The Song of Songs, the curiously erotic book found in the Old Testament between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah, was one of the most mused-upon passages of scripture during the Medieval and Renaissance periods, and poignantly demonstrates the extent to which Western culture during this period compared to the intensity of romantic love to religious fervor. Numerous composers set portions of this text to music, including Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who composed an entire set of pieces based on the biblical poetry. The piece under consideration here, the motet Pulchra es amica mea, comes from this collection, which Palestrina published in 1584 under the title Canticum canticorum. The collection was presented to Pope Gregory XIII as something of a peace offering: as the musical standard bearer of the counterreformation, Palestrina had disappointed church leaders by deviating from his characteristic sacred style and composing secular works; the preface to the Canticum canticorum issues an apology—but also explains that, because of the nature of the text being set, he has adopted a style "more lively" than the Holy Father might have expected in sacred music.



While some verses from the Song of Songs contain an explicitly sexual message (again, one that treats ecstasy of one kind as a surrogate of ecstasy of another kind), the text of Pulchra es amica mea conveys a more subtle romantic angst. The words are taken from the sixth chapter, sixth and seventh verses of the Song of Songs: "Thou art beautiful, O my love...comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners. Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me" (King James translation). The music treats the text with great detail, rendering each word or phrase with a deliberately crafted figure, texture, and effect. The opening words flow seamlessly in a characteristically crystalline counterpoint, the arching lines initiating in the bass and expanding into the entire ensemble. The comparison with Jerusalem is rendered in more articulate homophony, its chordal movement nonetheless ornamented with variations of attack and resolution between voices. A particularly striking moment occurs at "castrorum acies ordinata" ("an army with banners"), when the upper voices leap suddenly upward. This in turn sets off the next change of mood, when, at "turn away thine eyes," the harmony turns dark, the mode becomes a somber minor, and the voices intone the motet's last words in hushed homophony.

© Jeremy Grimshaw, Rovi