YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

POLYPHONY AND WORD-SOUND IN ADRIAN WILLAERT’S LAUS TIBI SACRA RUBENS
important consequences for contemporary performance practice, as they call for a
performance that is as attentive to the sound of the words and the way they are woven
into the polyphonic fabric as the composer himself had been when writing the piece.
Secondly, it goes without saying that Willaert’s Laus tibi sacra rubens establishes
itself as the ideal musical metaphor of the relationship between Bruges and
Venice. This is evidenced not only by the extramusical circumstances – Willaert, the
chapelmaster of the most famous Venetian institution, writes a piece that praises a
typical devotional tradition of his land of origin – but also by the stylistic features.
By framing his concentration on a text’s sonic and emotional qualities, which proves
to be a typical Italian tradition in general and a Venetian characteristic in particular,
in a full-blown polyphonic texture, he also symbolically reconciles the respective
musical traditions of his homeland Flanders and his second hometown Venice.
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