Ave Maria – Robert Parsons (c. 1535-1572)

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Little is known about the life of English composer Robert Parsons, but it is likely that in his youth he was a choir boy, as until 1561 he was an assistant to Richard Bower, Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal. Ave Maria, this morning’s communion motet, has become Parsons’ most famous and well-loved motet since it was included in the Oxford Book of Tudor Anthems in 1978. Settings of the Ave Maria are not frequent in England—even William Byrd only set them as required by the liturgy in his two books of Gradualia (1605 and 1607) rather than as stand-alone pieces. Parsons simply sets the lines found in the Gospel of St Luke and has no invocation for the dead (authorized by Pope Pius V in 1568). This is a magical setting, and it is not surprising that there is a beautiful ‘Amen’ coda.

Musicologists have suggested that this piece might have been prompted by the early promise or subsequent plight of Mary, Queen of Scots. There is no direct evidence for this, but it is not unreasonable to consider Parsons and indeed most of the mid-sixteenth-century writers—Sheppard, Tallis, White, Mundy and Tye—as Catholic sympathizers, during a period of major religious upheaval in England. They seem more free, more expressive, more expansive and braver in their Latin compositions and it is tempting to speculate that in setting words from Psalms 15 and 119, the Lamentations and the Funeral Responds, along with Marian works, they were consciously producing music with a Catholic slant.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee;
blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Amen.

Gerald Harder