Michael Alan Anderson, Assistant Professor of Music at the Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester) has discovered that the second half of the prayer—the sinner’s direct plea to Mary—dates considerably earlier than commonly thought by historians. According to Anderson, who specializes in medieval and Renaissance music history, it turns out that musical composers were experimenting with petitionary supplements to the Ave Maria as early as the late thirteenth century, at least 150 years before historians have recognized such additions to the prayer.And it was not just one composer providing an isolated case example. Anderson has found three instances that prove that composers – many of whom were also poets – were affixing a plea to the Virgin Mary after the text of the Ave Maria was apparently complete. A musical manuscript known as the Montpellier Codex (compiled between 1260-1280) contains two examples of the phenomenon, while another manuscript (Las Huelgas Codex) from the early fourteenth century provides another case study.
I'm not quite sure why this wasn't known before, since the Montpellier Codex is hardly a recent discovery, but there you go. Maybe some experts among our readers can clarify this.
Michael Anderson says