"The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." (John 1:14) This text, in the Vulgate Latin, is sung in today's Catholic church during the Feast of the Holy Family (the Sunday after Epiphany in January), and spoken at the close of every celebration of the Mass. A pithy little motet by Antoine Busnois upon this text, with interpolated Alleluias, is preserved between two fascicles of the large choirbook compiled for the Burgundian court Chapel (the institution he served for nearly twenty years), Brussels 5557. The number of his liturgical motets (large and small) in this manuscript source, as well as the presence of his Magnificat setting, testify to the importance of this man's music to that stellar musical foundation; Busnois himself probably participated actively in the consolidation of the manuscript—possibly even copying some of his own pieces himself.

This concise motet for four voices is mostly chordal in structure, though the texture of the inner voices is rhythmically active. The Alleluias, and the presence of another short motet—on the simple Advent text Noël, noël, noël—in a similar position in the same manuscript have suggested Christmas Vespers as a likely liturgical context for the piece, perhaps as an antiphon to Busnois' own Magnificat in the same mode. The musicologist Jennifer Bloxam finally determined the exact liturgical assignment for Alleluia, verbum caro in the Use of Paris (the local variant of Gregorian chant observed by the Burgundian Court): the antiphon for the canticle Nunc dimittis during Christmas Compline services. With this assignment localized, she also discovered that the motet uses a plainchant cantus firmus in the uppermost voice. As in Noël, noël, noël (for which a cantus firmus may yet be discovered), Busnois invests even a simple piece of functional polyphony such as this with polish and vigor.

© All Music Guide

Portions of Content Provided by All Music Guide.
© 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide is a registered trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.