Dufay's Nuper rosarum flores, King Solomon's Temple, and the Veneration of the Virgin

Abstract

Analysis of the architecture of the cathedral of Florence suggests that there is no correlation between the structural proportions in that church and the durational ratios in Guillaume Dufay's motet Nuper rosarum flores (as suggested by Charles Warren in 1973). The inspiration for the formal plan of the motet was likely not architecture, but a biblical passage (1 Kings 6:1-20), which gives the dimensions of the Temple of Solomon as 60 x 40 x 20 x 30 cubits. The vision of the Temple and, to a lesser degree, the image of the womb of the Virgin as the temple of Christ were elaborated upon by countless medieval exegetes, sermonizers, liturgical commentators, poets, and manuscript illuminators. Dufay expressed the traditional numerical symbols of the Temple (6:4:2:3, 4 and 7) and that of the Virgin (7) throughout the structure of his motet and thereby effected a musical union of these two spiritual forces.