A recently rediscovered motet by Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III

This article presents for the first time in print a motet by Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, which was recently rediscovered in a manuscript in the Berlin Sing-Akademie. Because the motet is attributed only to 'Ferdinando' in the source, evidence is provided to substantiate that the music is indeed by the emperor, including its musical style and its seeming reliance on the 'compositional machine' from Athanasius Kircher's treatise Musurgia universalis (1650). In addition, the article argues that this motet is different from a lost work with the same title attributed to Ferdinand III in a catalogue of the imperial music library. As well as augmenting the catalogue of Ferdinand III's works, the article thus also offers a case study in the methods by which one can puzzle through the conflicting source materials that frequently confront scholars and performers of early music.