A version of Josquin Desprez's Ave Maria, perhaps his most famous composition and certainly his most often sung today, appears at the head of the first volume of motets ever printed (1502); its composition occurred during the composer's service at one of several French and North Italian courts. Apparently written some time between 1476 and 1497; this motet expounds with classic elegance the stylistic ideals of the Italian Renaissance and provides one of the best examples of its style, power, and beauty. The structure of Josquin's musical setting corresponds to the text in a lucid way. Twentieth century theorists use the term "syntactic imitation" to describe the characteristic musical structure of High Renaissance vocal pieces. Each musical phrase corresponds to a phrase of text, and points of imitation frequently expose these phrases. Moments of structural articulation arrive at cadences, where two or more voices rest on perfect intervals. Within this style of composition, Josquin wrote a motet of classic balance. The opening section declaims the four phrases of text, in order. Clear and unobstructed imitation of each phrase (as if in a litany) occurs dramatically from the highest voice to the lowest; the imitated melody resembles a Gregorian chant version of "Ave Maria." Though the phrases of this section are completely balanced in length, the counterpoint increases in density, producing a strong climax at the first juncture where all four voices sing together. This climax quickly gives way to an imperfect, deceptive cadence. Josquin treats each strophe of the main body of the poem as a syntactic unit unto itself, roughly comparable and balanced in length with the others. Local details often relate directly to the affect of a portion of text, such as the sudden expanse of complete homophonic harmony at the text "solemni plena gaudio." Immediately following this moment comes the text "coelestia, terrestria...," and the music builds in climbing melodic lines and dense syncopation of rhythms, as if literally evoking the sense of the text's filling of heaven and earth. Whereas at the beginning of the motet the regularity of imitation articulated the phrases, in the middle verses the articulation largely comes from contrasts in texture. Even as the painter may draw upon a simple repertory of postures in which to cast a figure, the basic textures used by Josquin are few but sharply contrasting. Duets alternate with one another (a characteristic and favorite textural gambit of Josquin's), and with a texture of duet plus an accompanying third voice. Each strophe is further punctuated by structural cadences which bring the large sections of music to temporary repose; the lengthier the repose and the greater the degree of "perfection" in the harmony, the more powerful the punctuation. Thus the composer locates each structural cadence in a progression of increasing power, saving the strongest, most perfect cadence (consisting only of fifths and octaves) for the very end—the prayer which Josquin sets to a slow-moving, completely homophonic texture, set apart from the preceding music by an arresting pause. The physical unity of musical sound, embodying the spiritual unity of prayer, combined with the reflective comfort of slow-moving and untroubled consonance, completes the act of worship which has been the rhetorical goal of the text.

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