François Dulot’s “Ave Maria” – music for the men and boys of the Amiens Cathedral.
The MS Ny kgl. Samling 1848 2° is our only source for this five-part setting of the Marian antiphon by François Dulot (1st half of the 16th century). It was copied under his name (“Dulo”) into the music collection from Lyons in 1520 and placed in a large independent fascicle containing church music (see further P. Woetmann Christoffersen, French Music in the Early Sixteenth Century. Studies in the music collection of a copyist of Lyons. The manuscript »Ny kgl. Samling 1848 2°« in the Royal Library, Copenhagen I-III. Copenhagen 1994, Vol. 1 pp. 61-65 and 278). The music’s layout with the antiphon melody presented in canon at the fifth in the low voices supplemented by three high parts certainly points to an origin during the composer’s presence at the Cathedral of Amiens around 1514 as maître des enfants.
The motet is a welcome addition to Dulot’s sparsely preserved œuvre, which has been published online on the site Patrimoine musical de la Picardie (see http://ricercar.cesr.univ-tours.fr/3-programmes/EMN/Picardie/notice_bio.asp?numcomppositeur=1).