Ego Flos Campi by Jacobus Clemens non Papa

When my parents visited me last week, we went to a lovely concert dedicated to the works of Jacobus Clemens non Papa (c. 1510-1555), a relatively unknown Renaissance composer from the Low Countries. There is little that we know about his life – even his name is clouded in mystery. Some claim that the nickname ‘non Papa’ was attributed to distinguish him from Pope Clement VII (papa means ‘pope’ in Latin) or from the Ypres poet Clemens Papa. Others suggest that the name was merely created in jest, possibly mocking the composer for living excessively, immorally, and impiously – though his great output of sacred music suggests otherwise, containing 15 masses, 15 Magnificats, and over 200 motets. Today, I will highlight his stunning motet Ego flos campi.

“Perhaps the most sublime motet of all is Clemens’ Ego flos campi, where it is in fact the static qualities of the harmony, never straying far from the warm, glowing, even comforting tonic chord – combined with a rich and intricate yet remarkably unfussy seven-part texture – that lend it such an opulent beauty.”

Matthew O’Donovan, from the liner notes of Stile Antico’s Song of Songs

Although Clemens never traveled to Italy like many of his colleagues, thus maintaining a distinctive Franco-Flemish sound, we know he has lived and worked in places like Bruges and Antwerp. During the autumn of 1550, Clemens — for a period of just three months — worked as a singer and composer for the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, which was organized around a carved wooden image of the Virgin Mary in the city’s St. John’s Cathedral. It was for this Marian Brotherhood that he wrote his most iconic and brilliant piece of music: the motet Ego flos campi (‘I am the rose of Sharon‘). For its text, he resorted to the highly popular Song of Songs, a collection of poems from the Hebrew Bible in which the Christian spiritual yearning to be united with God is expressed in terms of erotic and sexual desire (cf. mysticism).

It was no coincidence that Clemens used these specific lines from the Song of Songs, because they contain the motto of the Marian Brotherhood he worked for: sicut lilium internet spinas (‘as a lily among the thorns’), a reference to Mary’s purity amidst a world of sins. He highlights the motto by setting its words homophonically (i.e. the words are sung simultaneously by all voices rather than independently), so that the words literally stand out between the complex polyphony, ‘as a lily among the thorns’. For me, it certainly stands out as one of the most exquisite motets from the Renaissance. The music from this period is so ravishing, so brilliant, and so achingly beautiful that we would do ourselves a disservice if we neglected it. So please give it a try — you will not regret it.