ABSTRACT
Bertrandus Vaqueras’ most complicated work, the one that has earned him his place in the history of music, is his Missa L’Homme armé, preserved in VatS 49. Uniquely among the papal singers of his generation Vaqueras was apparently also an active humanist. A dedicatory poem shows that Vaqueras intended to send this to Barnabus Christino in the house of Camillus del Bene. Vaqueras was making things easy for himself by providing the opportunity for layered composition over a slow moving cantus firmus and reducing the amount of melodic material he actually had to think up. Vaqueras may have been born in southern France and may have written humanistic poetry, but he shows himself to be a true follower of the late medieval Franco-Flemish school of composition. Perhaps the most accessible of Vaqueras’ works to modern ears is his motet Ave regina caelorunt.
