ABSTRACT
This chapter details Planxit autem David as the only substantial reading of an important biblical text that was largely overlooked by the medieval and early modern church. The medieval church displayed a certain amount of anxiety about this verse when, in the process of redacting the Bible during the middle ages, it added the phrase "sicut mater amat filium suum sic ego te diligebam" to the penultimate verse of the lament. Modern readers of the motet Planxit autem David face a musical text rich with challenges. If Planxit autem David brings David and Jonathan into the sphere of sacred homoerotics—if David is identified on some level in this motet as queer—in so doing it strengthens an analogy between David and that other famous homosexual of antiquity, Orpheus. As Orpheus called Euridice from Hades, so David, through his music, participates in the resurrection, bringing the promise of divinity to mortals.
