Uppsala 76a, no. 56 ff. 55v-56 »Dulcis amica dei« 4v Prioris
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Dulcis amica dei, |
Sweet friend of God |
A Lauda to Virgin Maria, RH nos. 25737 and 36836, entered by Hand C, who attributed the song to the royal chapelmaster, Prioris (Denis Prieur). The composition was originally for three voices only. It became very popular in the last decades of the 15th and the first half of the 16th centuries and enjoyed a wide circulation, often with a fourth part added to fill out the texture (see the comments to the edition of the MS Amiens 162 D for a list of concordances and editions). The Uppsala version has an added contratenor, which does not disturb the elegant three-part texture too much. However, the song’s rhythm has been revised in an idiosyncratic way. The three first lines all start with two brevis notes, which makes the text underlay difficult and clumsy!
Concerning the identity of Prioris, see the article by Theodor Dumitrescu, ‘Who Was “Prioris”? A Royal Composer Recovered’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 65 (2012), pp. 5-66 (comments on “Dulcis amica dei” pp. 31-36).
See also the comments and lists of related compositions in Christoffersen 1994, Vol. II, p. 160, and Fallows 1999, pp. 580-581.