Motet Music

Motet Music

The genesis of the motet is, like the biblical birth of Eve, a matter of appendage. In the case of Eve, a rib was removed from Adam and fashioned into a women; the motet was a rib added to pre-existing clausulae. James C. Thomson describes this development as follows: “In the thirteenth century, perhaps sooner, it became the practice to add a new text to the upper voice of a clausula. The newly worded, was then called motetus.” (Thomson, 56) Despite its somewhat haphazard birth, the form was widely accepted. Grout describes its popularity as: “Thousands of motets were written in the thirteenth century; the style spread from Paris throughout France and to all parts of western Europe.” (Grout, 99) Originality was not a hallmark of the thirteenth century motet. In fact, of the two essential characteristics of the motet, one was that “it was constructed on a cantus firmus, some pre-existent melody…” (Thomson, 57) The other was that it had at least two different texts. As Grout points out, “the stock of motet melodies, both tenors and upper parts, lay in the public domain; composers and performers freely helped themselves to the music of their predecessors without acknowledgment and altered it without notice.” (Grout, 99) A unique characteristic of the motet of this period is the mixing of melodies and rhythms. Alfred Einstein described this technique as: “This may be called polymelody, the compulsory combination of the two or more distinct melodies with different rhythms…” (Einstein, 26) With the acceptance of such combinations came the development of stranger mixtures. Side by side with a sacred liturgical text appeared secular texts of sometimes outrageous contrast. The mixture of sacred and secular text was a result of the fact that less and less notice was taken of the connection between the texts of the tenor and duplum. Einstein theorized this development was arbitrary, however most belief the music is premised on an, “internal perception” (Bukofzer, 28) and to the musician, “to them a detail was a value in itself.” (Mathiassen, 70) The motet blended the different planes of music. An additional development in the technique of mixing and adding is that not only was it polyphonic, polyrythmic, and polytextual, but music was now polyglot: “one or more vernacular (French) texts might be substituted for Latin ones.”

(Thomson, 57) During this time, composers of the Notre Dame School concerned themselves with the development of clausulae in “rhythmically identical patterns.” (Harman, 53) Harman writes: “This was not only the culmination of the Notre Dame preoccupation with rhythm, but was also a very important innovation, because it eventually developed into the chief structural device of the fourteenth century motet.” (Harman, 53) The structural device alluded to above, goes under name of “isorhythm”, (same rhythm). At first, this concept of single rhythm was applied solely to the tenor part, but gradually the principle was applied to the other parts. Creating a greater unity and sense of whole to the listener. Philippe de Vitry (1291-1361) “was a master of the isorythmic motet.” (Thomson, 59) It was he who pioneered the application of the principle to the other parts. He and Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-c.1377), whose “claim that the ear should be used to check a completed composition was the first indication that the combination of the given melodies… was beginning to yield to a freer, more individual attitude towards creative art.” (Einstein, 34) Machaut was the most prominent practitioner of the strophic motet and preferred the use of French text. (Saide, 625) The fourteenth century also witnessed a change in attitude toward text. The polytextual thirteenth-century motet was replaced by the fourteenth-century forms, which typically had a single text, treated either as a solo (the French ballad) or distributed between the voices in such a way as to keep the words always clearly understandable. (Grout, 157) The development of the motet from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries can be characterized as a gradual turning away from the abstract, nonsensuous principles of construction toward pleasure of sounds for their own sake, and toward a clarity of structure immediately apparent from the music itself, without reference to esoteric meanings. (Grout, 157) Many of the motets written during the fourteenth century were constructed in a fashion that has come to be called isoperiodic. In these the phrases were normally kept at the same length but were laid out so as to produce overlaps between the various voices. (Saide, 625) Up until the fifteenth century, the principle of cantus firmus, or pre-existent melody use, was rigidly adhered to.