Auricomum alterius mundi jubar altera virgo, Regia cui
stirps est, meus neque stirpe minor; Bis imperfectum facili cape fronte poema: Est quia perfectus qui tibi mittit amor.
He notes, for example, that the homage motet Ascaniae
stirps virtus est for Johann-Ernst of Anhalt formerly survived in sixteen printed copies in a Zerbst library, suggesting that Lechner presented a sizeable and pricey stock of copies.
In a similar fashion, Paula Higgins ("Love and Death in the Fifteenth-Century Motet: A Reading of Busnoys's Anima mea liquefacta est /
Stirps Jesse") suggests a previously unexplored context for composition based on events at the French court surrounding the death of the dauphine, Margaret of Scotland, and a close reading of Anima mea and related texts.
The combination of Anima mea and
Stirps Jesse weaves a complex tapestry of commentary upon events at the court of Louis and Marguerite d'Ecosse in 1445--6 and demonstrates how an ostensibly devotional work can convey an astonishing variety of extra-devotional meanings and symbols.
The stylistic range of the St Martial and Santiago music is remarkably wide, ranging from unrelieved note-against-note writing (for example in Congaudet hodie, no.32 in Karp's edition) to an almost Leonine floridity in the higher voice (
Stirps Jesse, no.18), and from archaic-sounding parallelism (Adsit Johannis, no.17) to expertly controlled melodic counterpoint (Oriente oriens, no.