Motet

The motet, though now largely absent from modern concerts, has nonetheless played a crucial role in the development of polyphonic music throughout the history of Western art music. What began as the simple application of new text to older music nearly eight hundred years ago went on to become one of the longest lasting and most influential genres of composition--and the perfect vehicle for early musicians to develop their own distinct voices as composers. Because its history is so expansive--both in its longevity and in its international span-- the term ‘motet’ has meant many things to many different people. While its origins can be traced back to early 13th century France, it was a very different motet which was popularized and exported to surrounding nations. The motet, like many other musical genres, found its polyphonic culmination in the learned hands of Johann Sebastian Bach though he was here again standing on the shoulders of more giants than many of his idolizers may care to admit to. An important aspect of motet writing--if not the most important-- was that as it grew, it necessitated the evolution of many technical parts of music writing--and changed people’s ideas about how music could be composed. The motet had passed through perhaps more hands than any other kind of polyphonic genre before it reached Bach, and those skilled hands left it grown and changed. Pérotin was the one who perhaps started the practice, though some time would pass before ideas changed and the more rhythmically complex motets of Guillaume de Machaut were to be possible. The well-traveled and cosmopolitan  Guillaume Du Fay exemplified the newer, more consonant harmonies which were being disseminated throughout continental Europe in the fifteenth century (and in effect contributed to the more international harmonic language that was to be found there), and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, the so-called “Prince of Music," brought the counterpoint found in motets to heights never before explored. All of these composers, and many more, played a crucial role in delivering the motet to Johann Sebastian Bach (who called only seven of his compositions “motet”).

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