Two character issues apparently separated Jean Mouton from many other Renaissance composers: his loyalty and his piety. He served the French Royal court for nearly two decades and a contemporary there described him as "most humble" and "a good servant of God." Both of these traits show in Mouton's many motets. A great number of them celebrate his patrons and their occasions of state; others, such as his four-voiced Marian motet Ave sanctissima Maria, provide pious additions to the divine Service. The text, versions of which were set by Pierre de la Rue and Heinrich Isaac, praises the Blessed Virgin in rich imagery—mother of God, queen of heaven, portal of paradise, singular in purity. After asserting her delivery of the Savior without pain, the text even breaks into a rare, first-person singular: in quo non dubito (Of this I do not doubt). Though the text is in fact paraliturgical, the French Kings (especially François I) enjoyed hearing their splendid choir sing such motets while a priest spoke low mass.

Mouton's music progresses with characteristic grace, though the harmonic logic of the Phrygian mode somewhat escapes the twenty-first century ear. Duo passages (a favorite texture of Josquin's, as well) punctuate the texture from the severe opening throughout most of the motet; the regular duple meter is "freed" by a sudden departure into tripla at the point in which the text implores that Mary libera nos (free us from sin). Mouton's melodies are generally short and succinct. The close of the motet, however, broadens into an expansively melismatic and rhythmically potent "Amen" section, including a poignant B flat cross-relation just before the final chord. The writer of the text had added his personal fidelity to the mysteries of faith; Mouton, in his music, added the exclamation point!

© All Music Guide