Music notes: The Annunciation

The Annunciation of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Blessed Virgin Mary
2025.03.25

The observance of the Feast of the Annunciation in the parish I serve features a motet by leading late Renaissance composer Hans Leo Haßler, paired with an organ arrangement of it from roughly the same time.

Haßler was a prolific composer for voices (with instruments) and for the organ. He straddled several divides: Italy (where he studied) and South Germany (where he lived and worked); old (Renaissance) and new (what might be called proto-Baroque) styles of music; Catholic and Protestant milieux. His well-known motet ‘Dixit Maria ad angelum’ (which he also used as the basis for a Mass setting), published in 1591, sets part of the Gospel account of the Annunciation. The narrative text ‘Mary said to the angel’ appears in the series of imitative entries standard in Renaissance polyphony, while the Blessed Virgin’s reply ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord’ brings the voices together in longer note values. ‘Let it be to me’ returns to livelier writing; ‘according to thy word’ is set first for higher, then for lower, then for all voices, before the whole of this section is repeated.

Heinrich Scheidemann was the leading North German composer of the first half of the seventeenth century. Though the common practice of playing highly ornamented versions of vocal pieces on the organ had largely died out by the time of his artistic maturity, he left no fewer than a dozen such works, surely the finest examples of the genre, based on motets by leading composers of the preceding generation or two including Haßler, Lassus, and Hieronymus Praetorius. His version of ‘Dixit Maria’ is dated March 3, 1637, in the manuscript source, suggesting that it might have been written in preparation for the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25. The pedal part is almost an exact transcription of the original bass voice, and there are substantial stretches in which the other voices are also devoid of ornamented passagework, particularly at the homorhythmic ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord’, but the final part of the work is set more floridly, beginning with two approaches in quick succession to the highest note of the keyboard.

Our other anthem, ‘The Word whom earth and sea and sky’ (‘Quem terra, pontus, aethera’ [263]), a traditional Office hymn attributed to the sixth-century writer and bishop Fortunatus, includes a short summary of the Annunciation account and goes on, among other things, to enumerate three ways in which the Mother of Our Lord might be called ‘blessed’:

Blest in the message Gabriel brought,
blest in the work the Spirit wrought,
most blest to bring to human birth
the long-desired of all the earth.

Our congregational music includes a beloved Annunciation song, the Basque carol translated as ‘The angel Gabriel from heaven came’, sung to its lilting proper tune (‘Birjina gaztettobat zegoen ’ [265], and a hymn relatively new to this parish, ‘Ye who claim the faith of Jesus’ [268/269], which we sing to the tune ‘Divinum mysterium’ [82], usually associated with the Christmas hymn ‘Of the Father’s love begotten’. The latter includes a different list of three ‘blessings’ associated with Our Lord’s incarnation:

Blessèd were the chosen people
out of whom the Lord did come;
blessèd was the land of promise
fashioned for his earthly home;
but more blessèd far the mother,
she who bore him in her womb.

The text concludes with a one-stanza summary of the Song of Mary (Magnificat) and the refrain ‘Hail, Mary, full of grace’ echoing the angelic greeting.