Motet

I Motecta festorum totius anni cum communi sanctorum quaternis vocibus di Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, pubblicati durante gli anni del suo servizio come Maestro di Cappella presso la basilica romana di Santa Maria Maggiore, conobbero nei decenni successivi uno straordinario successo, imponendosi come un classico della letteratura mottettistica cinquecentesca.
Questa nuova edizione critica offre agli studiosi ed agli esecutori il testo palestriniano, corredato da uno studio introduttivo che prende in esame, tra l’altro, l’ordinamento liturgico dell’opera e la sua fortuna.

A transcription of Machaut's Rondeau 14, "Ma fin est ma commencement" ("my end is my beginning"). The score is rendered to be read both forwards and backwards as necessitated by the music. For an animated video of the score with a performance visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcfPr4IN2MM

Se estudian motetes compuestos por maestros de la capilla catedralicia de Valencia en honor a San Vicente Ferrer. El estudio permite reconocer la pervivencia del estilo antiguo y, al mismo tiempo, el afianzarse del estilo galante. También se atisba una especialización en el uso de los estilos, destinado el primero a momentos de pausa y meditación, y orietado el segundo hacia una oratoria cada vez más teatralizada.
The essay examines motets composed by masters of the cathedral chapel of Valencia in honor of San Vicente Ferrer. The study allows to recognize the survival of the stylus antiquus and, at the same time, the consolidation of the gallant style. There is also a glimpse of a specialization in the use of styles, the former intended for moments of pause and meditation, and the latter oriented towards an increasingly dramatized oratory.

A pedagogical transcription of Richard Sampson's (attr.) motet in double canon, "Salve radix," written to celebrate the union of Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon and the birth of their daughter, Mary.

For a video with recording accompanying the modern transcription with side-by-side animated original notated music see the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9wl1XqV6Nk

Les grands motets de Mondonville représentent l'apogée d'un genre initié par Robert et Dumont, formalisé par Lully et développé par Lalande et ses successeurs. Ces grands motets assurèrent le succès à Mondonville pendant plus de vingt ans au Concert Spirituel et à la Chapelle Royale.
Cette édition du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles comporte une introduction historique, le texte latin et sa traduction en français, des notes pour l'interprétation, la partition et des notes critiques.

Tomás Luis de Victoria’s and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s motets are surprisingly understudied. On the other hand, recent analytical comparisons have clearly (and intriguingly) demonstrated that Victoria knew Palestrina’s music, reworked it, modelled his own works on it in different ways and in different phases of his career, but most notably in his first published collection of 1572. Thus, the aim of the article is twofold: to study Palestrina’s motets published before 1572 and Victoria’s motets of the same year focusing on formal design and sonic architecture; and to shed new light on the compositional relationship between the two masters. Palestrina’s "Motecta festorum totius anni" (1563), "Liber primus motettorum" (1569), "Motettorum … liber secundus" (1572), and Victoria’s "Motecta" (1572) are taken into consideration. Issues of imitatio and originality, the problem of form in the motet, and questions regarding the definition of sonic styles in late sixteenth-century polyphony are discussed. The results of this analytical survey confirm Palestrina’s role as a ‘great inspirer’, and at the same time show that Victoria, while setting up an enduring compositional dialogue with his senior colleague, used and developed his own, highly individual voice.

Créé pendant la Semaine Sainte de l’année 1663, par les chanteurs de la Chambre et de la Chapelle du Roi, et l’orchestre des Vingt-quatre Violons, le Miserere de Lully fut admiré en son temps et longtemps considéré comme le modèle du grand motet français

Le psaume 50, avec ses vingt versets courts aux affects variés offrit à Lully l’occasion de prouver, dans le genre du motet, son talent de dramaturge. À une époque où l’écriture contrapuntique dominait encore la musique sacrée, les contrastes dramatiques introduits par Lully, en usant de tous les artifices d’écriture permis par le double-chœur, représentèrent une véritable nouveauté en France.

Cette partition peut être interprétée par différents effectifs vocaux et orchestraux. Au minimum, il faut un petit chœur de 6 solistes (2 dessus, 1 bas-dessus, 1 haute-contre, 1 taille, 1 basse), un grand chœur à 5 voix (dessus, haute-contre, taille, basse-taille, basse), un orchestre à cordes, et un orgue positif.

Cette édition du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles comporte une introduction historique (FR/EN), le texte latin et sa traduction (FR/EN), la partition et un appareil critique (FR/EN). La réduction clavier et le matériel du Miserere sont disponibles chez le même éditeur.

Gioseffo Zarlino’s motet collection Modulationes sex vocum (Venice, 1566) contains two pieces that share a number of characteristics. Not only do they make use of the same cantus firmus (‘Ne reminiscaris Domine delicta mea’), which is treated canonically, but their texts are also remarkably similar: Miserere mei Deus and Misereris omnium. Moreover, in the latter piece, the words ‘Miserere mei Deus’ pervade the composition as a soggetto ostinato.
Zarlino mentions both motets twice in his Istitutioni harmoniche of 1573 and links them explicitly in book 3 (discussion of contrapuntal techniques) and book 4 (presentation of the modes).
In his studies on Josquin’s Miserere mei Deus, Patrick Macey has investigated the influence of this composition on Willaert, Rore, Vicentino, and others from an analytical and historical point of view. Especially their connection with the dukes of Ferrara provides a common context for this cluster of works.
Interestingly enough, Zarlino’s pair of six-part motets has not been thoroughly examined as part of this tradition. I show that a link with the Este court can indeed be established. My evidence is based on archival, musical, and theoretical sources.

The repertoire of Milanese Motetti missales has often aroused interest among scholars from an historical point of view, while there are surprisingly few analytical investigations concerning this corpus. The case of Franchino Gaffurio (1451-1522), surely one of the most prominent figures of the Milanese scene, is particularly striking: paradoxically, the importance of his contributions as a theorist and author of treatises has almost completely obscured his role as a composer. This article presents a first attempt to delineate Gaffurio’s motet style. Some of his motets in Librone 1 of the Veneranda Fabbrica are considered, examining the texts he choose to set, and giving special attention to the formal solutions he adopted, as well as to issues of intertextuality pointing both inside and outside his oeuvre (Ockeghem, Josquin). A number of questions concerning both the Gattungsgeschichte of the motet and the personal style of the first native Italian composer of the Renaissance are pondered.

A transcription of French 14th century Ars Nova Chace, "Se je chant," from the Ivrea Codex, B.C. 115 fol. 52v possibly by Denis le Grant (died 1352). Watch the score with a rare virtuosic recording at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_Yn9y0BjR8

Despite the frequently critiqued prolixity in much of his oeuvre, Alexander Agricola (1445/46-1506) crafted music comprehensible enough to elicit great praise from numerous contemporaries. What is then inherently praiseworthy in this abstruse music? In his Salve Regina I, Agricola crafts a musical argument for his garrulity, the thesis of which aims to clarify and justify the virtue of his style. While Agricola employed cantus firmus conventions to provide formal scaffolding, he also imbues discursiveness with comprehensibility through rhetorical techniques, such as inflection of cadence, clearness of imitation, phraseology of text, and varied implementation of cantus firmus. Articulating the micro-structure of his music, these components are then couched in the discourse of the classical argument: an introduction, confirmation, and refutation of a thesis. In Agricola’s Salve Regina I, motet becomes a medium for the exhibition and logical justification of his musical thesis of abstract polystylism.

A score analysis of Alexander Agricola's first "Salve Regina" motet by Jordan Key. If you are interested in this analysis, my paper "Rhetoric, Prolixity, and Agricola: Alexander Agricola's Salve Regina I as a Defense of Polystylism During the Late 15th Century" discusses at length this piece as a model of rhetoric in music during the 15th century.


See:
https://www.academia.edu/27395799/Rhetoric_Prolixity_and_Agricola_Alexander_Agricolas_Salve_Regina_I_as_a_Defense_of_Polystylism_During_the_Late_15th_Century


For a performance recording with a score, see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3B-j3fUbqc

The paper addresses specifically the production of motets of G. Contino, J. de Mantua, C. De Rore connected with the political-institutional work of the cardinal of  Trent Cristoforo Madruzzo (1512-1578), in the delicate historical phase of the Council of Trent (1545-1563)

Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548 ca. - 1611) ebbe due patrie: la Spagna e Roma. Interamente dedito alla musica sacra e grande maestro di voce, attinse all'esperienza di Morales e Palestrina e seppe contemperare vigore spirituale, intensità di sentimento e disciplina stilistica, in una sintesi di irripetibile perfezione.
Da decenni non si pubblica in Europa una monografia dedicata a Victoria e questo libro riapre il dibattito sulla vita e l'opera di uno dei massimi stilisti della musica rinascimentale.

Presents the textless setting of the chant trope “Gregorius presul meritis”, which functions as an introduction to the Introit “Ad te levavi” for the first Sunday of Advent. It was added to the French chansonnier as its opening piece with spaces left open for big decorative initials, but it was never finished.motet

Facsimile and Critical Edition by Luigi Collarile.
ISBN 978-88-271-3055-1

L’analisi di un’edizione musicale conservata oggi in un unico esemplare senza data e luogo di edizione, ha permesso di identificare una raccolta prodotta dall’editore veneziano Alessandro Vincenti. Tra il 1650 e il 1651, egli diede alle stampe due importanti raccolte postume di Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). Ad esse va ora aggiunta una terza edizione. Essa contiene quattro mottetti mariani, tre dei quali ancora completamente sconosciuti.

Il presente volume contiene un’introduzione storica, un’edizione critica dei mottetti e il facsimile della stampa musicale originale.

Reviews:
- Il Giornale della musica n. 291 (avril 2012), p. 32 (Fiorella Sassanelli)
- Early Music 41 (2013), p. 161-163 (Noel O’Regan)

“Clap, clap, par un matin – Sus Robin.” is a motet of unique quality with an intriguing text. The medieval motet originated as highly embellished liturgical music during the 12th and 13th centuries, but by the late 13th and 14th century had evolved into the most popular form of secular art music. “Clap, clap” is one of, if not the most, bawdy piece in the Ivrea Codex. The piece features two corresponding poems, which tell two accounts of a raunchy and probably adulterous sexual encounter between a man, Robin, and an unnamed woman, who appears to be married to a man named Guerin, with whom she is sexually frustrated. Both texts are provided in English translation as subtitles in the above video and as verse below. To view the score with a recording visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtDOHvTTb2k

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina published his first motets book, Motecta festorum totius anni… quaternis vocibus, in 1563: in the following decades, this collection enjoyed a wide success (13 editions in forty years) and became a model of excellence in motet composition, as testified by instances of imitatio by Marenzio, Victoria and G.F. Anerio, among others.
In the Marian section of the book, the motet Nativitas tua Dei Genitrix Virgo (In Nativitate Beatae Mariae) stands out for its elegant construction and intense expressiveness. The presence of an alternative authorial version of this interesting motet in the anthology Liber primus musarum issued by Antonio Barrè in the same year, gives us the opportunity to reconsider some aspects of Palestrina’s ‘idea of motet’ and, on a broader level, of his creative process.
This paper will try to put a basis for a new understanding of writing and re-writing in the field of Renaissance motet, showing in particular the close attention Palestrina paid to such problems as text expression and the relation between musical form and rhetorical strategies. The exposition will include analytical details – useful to specialists in Renaissance musicology –, as well as more general arguments open to interdisciplinary discussion.

The phraseological stratification and superimposed rondo form present in the Ars Antiqua motet, "Clap, clap, par un matin - Sus robin" seem reminiscent of the effects engendered by isorhythm. The tenor’s regularized pattern in this motet is a 7-part rondo AB-AB-AB-A Due to this regular phraseological structure of the tenor, one might naturally expect that at the end of each A and B phrase both of the above parts would also come to some cadence, giving the whole piece the same clear phrase as the tenor. Intriguingly, this is not the case in “clap, clap." The layering of phrases of unequal length and the evasion of correspondence between voices until the end of the piece is similar to the effect created by isorhythm with large least common multiples between the color and talea. This Ars Antiqua motet foreshadows the isorhythmic innovations and aesthetics of the ars nova.

The figure of Cardinal Bernard Clesio of Trent (1485-1539) was of fundamental importance to the introduction of the Italian Renaissance culture and art in the Prince-Bishopric of Trent, important imperial Elector important for northern Italy and the political balance with the papacy. The essay on the basis of previous studies add more news and assessments, and the first critical transcription of the motet dedicated to Clesio E. Lapicida on the occasion of his elevation to bishop of Trento (1515)

The French singer and composer known in the musical sources as “Fede”, whose career unfolded between 1440 and 1475, was listed among prominent musicians in poems by Greban, Crétin and Eloy d’Amerval. Here he was mentioned along with Du Fay, Binchois, Ockeghem and Busnoys. Only five compositions by him are preserved, two small motets and three chansons.

Dans un phénomène tout à fait analogue au cas pictural, la thématique de la vanité a pénétré le champ musical aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles, se matérialisant en un vaste corpus de pièces vocales, qui demeure pourtant méconnu de la critique. Jetant lumière sur le répertoire italien de représentations musicales de la vanité, nous prétendons montrer les paradoxes d’un discours qui, tout en tentant d’affirmer un code moral menacé par les pratiques sociales modernes, finit par contribuer à son abolition.

Mots-clé : Vanité, Musique, Italie, Contre-réforme.

A phenomenon analogous to the case of painting, the theme of vanity entered the field of music in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, materializing in a large corpus of vocal pieces, which have remained, however, overlooked by critics. Analyzing the representative vanity pieces in the Italian repertoire, this article intends to demonstrate the paradoxes of a speech that, while attempting to assert a code of moral values threatened by modern social practices, ultimately contributes to its abolition.

Keywords : Vanitas, Music, Italy, Counter-reformation.

The conductus repertoire was widely cultivated between c.1160 and the late thirteenth century, and it comprises Latin texts set to both monody and polyphony. Unlike the organum and the motet, the conductus does not normally exploit any pre-existing musical or poetic material. This makes the polyphonic share of conductus material the first newly composed, coherent repertoire for more than one voice.
This thesis focuses on the two-part conductus. It aims at exploring the authorial and historical context in which it was created, analysing and categorising the interaction between its syllabic and melismatic sections, and describing its development over the life span of the corpus.
The conductus is introduced and presented within the broader context of music of its time. It is argued that most of the extant testimonies of conductus were subject to several stages of reworking, and a multitude of personalities are credited with the creation of the repertoire as a whole. Furthermore, the study discusses some particular cases of contested attribution and proposes new authorial identifications.
The analytical description that follows challenges the current view of the polyphonic conductus as a rigid juxtaposition of syllabic cum littera and melismatic sine littera sections. Such a sharp division does not take into account the complex structure of the syllabic cum littera music. The analytical study consequently undertaken describes all melismatic features of the two-voice conductus. Two groups of melismas are identified. The first, framing caudae, typically covers a structural role. The second, internal caudae, interacts actively with all the components of the song: text, meter, rhymes, and meaning of the poem.
The last section of this work examines the evolution of the use of melismas throughout the lifespan of the genre. The study is accomplished by building on the previous analytical investigation, diminishing ambiguities due to the relatively small sample of datable songs. The terminal cauda results being the main feature of the repertoire, initially set to all stanzas. The initial cauda was instead either set to all stanzas or not used at all. The approach to framing caudae becomes more flexible after the end of the twelfth century. Internal caudae were instead always used by conducti composers.