Devotion to the Virgin Mary flourished in the High Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Both the liturgical corporate worship in the church and the often passionate private devotions in the home fostered new celebrations, new poetry, and new music devoted to the worship of the Virgin. This situation provides rich background for a motet such as Gaude Virgo, but of course makes it difficult to tell for which context was its original conception. The text, with no common liturgical use, was likely written for private devotion. Josquin sets six equal three-line strophes of poetry, though numerological considerations suggest there may have been seven in all (for the Seven Joys of the Virgin). All but the last stanza begin with the word "Gaude" ("rejoice!"), and they loosely narrate the story of Mary's involvement with the Christ Child from her Annunciation, through his death and resurrection, and onward to her being honored alongside Him; the final stanza asks for her intercession, but still foreseeing "eternal joy."

Musically, Josquin responds to this text with a motet of elegant and classical proportions - much like his setting of Ave Maria, to which it is sometimes compared. The opening two pair of strophes are set to equal and alternating duos; each duet interweaves the two voices in near-canonic intimacy. The full four-voiced texture Josquin reserves for later, nearly a third of the way through the piece. Once the full texture arrives, he maintains the excitement which this device has built by means of syncopations on many levels, by alternations of duple- and triple-time sections, by striking melodic gestures such as the rise completely through two octaves on the text, "Gaude, Christo ascendente/ Et in coelum te vidente," and by a generally high tessitura in all four voices. The piece concludes appropriately with a highly imitative and joyous "Alleluia."



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