Musical Form
Motet
A short sacred choral piece - from medieval puzzles to Renaissance masterpieces.
Vocal / Sacred
A motet is a choral piece, usually sacred and usually sung in Latin, setting a text such as a psalm, a prayer, or a hymn to the Virgin Mary. Where the Mass sets the fixed texts of the Catholic service, a motet sets other words, and so it gave composers more freedom - and became one of the most important forms in church music for over five centuries.
The medieval motet
The name probably comes from the French mot, "word." The earliest motets, from 13th-century France, were extraordinary puzzles: composers took a fragment of chant as the lowest voice and added one or more voices above it, each with its own text - sometimes in different languages, and sometimes a sacred Latin text sung against a French love song. In the 14th century, composers such as Guillaume de Machaut built motets on isorhythm, using repeating rhythmic patterns as a hidden structural framework. Guillaume Du Fay's Nuper rosarum flores was written for the consecration of the great dome of Florence Cathedral in 1436.
The Renaissance motet
In the Renaissance the motet changed into the form most people know: a single sacred text, usually sung by an unaccompanied choir in flowing, imitative polyphony, with the music shaped to the meaning of the words. This was the golden age of the form:
- Josquin des Prez's Ave Maria... virgo serena.
- Palestrina's Sicut cervus.
- Tomás Luis de Victoria's O magnum mysterium.
- Thomas Tallis's forty-part Spem in alium.
- William Byrd's Ave verum corpus.
In England after the Reformation, the motet's English-language counterpart became the anthem.
Later motets
Bach wrote a handful of brilliant German motets, several for double choir, including Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied ("Sing to the Lord a new song") and Jesu, meine Freude. Mozart's tiny Ave verum corpus (1791), written months before his death, is one of his most loved pieces. In the 19th century, Anton Bruckner wrote motets such as Locus iste, and in the 20th century Maurice Duruflé and Francis Poulenc continued the tradition. Morten Lauridsen's O magnum mysterium (1994) is one of the most performed choral works of recent decades.
Famous motets
- Josquin - Ave Maria... virgo serena.
- Palestrina - Sicut cervus.
- Tallis - Spem in alium (c. 1570).
- Allegri - Miserere (1630s) - a psalm setting so prized that the Vatican guarded it; Mozart famously wrote it out from memory at fourteen.
- Bach - Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied.
- Mozart - Ave verum corpus (1791).
- Lauridsen - O magnum mysterium (1994).
Where to start listening: Mozart's Ave verum corpus is three minutes of pure serenity. Then try Palestrina's Sicut cervus for the Renaissance style, and Allegri's Miserere, with its famous soaring high C. See also choral music.