The short motet
Filiae Jerusalem provides a fine example of the conflation of sacred and secular elements in music of this period. Its opening suggests a liturgical text: the first, busy, imitative point represents the throng of Palm Sunday observers jostling to see Jesus enter Jerusalem. However, the ‘martyr’ apparently being celebrated is in fact the emperor Maximilian, ‘with the crown with which the Lord crowned him’: the idea of emperor as martyr may possibly be a reference to Maximilian’s noted sympathy with Protestantism.
from notes by Stephen Rice © 2009
