Motets During The Renaissance Period

A motet can be defined as an unaccompanied choral or composition based on a sacred Latin text. There are some exceptions, such as motets that have secular text or instrumental accompaniment. In general, motets normally used religious texts that were not used in the mass. Motets were often polyphonic, meaning that there were multiple vocal parts sung simultaneously. Motets started to be written during the medieval period and then developed throughout time and was most known throughout the Renaissance period. During this time, there were a list of schools and churches that had well known composers and pioneers of the motet. The Burgundian School was a group of composers in the 15th century in northern and eastern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands,
The text was added to the upper-voice parts of descant clausulae. This was the short sections of organum, a 13th-century and earlier form consisting of a plainchant melody in the tenor voice. The earliest motets started off with two voices that moved together which was called a conductus motet. They would move together over with a single text over a tenor line. When the motet developed during the 13th century ,on top of a tenor voice, another two or three melodies were simultaneous placed; in descant clausulaea. In other organums, all the voice parts were set in short, repeated rhythmic patterns called rhythmic modes. In forming motets from descant clausulae, two or even three parts were each given a text. The motets most used text language was Latin, because the motet was mainly used for the church. During the 13th century, motets began to become bilingual which led to the addition of French and English on sacred and secular text. During the 14th century motets were used for ceremonies and both sacred and secular began to shift into using a technique called isorhythms. Isorhythms is the repetition complex rhythmic patterns throughout a piece of music. By the 15th century motets were sung with all four voices. The texture of the motet was contrapuntal, Syllables and words were not sung simultaneously in the different voices except in contrasting parts due to chord changes in the music. The
Guillaume Du Fay was one of the earliest and pioneers of the motet. Du Fay was born Beersel, near Brussels, Burgundian Netherlands and was a Franco-Flemish composer noted for both his church music and his secular chansons. Dufay was a chorister at the Cambrai cathedral, became a canon of Cambrai, supervised the music of the cathedral and then in the service of the duke of Burgundy. In his legacy Du Fay left 87 motets, 59 French chansons, 7 Italian chansons, 7 complete masses, and 35 mass sections. His works often used the technique of fauxbourdon. Fauxbourdon is a style of composition that moved melodies and harmonies from the third and sixth notes of the scale and was derived from English descant which was an improvisational practice. In one of Du Fay’s works “Alma redemptoris mater”, we can understand some of the text, forms and textures he uses. This motet begins with a Latin text, monophonically and then shifts to polyphony in measure nine. Each line is sung as an individual musical phrase and cadenced at the last measure of each phrase. Du Fay uses three different voices, within doing this a polyphonic texture is created, but the top most voice or cantus is the most texted line, while the tenor and contratenor are texted with less words than the overall cantus. In measure 9 we see the tenor part enters, it is homorhythmic with the cantus until measure 11. In terms of the text which is in Latin, the text