Motet

According to the English musicologist Margaret Bent, "a piece of music in several parts with words" is as precise a definition of the motet as will serve from the 13th to the late 16th century and beyond.

[2] In the early 20th century, it was generally believed motet came from the Latin movere (to move), though a derivation from the French mot ("word", or "phrase") had also been suggested.

[4][5][6][7] The troped clausulas that were the forerunner of the motet were originally called motelli (from the French mot, "word"), soon replaced by the term moteti.

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 usually adapted from a melismatic passage of Gregorian chant on a single word or phrase.

[10] The texts of upper voices include subjects as diverse as courtly love odes, pastoral encounters with shepherdesses, political attacks, and many Christian devotions, especially to the Virgin Mary.

Guillaume Dufay was a transitional figure in this regard, writing one of the last important motets in the medieval, isorhythmic style, Nuper rosarum flores, in 1436.

[13][14] During the second half of the fifteenth century Motets stretched the cantus firmus to greater lengths compared to the surrounding multi-voice counterpoint, adopting a technique of contemporary 'tenor masses'.

Cascading, passing chords created by the interplay of voices and the absence of an obvious beat distinguish medieval and renaissance motet styles.

[16] The relationship between the forms is clearest in composers of sacred music, such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whose "motets" setting texts from the Canticum Canticorum are among the most lush and madrigal-like, while his madrigals using Petrarch's poems could be performed in a church.

"If Ye Love Me" by Thomas Tallis serves the demand of the Church of England for English texts, and a focus on understanding the words, beginning in homophony.

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.

Six motets attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach and catalogued BWV 225–230 are relatively long pieces combining German hymns with biblical texts, several of them composed for funerals.

Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach composed an extended chorale motet Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, combining Baroque techniques with the galant style.

Felix Mendelssohn composed Jauchzet dem Herrn, alle Welt, Denn er hat seinen Engeln befohlen and Mitten wir im Leben sind.

In 1920, Ralph Vaughan Williams composed O clap your hands, a setting of verses from Psalm 47 for a four-part choir, organ, brass, and percussion, called a motet.

Other examples include works by Richard Strauss, Charles Villiers Stanford, Edmund Rubbra, Lennox Berkeley, Morten Lauridsen, Edward Elgar, Hugo Distler, F. Melius Christiansen, Ernst Krenek, Michael Finnissy, Karl Jenkins[18] and Igor Stravinsky.