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• Moulu: Quam pulchra es

Moulu: Quam pulchra es

for 4 voices or instruments.

This unusual motet by Pierre Moulu is taken from the Rusconi Codex, (Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, Cod. Q.19), a manuscript compiled in or around the Bologna area in the 1510s (a facsimile is available as Renaissance Music in Facsimile, Volume 1, Garland Publishing, New York). The scribe originally wrote the name of Jean Mouton after our piece, but then substituted that of Pierre Moulu (c.1480-1550). The work appears in two other sources, both printed: Petrucci´s Motetti de la Corona of 1519, where Mouton is given as the composer, and the Novum et insigne opus musicus sex, quinque et quator vocum, published in Nürnberg in 1537, where the composer is given as Josquin des Prés.
The Josquin attribution need not, I think, be taken seriously. Of the two other named composers, Moulu seems to more likely on grounds of texture: he composed several other pieces with the parts similarly close together. Whoever the real composer is, this is a piece of some contrapuntal beauty. It is interesting that another setting of the Quam pulchra es text (though the selection of lines from the Song of Songs is different) by Costanzo Festa, probably written a decade or so later, is written in the same mode and employs the same scoring, with parts very close together, though written an octave higher.
In this edition the music has been transposed up a tone. However, even with this adjustment the written pitch may be too low for many Purposes, so we have made available an alternative version a fourth higher still, in C (EML 283a). The present version actually can sound very fine an octave higher than written.
The original note values have been halved throughout. A few editorial accidentals are printed small above the stave, applying to the one note only.