Quam pulchra es: a Marian bouquet
Devotion to Mary is the clear intent of the great effusion of Renaissance & early Baroque motets and arias on Song of Songs texts with a feminine addressee, that, in one way or another, say O quam tu pulchra es - "How fair you are!" These Marian devotional arias often sound very much like love songs in the human sense, and why should we find that surprising? The Virgin as portrayed in Renaissance & Baroque paintings is often quite like the beautiful women depicted in contemporary portraits or in paintings of goddesses from Greek & Roman myths. Similarly, arias in sacred music written by 19th century Italian composers sound very much like arias in the operas that those same composers wrote. One of the great singers of recent decades offers another striking instance of this continuum between sacred and secular: the Aretha Franklin whose powerful voice spirals up to God in her Gospel music is quite like the Aretha Franklin in popular songs, with all her vocal power trained on a human male (a "guy").
Quam pulchra es | English translation |
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Ecce tu pulchra es | English translation |
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O dulcissima | English translation |
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Sicut lilium inter spinas | English translation |
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Pulchra es, amica mea | English translation |
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Nigra sum | English translation |
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O dulcissima dilecta mea | English translation |
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O quam tu pulchra es | English translation |
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Tota pulchra es | English translation |
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