verses (plus two verses containing the Lesser Doxology) to the same modal tone. Most early polyphonic Magnificats preserve this alternating structure, and set only the odd or the even verses for the mixed choral voices. However, Busnois creates a setting of all twelve verses, quite obviously intended as a complete entity. He boldly alternates four vocal textures (three voices, duo, trio, and then full four-part writing) and four mensurations (time signatures: O, C, cut-O, O2) in a rational pattern of ABCD ABCD ABCD over the twelve verses. He further perfects this elegant (and uncommon) structure by motivically connecting the related verses, recycling sections of music. For instance, a similar motif to the opening polyphony (verse 1b) recurs in the related half-verse 5b and also 9a; 5a and 9b correspond as well.

The only verse which doesn't share musical material with its structural companions is "Deposuit potentes," the seventh verse at the heart of the setting. It gives the clearest paraphrase of the plainchant tone in the upper voice, and calls for fauxbourdon in the other two voices of its trio, a simple parallel elaboration of the liturgically correct melody. This is also the only verse which doesn't partake of pervasive imitative writing-another unique and forward-looking feature of Busnois' setting. The elegant structural patterning, and the strongly imitative plainchant paraphrase techniques of Busnois' Magnificat suggest a possible musical relation to several other contemporary Magnificats: a veritable "twin" to this piece, an anonymous work, is in a Vatican manuscript; the "other" setting is in this Brussels choirbook; one is in Lucca; and there is the Magnificat tertii toni otherwise attributed to Guillaume Dufay. Any of this group is worthy of Busnois' pen and his name.



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