Salve Jhesu summe bone: a recovered motet of Pierre de la Rue?

Abstract

The 1597 inventory of manuscripts of Philip II of Spain lists, among its many entries, a music book opening with a six-voice motet Salve Jesu by Pierre de la Rue. Unfortunately this manuscript no longer exists, and as the motet could not be located in any of the Alamire manuscripts or in other sources containing La Rue’s works, it figures as a lost composition in lists of La Rue’s works. This article argues that the motet may not be lost, but is rather preserved as an anonymous work in one of the manuscripts of Johannes Heugel. The six-voice Salve Jhesu in manuscript 91 of the former State Library at Kassel, which sets part of a well-known text that was long attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, is clearly a work from the early 16th century and shows interesting parallels with La Rue’s six-voice motet Pater de caelis.