motet - Medieval motets, Renaissance motets, Baroque motets, The motet since Bach

A sacred musical work, originating in the 13th-c and cultivated (especially at Vespers) during the Renaissance as an unaccompanied polyphonic piece, reaching its highest point of development in the works of such composers as Desprez, Lassus, Palestrina, and Byrd. After 1600, motets often included instrumental accompaniment, notably the grands motets of Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1634–1704), Lalande, and others performed at the French court, but the term continued to distinguish sacred works in Latin from others (cantatas and anthems) in the vernacular. Some German composers (notably Bach and Brahms), however, used the term Motette for pieces in the vernacular without independent instrumental support.

According to Margaret Bent (1997), "'a piece of music in several parts with words' is as precise a definition of the motet as will serve from the thirteenth to the late sixteenth century and beyond.

Medieval motets

The earliest motets arose, in the thirteenth century (Bent, 1997), out of the organum tradition exemplified in the Notre Dame school of Léonin and Pérotin. From these first motets arose a medieval tradition of secular motets.

Increasingly in the 14th and 15th centuries, motets tended to be isorhythmic; Philippe de Vitry was one of the earliest composers to use this technique, and his work evidently had an influence on that of Guillaume de Machaut, one of the most famous named composers of late medieval motets.

Renaissance motets

The name of the motet was preserved in the transition from medieval to Renaissance music, but the character of the composition was entirely changed. While it grew out of the medieval isorhythmic motet, the Renaissance composers of the motet generally abandoned the use of a repeated figure as a cantus firmus. he wrote one of the last motets in the medieval, isorhythmic style, the Nuper rosarum flores which premiered in 1436 and was written to commemorate the completion of Filippo Brunelleschi's dome in the Cathedral of Florence. this tended to obscure the rhythm supplied by the cantus firmus that is apparent in the medieval isorhythmic motet.

Instead, the Renaissance motet is a short polyphonic musical setting in imitative counterpoint, for chorus, of a Latin text, usually sacred, not specifically connected to the liturgy of a given day, and therefore suitable for use in any service. This is the sort of composition that is most familiarly named by the name of "motet," and the Renaissance period marked the flowering of the form.

In essence, these motets were sacred madrigals. The relationship between the two forms is most obvious in the composers who concentrated on sacred music, especially Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whose "motets" setting texts from the Canticum Canticorum, the Biblical "Song of Solomon," are among the most lush and madrigal-like of Palestrina's compositions, while his "madrigals" that set poems of Petrarch in praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary would not be out of place in church. Like most madrigals, Renaissance motets developed in episodic format, with separate phrases of the source text being given independent melodic treatment and contrapuntal development;

Secular motets continued to be written; these motets typically set a Latin text in praise of a monarch, commemorating some public triumph, or even praising music itself; the themes of courtly love often found in the medieval secular motet were banished from the Renaissance motet. Many secular motets are known as "ceremonial motets" Characteristic of ceremonial motets was a clarity of diction, for the audience was not presumed to be familiar already with the text, as would have been true with Latin hymns;

The motet was one of the pre-eminent forms of Renaissance music. Other important composers of Renaissance motets include:

Alexander Agricola Gilles Binchois Antoine Busnois William Byrd Johannes Vodnianus Campanus Loyset Compère Josquin Des Prez John Dunstaple Antoine de Févin Francisco Guerrero Nicolas Gombert Heinrich Isaac Pierre de La Rue Orlando di Lasso Cristóbal de Morales Jean Mouton Jacob Obrecht Johannes Ockeghem Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Thomas Tallis John Taverner Tomás Luis de Victoria

In the latter part of the 16th century, Giovanni Gabrieli and other composers developed a new style, the polychoral motet, in which two or more choirs of singers (or instruments) alternated. This style of motet was sometimes called the Venetian motet to distinguish it from the Netherlands or Flemish motet written elsewhere.

Baroque motets

The name "motet" was preserved into Baroque music, especially in France, where the word was applied to petits motets, sacred choral compositions whose only accompaniment was a basso continuo; Lully's motets also continued the Renaissance tradition of semi-secular Latin motets in works such as Plaude Laetare Gallia, written to celebrate the baptism of King Louis XIV's son; The Dauphin is bathed in the sacred font, and the Christian is dedicated to Christ.)

In Germany, too, pieces called motets were written in the new musical languages of the Baroque. Heinrich Schütz wrote many motets in a series of publications called Symphoniae sacrae, some in Latin and some in German.

Johann Sebastian Bach also wrote six surviving works he called motets; Bach's motets are:

BWV 225 Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (1726) BWV 226 Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf (1729) BWV 227 Jesu, meine Freude (?) BWV 228 Fürchte dich nicht (?) BWV 229 Komm, Jesu, komm! (1730 ?) BWV 230 Lobet den Herrn alle Heiden (?)

There is also a piece of a cantata that is classified as a motet.

BWV 118 O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht (1736-1737?)

The motet since Bach

Later 18th-century composers wrote few motets, although Mozart's well-known Ave verum corpus is in this genre.

In the 19th century German composers continued to write motets occasionally, notably Johannes Brahms (in German) and Anton Bruckner (in Latin). Similar compositions in the English language are called anthems, but some later English composers, such as Charles Villiers Stanford, wrote motets in Latin.

In the 20th century, composers of motets have been conscious imitators of earlier styles, such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Hugo Distler, Ernst Krenek, and Giorgio Pacchioni.