Motets

In western music, a motet is a mainly vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from the late medieval era to the present.

The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. The late 13th-century theorist Johannes de Grocheo believed that the motet was "not to be celebrated in the presence of common people, because they do not notice its subtlety, nor are they delighted in hearing it, but in the presence of the educated and of those who are seeking out subtleties in the arts."

The earliest motets arose in the 13th century from the organum tradition exemplified in the Notre Dame school of Léonin and Pérotin.  From these first motets arose a medieval tradition of secular motets. These were two- to four-part compositions in which different texts, sometimes in different vernacular languages, were sung simultaneously over a (usually Latin-texted) cantus firmus that once again was usually adapted from a passage of Gregorian chant.  It is also increasingly argued that the term "motet" could in fact include certain brief single-voice songs.  The texts of upper voices include subjects as diverse as courtly love odes, pastoral encounters with shepherdesses, political attacks, and many Christian devotion, especially to the Virgin Mary.  The vast majority of medieval motets are anonymous compositions, and there is significant re-use of music and text. 

Increasingly in the 14th and 15th centuries, motets made use of repetitive patters often termed panisorhythmic; that is, they employed repeated rhythmic patterns in all voices—not only the cantus firmus—which did not necessarily coincide with repeating melodic patterns.  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.

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.  Guillaume Dufay was a transitional figure in this regard; he wrote one of the last important motets in the medieval, isorhythmic style, Nuper rosarum flores (1436), written to commemorate the completion of Filippo Brunelleschi's dome in the Cathedral of Florence.

During the second half of the fifteenth century, motets came to adopt the cantus firmus technique found in contemporary "tenor masses," in which the cantus firmus was stretched out to great lengths compared to the multivoice counterpoint surrounding it.  This tended to obscure the rhythm supplied by the cantus firmus that had been apparent in the medieval isorhythmic motet. The cascading, passing chords created by the interplay between multiple voices, and the absence of a strong or obvious beat, are the features that distinguish medieval and renaissance motet styles.  Instead, the Renaissance motet is a polyphonic musical setting, sometimes 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.  The texts of antiphons (texts from the Psalms) were frequently used as motet texts.  This is the sort of composition that is most familiarly designated by the term "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.  The language of the text was the decisive feature: if it is Latin, it is a motet; if the vernacular, a madrigal.  Religious compositions in vernacular languages were often called madrigali spirituali, "spiritual madrigals."  Like their madrigal cousins, Renaissance motets developed in episodic format, with separate phrases of the source text being given independent melodic treatment and contrapuntal development; contrapuntal passages often alternate with monody.

Secular (non-religious) motets continued to be written, however.  These motets typically set a Latin text in praise of a monarch, commemorating some public triumph, or even praising music itself.  Nevertheless, 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) and also a clear articulation of formal structure, for example a setting apart of successive portions of text with sharp contrasts of texture or rhythm. Adrian Willaert, Ludwig Senfl, and Cipriano de Rore were among the most prominent composers of ceremonial motets during the first half of the 16th century.


Baroque Motets

In Baroque music, especially in France, there were two distinct, and very different types of motet: petits motets, sacred choral or chamber compositions whose only accompaniment was a basso continuo; and grands motets, which included massed choirs and instruments up to and including a full orchestra.  Jean-Baptiste Lully was an important composer of grands motets.  Lully's motets often included parts for soloists as well as choirs; they were longer, including multiple movements in which different soloist, choral, or instrumental forces were employed.  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; its text by Pierre Perrin begins:

     Plaude laetare Gallia
     Rore caelesti rigantur lilia,
     Sacro Delphinus fonte lavatur
     Et christianus Christo dicatur.

     ("Rejoice and sing, France: the lily is bathed with heavenly dew. The Dauphin is bathed in the sacred font, and the Christian is dedicated to Christ.")

Johann Sebastian Bach was also an important composer of Baroque motets.  They were relatively long pieces in German on sacred themes for choir and basso continuo, with instruments playing colla parte, several of them composed for funerals.

Classical era

Motet composing diminished in this era although Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart well-known Ave verum corpus (K. 618) is in this genre.

Later motets

In the 19th century, some German composers such as Felix Mendelssohn , Johannes Brahms, and Anton Bruckner composed motets as did French composers like Camille Saint-Saëns, and César Franck. 

In the 20th century, composers of motets have often consciously imitated earlier styles.  These composers include Ralph Vaughan Williams, Carl Nielsen,  Francis Poulenc, Richard Strauss,  Edward Elgar,  and Igor Stravinsky.