‘I have never seen your equal’: Agricola, the Virgin, and the Creed
M. Jennifer Bloxam is Professor of Music at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA. She has published widely on 15th- and early 16th-century sacred music, especially masses and motets based on plainsong and secular song. Mary.Jennifer.Bloxam{at}williams.edu
The chanson Je ne vis oncques la pareille enjoyed a certain renown in the years after 1454, when it was sung during the Feast of the Pheasant, an extravagant banquet entertainment hosted by the Burgundian Duke Philip the Bold. A consideration of the circumstances of the song’s performance then and its subsequent quotation in poetry by the Burgundian poet Jean Molinet reveals the potent multivalent nature of this chanson as paean to both courtly lady and Blessed Virgin. Among the company of masses and motets based on this song in the decades after its composition, two independent Credo settings by Alexander Agricola evince an especially intriguing Marian sensibility. Agricola’s manipulations of Je ne vis oncques la pareille suggest a deliberate effort on his part to co-ordinate certain musical events with particular narrative moments and theological declarations within the text of the Creed in which the Virgin was understood to participate.
Key Words: Agricola • Philip the Bold • Feast of the Pheasant • Jean Molinet • mass settings • Credo settings • the Virgin Mary