abstract
| - While the authorship of the Regina Caeli is unknown, the hymn has been traced back to the twelfth century. It was in Franciscan use, after Compline, in the first half of the following century. Legend has it that St Gregory the Great heard angels chanting the first three lines one Easter morning in Rome, while following barefoot in a great religious procession the icon of the Virgin painted by Luke the Evangelist. He was thereupon inspired to add the fourth line. There are plainsong melodies (a simple and an ornate form) associated with Regina Caeli, the official or "typical" melody being found in the Vatican Antiphonary, 1911, p. 126. The antiphonal strophes of Regina Caeli were often set by polyphonic composers of the 16th century. There are three settings by the young Mozart, K.108, K.127, and K.276. The Marian anthems run the gamut of medieval literary styles, from the classical hexameters of the Alma Redemptoris Mater through the richly-rhymed accentual rhythm and regular strophes of the Ave Regina Caelorum, the irregular syntonic strophe of the Regina Caeli, to the sonorous prose rhythms with rhyming closes of the Salve Regina. "In the 16th century, the antiphons of our Lady were employed to replace the little office at all the hours" (Baudot, The Roman Breviary, 1909, p. 71).
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