An eleventh century bishop may have been the author of the first text and music for Salve Regina, creating the devotional lyric as a processional chant for the use of Crusaders. Tradition suggests that St. Bernard of Clairvaux added the intimate closing lines to the poem. It was also apparently used as a processional chant for the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin. By the time of Josquin Desprez, the liturgical plainchant Salve Regina was well-ensconced as one of the most popular antiphons to the Virgin Mary; many parishes, including those under Roman observance, sang this piece as a final prayer at the close of Vespers each day for the entire season of Pentecost (through summer until the beginning of Advent). Though a motet such as this likely saw liturgical use, motet singing for private devotion and entertainment was also common; a Ferrarese ambassador in Rome reports hearing a Salve Regina by Josquin sung while the Pope was at the table eating dinner.

Josquin composed two motets based on the music and text of the popular Marian chant. An earlier version for four voices may date from around 1480 during his service in French-speaking lands, or later with Cardinal Ascanio Sforza. In it, the upper two voices proceed in a canonic relationship, the superius voice following the altus at a close interval of time and echoing the altus' elaboration and paraphrase of the plainchant melody. At the same time, the lower two voices are also in canon, yielding a tour de force of the composer's tight control over the development of his material. This canonic procedure relates to Josquin's early canonic chanson experiments, such as Basiez moy and En l'ombre d'ung buissonet.

A presumably later five-voiced setting of the same text is much more expansive and long-breathed by comparison. Considerably longer, the second setting is divided into three partes, or sections, following the main grammatical divisions of the text. The chant melody this time appears in its entirety only in one voice: transposed up an octave and placed in the superius. The lower three voices proceed in free counterpoint beneath this paraphrase, though they often (characteristically for Josquin) echo small motifs from the melody. The fifth voice sings only ostinato repetitions of the first four notes of the chant: "Salve!" (or Hail!) As is the case in the Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae and the clever motet Illibata Dei Virgo nutrix, the underlying structure of this motet is hidden in these repetitions. The ostinato takes seven measures to sing (Josquin was certainly not above a numerological reference to the Seven Joys of the Virgin Mary), and then is performed down a fourth; this takes place six times in the prima pars, twice in the secunda, and four times in the tertia. This provides for the motet an utterly rational basis underlying a surface fluidity of beautifully shifting textures and melodies.

© Timothy Dickey, Rovi