Nuper rosarum flores

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Nuper Rosarum Flores or Flowers of Roses/The Rose Blossoms, is an isorhythmic motet composed in 1436 by Guillaume Dufay, to be performed at the consecration of the new Florence cathedral on the occasion of the completion of the dome designed by Filippo Brunelleschi. The motet is striking for its synthesis of both the older isorhythmic style and the new contrapuntal style which would be developed in the coming decades by Dufay himself as well as his successors (such as Ockeghem and Josquin des Prez). The title of the piece stems from the actual cathedral itself, which was named Santa Maria del Fiore, or St. Mary of the Flower.

The musicologist Charles Warren claimed in his article Brunelleschi's Dome and Dufay's Motet that the proportional structure of the motet mimicked the proportions of the building itself. A compelling counter-argument is presented by Craig Wright, however, in Dufay's "Nuper rosarum flores," King Solomon's Temple, and the Veneration of the Virgin. A yet subsequent article aimed to restore Warren's theory: M. Trachtenberg, Architecture and Music Reunited: A New Reading of Dufay's "Nuper Rosarum Flores" and the Cathedral of Florence, Renaissance Quarterly 54 (2001), 740-775.

[edit] Text of the motet

Nuper rosarum flores

Ex dono pontificis

Hieme licet horrida

Tibi, virgo coelica,

Pie et sancte deditum

Grandis templum machinae

Condecorarunt perpetim.

Hodie vicarius

Jesu Christe et Petri

Successor Eugenius

Hoc idem amplissimum

Sacris templum manibus

Sanctisque liquoribus

Consecrare dignatus est.

Igitur, alma parens

Nati tui et filia

Virgo decus virginum,

Tuus te Florentiae

Devotus erat populus,

Ut qui mente et corpore

Mundo quicquam exorarit.

Oratione tua

Cruciatus et meritis

Tui secundum carnem

Nati Domini sui

Grata beneficia

Veniamque reatum

Accipere meraeatur. Amen.

(Cantus firmus) Terribilis est locus iste.