Ave Maria . . . Virgo Serena

   Famous four-voiced motet of Josquin Desprez often cited as an early example par excellence of the technique of structural imitation, which he did so much to perfect. The strophic text is a pastiche of a sequence sung at the Feast of the Annunciation, a well-known 15th-century prayer, and a common invocation at the end. Josquin composes a different type of imitative texture for each strophe, including strict, free, and paired imitation, and an apparently homophonic passage that hides a canon. The piece may come from Milan in the 1470s, and it requires about five minutes to sing.