The motet-chanson was a specialized

musical form In music, ''form'' refers to the structure of a musical composition or musical improvisation, performance. In his book, ''Worlds of Music'', Jeff Todd Titon suggests that a number of organizational elements may determine the formal structure of a ...

of the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

, developed in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

during the 1470s and 1480s, which combined aspects of the contemporary

motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the preeminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to the Eng ...

and

chanson A (, ; , ) is generally any Lyrics, lyric-driven French song. The term is most commonly used in English to refer either to the secular polyphonic French songs of late medieval music, medieval and Renaissance music or to a specific style of ...

. Many consisted of three voice parts, with the lowest voice, a

tenor A tenor is a type of male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second B below m ...

or a contra, singing a sacred text in Latin, drawn from

chant A chant (from French ', from Latin ', "to sing") is the iterative speaking or singing of words or sounds, often primarily on one or two main pitches called reciting tones. Chants may range from a simple melody involving a limited set of no ...

, while the two upper voices sang a secular text in French. Some were written for four to five voices, with the ''bassus'' taking the Latin part. Generally, the French text was either a commentary on the Latin text or had some symbolic relation to it. The lowest voice served as a

cantus firmus In music, a ''cantus firmus'' ("fixed melody") is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition. The plural of this Latin term is , although the corrupt form ''canti firmi'' (resulting from the grammatically incorrect trea ...

, and usually sang in long notes, with phrases separated by long rests, while the upper voices, singing more quickly, followed the rigid formal structure of the contemporary '' formes fixes'', particularly the rondeau and the

bergerette A bergerette, or shepherdess' air, is a form of early rustic French song. The bergerette, developed by Burgundian composers, is a virelai with only one stanza. It is one of the "fixed forms" of early French song and related to the rondeau. Exam ...

. The three most prominent composers of motet-chansons were

Josquin des Prez Josquin Lebloitte dit des Prez ( – 27 August 1521) was a composer of High Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, he was a central figure of the ...

Loyset Compère Loyset Compère ( – 16 August 1518) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. Of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, he was one of the most significant composers of motets and chansons of that era, and one of the first musicia ...

, and Alexander Agricola, all of whom were in Milan, Italy, during the late 15th century as part of the progressive and opulent musical establishment of the

Sforza The House of Sforza () was a ruling family of Renaissance Italy, based in Milan. Sforza rule began with the family's acquisition of the Duchy of Milan following the extinction of the Visconti of Milan, Visconti family in the mid-15th century and ...

family. Other composers who wrote motet-chansons included Johannes Prioris and Johannes Martini. Of these, only Prioris is not known to have been in Milan, but then relatively little is known about his life. Josquin wrote three motet-chansons: "Que vous madame/In pace", "A la mort/Monstra te esse matrem", and "Fortune destrange plummaige/Pauper sum ego". "Que vous madame" had circulated widely by 1490; it was one of the earliest of Josquin's compositions to do so. Two of Agricola's motet-chansons, "L'eure est venue/Circundederunt" and "Revenez tous regretz/Quis det ut veniat", are preserved in manuscripts of the chanson albums of

Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy Margaret of Austria (; ; ; ; 10 January 1480 – 1 December 1530) was Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands from 1507 to 1515 and again from 1519 until her death in 1530. She was the first of many female regents in the Netherlands. She was vario ...

, as are two of Compère's, "Plaine d'ennuy/Anima mea" and "O devotz cocurs/O vos omnes". It has been inferred that the motet-chanson repertory may once have been much larger than is now known, since many of the surviving sources give only the Latin text for three-voice compositions of otherwise similar texture. It may be that the uppermost voices for some of these once had secular French words, now lost.David Fallows, Grove, "Chanson-motet".

References and further reading

* Richard Sherr, ed., ''The Josquin Companion''. Oxford, Oxford Univ. Press, 2000. * Gustave Reese, ''Music in the Renaissance''. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. * Gustave Reese (biography) and Jeremy Noble (works), "Josquin Desprez," Howard Mayer Brown, "Chanson", in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980.

Notes

{{reflist Renaissance music Classical music styles Choral music genres