Salve Regina

What it means

The Salve Regina is one of the four great Marian antiphons of the Latin liturgy. It is sung in the Divine Office at the end of the day, in a particular period of the church year; the other periods each have their own antiphons. The text is a greeting and prayer of petition to Mary. Its melody survives in a solemn and a plainer version, both of which are widespread.

Musical use

Because of its fixed place in daily prayer, the antiphon belongs among the best-known melodies of chant and has been set polyphonically many times — from the Renaissance to the present, as a plain setting as well as an extended motet. Settings partly take up the chant melody as a cantus firmus, partly set the text freely. The two-part structure of the text, which proceeds from invocation to petition, gives the music a natural organization; the repeated exclamations at the end offer occasion for intensification or for gradually fading away.

Performance practice

Clarify which version of the melody is meant, and sing it with calm, closed tone production without vibrato. Shape the text from the Latin word stress and breathe at the points marked by strokes. With polyphonic settings, check whether the chant melody is quoted, and make it audible. Watch for shared pronunciation and uniform vowel colours. In liturgical use, the choice follows the church year; clarify this with those leading the service.

Bear in mind that the antiphon has a fixed place in the Divine Office and its use is bound to the time of the church year: check this before using it in a service, and clarify it with the leadership. Also clarify which version of the melody is meant, since a solemn and a plainer one survive. Sing with calm, closed tone production without vibrato and shape from the Latin word stress. Settings come, among others, from Pergolesi and Schubert.

Check whether a polyphonic setting quotes the chant, because the shaping must then proceed from the melody.