Description
Illumina faciem tuam is the communion motet for Septuagesima and is found in Isaac and Senfl’s Choralis Constantinus. Commissioned by Konstanz Cathedral in 1508, this huge collection of mass propers likely included works written for the court of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, who was Isaac’s patron at the time. During Isaac’s interview process at the Este court in Ferrara around 1502/3, he would have been aware of the Savonarolan political leanings of his intended patron: Ercole I D’Este, for whom Josquin wrote his monumental setting of Psalm 51: Miserere mei, Deus.
The text of Illumina faciem tuam is taken from the later verses of Psalm 31, the other psalm taken as inspiration by Girolamo Savonarola for his meditation Tristitia obsedit me, as he awaited his doom in his cell in Florence in 1498. A reasonably rare choice of text, it is worth noting the Ferrarese link with Carlo Gesualdo who chose to set this text almost a century later in his Sacrae Cantiones I of 1603, less than a decade after his second marriage in Ferrara to Eleanora D’Este, the great-grandaughter of Ercole I.
Isaac’s superius part is based very clearly on the plainchant, with ligatures helping clarify the plainchant’s text underlay, while the lower parts serve to embellish and occasionally imitate the plainchant in his typically graceful harmonic style.
© Guy James 2025
Illumina faciem tuam super servum tuum,
Et salvum me fac in tua misericordia,
Domine, non confundar,
quoniam invocavi te.
Shew thy servant the light of thy countenance,
And save me for thy mercy’s sake.
O Lord, let me not be confounded,
for I have called upon thee.
Psalm 30: 17 – 18
