Motet

MOTET. - In its first meaning the term m. (motetus, moctetus) designates the vocal part superimposed on the tenor in medieval polyphony. It then denotes the composition itself, which in the 13th century is for 2 or 3 voices (tenor, motetus, triplum), more rarely for 4 (above the triplum there is then the discantus). The tenor performs the cantus firmus, subjected, with the necessary prolongations and displacements of notes, to the theory of the 6 rhythmic modes (series of trochees, iambs, dactyls, anapests, spondees, tribrachs). The various voices have different texts. The concordance of the parts themselves is, naturally, quite different from that which was codified by the theorists of the classical art; it admits, for example, parallel successions of 2nds and likewise of 5ths. In it the concept of the independence of the parts and of their contrasting movement within a harmonious and rich whole comes to maturity, from which springs that exquisite wonder that belongs to all the golden ages and, in the specific case, to that (already advanced) of polyphony.

These qualities were deepened in the 14th century, arriving at rapid figurations, at the sobbing interruptions of the Ochetus, at the collaboration with instruments that the ars nova reveals, and at the technical peculiarities emerging in Philippe de Vitry and in Guillaume de Machaut, but also arriving, in the sacred genre, at those inconveniences and abuses against which the Church rose up (constitution Docta sanctorum of John XXII, 1324). Then, once the use of multiple texts was abandoned and a single text adopted for all the voices, the m. became part of the finest liturgical and extraliturgical production. Its history, therefore, is incorporated into that of Franco-Flemish polyphony: it follows its periods through the masters of the 1st generation (Dufay, Binchois), then of the 2nd (Busnois, Ockeghem) and of the 3rd (Obrecht, Josquin, to mention only a few of the best known); and with them it evolves, gradually acquiring a more valid rhythmic homogeneity of the voices and a greater stylistic coherence among them, and tending toward the balance of verticality and horizontality, of homophony and polylinearity, of cantability and thematicism, of strophic structure and the expansive principle of contrapuntal variation. Balances and merits fully attained when the m. became embedded in the heart of the classical era. Technically the m. is based on the sectioning and exploitation of a Gregorian melody, in such a way that from each fragment of it a polyphonic episode is drawn. The greatest polyphonists of the 16th century loved this form and made use of it. Palestrina, besides the six books of m., for 4 and 8 voices, in which he had given ample proof of the limit-possibilities of this form in the purely choral field, and the two books of spiritual madrigals, as well as the other two books of profane madrigals and the offertories, composed the celestial motet-poem for 5 voices on texts from the Song of Songs («ex canticis Salomonis») taken in their high prophetic meaning. With Palestrina it is right to remember the best masters of vocal polyphony, from Animuccia to the two Anerio, from O. di Lasso and Victoria to Giovannelli. The m., surviving the golden age of sacred polyphony, was cultivated also in the 17th and 18th centuries, that is, when the «a cappella» style was no longer a creative necessity but had become a tradition and was rapidly falling into academicism. Nevertheless in the 17th century, availing itself of the tendencies imposed with the advent of accompanied monody and of melodrama (and therefore also availing itself of the new functions assumed by the associated instruments and of the expressive possibilities emerging from their growing affirmation) the m. evolved toward the so-called «concertante» form: it appropriated the «basso continuo», adorned itself with descriptivisms and expanded into solo passages sometimes not devoid of difficulty, becoming an interpreter of the world of human passions not always veiled with sacred motives. After T. L. Grossi da Viadana, Monteverdi (in the Sacri concentus appended to the Messa a 6 voci per la B. V. M., publ. in 1610), arrived at a genial and highly personal synthesis of the old and the new style: «the gravity of ancient polyphony mingled with the inventions of opera» (A. Pirro).

Edgardo Carducci Agustini