Jane Elizabeth Dahlenburg, Ph.D. 2001

Advisor: James Haar

Dissertation Title: The Motet c. 1580-1630: Sacred Music Based on The Song of Songs

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Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation is a textual study of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century sacred music based on the Song of Songs. The first chapter of the study explores the Song itself: the changing text in the various sixteenth and seventeenth-century Vulgate editions, and the long history of exegetic interpretation which asserts that the Song describes various types of divine, not human love. The second chapter examines the Song’s role in the continually evolving Roman liturgy, which continued to be used as a textual source by composers. Finally, a series of case studies explores individual works from various standpoints. I begin with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s 1583/1584 fourth book of motets for five voices, and show that rather than using the Bible as a textual source, which has always been assumed in the secondary literature, Palestrina extracted his text from the Roman lectionary. Antonio Cifra’s 1619 Motecta ex sacris cantionibus was clearly based on Palestrina; however, Cifra made significant textual changes to reflect a Mariological, rather than a tropological, interpretation. Adriano Banchieri’s 1611 Vezzo di Perle approaches the text from a monastic point of view, while Severo Bonini’s 1615 Affetti Spirituali uses musical dialogue to dramatically portray an allegorical reading (i.e., dealing with the love between the Church and Christ) of the Song. Finally, Seraphino Patta’s 1609/1611 Sacra Cantica, though musically unsatisfying, is highly innovative in its organization which clearly outlines the stages of the via mystica. 

Dr. Dahlenburg is Associate Professor of Music History at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, AR. In addition to the interest in early sacred music explored in her dissertation, she also researches music by twentieth-century Soviet composers