What a Motet is
The motet probably gets its name from a kind of profane song (not sacred) that was called in Italian mottetto, and translated into French bon mot, means a jest. It dates back to the 13th century, and was disliked by the Church. The first motets used in the Church in the early 14th century are very crude to our ears, but interesting historically. The composers of the different schools of this period wrote many of them. Motets were usually those parts of the church ritual which depended on the day or season. They were not the regular unaltered parts like the mass itself.
This motet, or part-song, used as its central theme a tune already familiar to its hearers; this tune, the cantus firmus was sometimes a bit from a Gregorian chant or from a mass, but more often it was a snatch from a dance song or a folk song with very vulgar words, or it may have been a troubadour love song with anything but the right kind of words for the Church. The words for one part were often from the Bible and for other parts very coarse words from popular tunes. Imagine singing them at the same time! Still funnier, the words of the sacred song were sung in Latin and the popular song was sung in whatever language it happened to be written! Can you think of anything more ridiculous? The masses came to be known by the names from which the tune was taken and nearly every composer including the great Palestrina wrote masses on a popular tune of the day, L’homme armé (The Man in Armor). Yet they were all quite different, so varied had become the science of writing counterpoint.
Josquin des Près (1450–1521) the Flemish composer wrote a motet, Victimae Paschali, which is written around an old Gregorian plainchant, interwoven with two popular rondelli (in French roundel from which comes our terms roundelay and rondo) and a Stabat Mater of his. The cantus firmus, or subject of this motet is another secular or popular air.
The popular composers returned the compliment and took themes or tunes from church music and put secular words to them. History repeats itself, for we today take a tune from Handel’s Messiah and use it in Yes, We Have No Bananas and we jazz the beautiful and noble music of Chopin, Beethoven, Schubert and many others.
Yet this music,—the child we are watching grow up—because of mixing up sacred and profane music soon gets a big reprimand.
The northern part of France seems to have been the birthplace of the motet; a little later it found its way into Italy where some of the finest music of the period was written, and the Italian influence reached into Spain in the middle of the 15th century; at the end of the century the Venetian school had spread its work into Germany. In the 17th century the name motet was given to a kind of composition between a cantata and an oratorio, but it had nothing to do with the famous motet of the 15th and 16th centuries which we are discussing.
To show you how clever the men were in these days, one composer wrote a motet in thirty-six parts!
In the Library of the Sistine Chapel in Rome are volumes containing the motets of the 14th century, copied, of course, by hand in notes large enough to be seen and read by the whole choir! These books are beautifully decorated in gold and lovely colors, or illuminated, and are of great value.