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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 pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to 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.Margaret Bent,The Late-Medieval Motet in ''Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music'', edited by Tess Knighton and David Fallows, 114–19 (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1992): 114. . The late 13th-century theorist Johannes de Grocheo believed that the motet was "not to be celebrated in the presence of common people, because they do not notice its subtlety, nor are they delighted in hearing it, but in the presence of the educated and of those who are seeking out subtleties in the arts". Etymology In the early 20th century, it was generally believed the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Montpellier Codex
The ''Montpellier Codex'' (''Montpellier, Bibliothèque Inter-Universitaire, Section Médecine, H196'') is an important source of 13th-century French polyphony. The ''Codex'' contains 336 polyphonic works probably composed c. 1250–1300, and was likely compiled c. 1300. It is believed to originate from Paris. It was discovered by musicologist Edmond de Coussemaker in c. 1852. Format and contents The ''Montpellier Codex'' can be roughly divided into 8 fascicles, each of which contain discrete genres of music. The format of the ''Codex ''is as follows: * 1. Liturgical polyphony (ff. 1r-22r) * 2. French triple motets, consisting of a ''cantus firmus'' with three contrapuntal lines above it (ff. 23v-61r) * 3. Macaronic double motets, consisting of a ''cantus firmus'' with two contrapuntal lines above it (ff. 63v-86v) * 4. Latin double motets (ff. 87v-111r) * 5. French double motets (ff. 111v-227r) * 6. French two-voice motets (ff. 231r-269v) * 7 & 8. Three-voice motets, possibly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medieval Music
Medieval music encompasses the sacred and secular music of Western Europe during the Middle Ages, from approximately the 6th to 15th centuries. It is the first and longest major era of Western classical music and followed by the Renaissance music; the two eras comprise what musicologists generally term as early music, preceding the common practice period. Following the traditional division of the Middle Ages, medieval music can be divided into Early (500–1150), High (1000–1300), and Late (1300–1400) medieval music. Medieval music includes liturgical music used for the church, and secular music, non-religious music; solely vocal music, such as Gregorian chant and choral music (music for a group of singers), solely instrumental music, and music that uses both voices and instruments (typically with the instruments accompanying the voices). Gregorian chant was sung by monks during Catholic Mass. The Mass is a reenactment of Christ's Last Supper, intended to prov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clausula (music)
The ''clausula'' ( Latin for "little close” or “little conclusion"; plural ''clausulae'') was a newly composed section of discant ("note against note") inserted into a pre-existing setting of '' organum''. ''Clausulae'' flourished in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries and were associated with the Notre Dame school. The origin of the ''clausula'' has long been subject of scholarly debate, as the relationship between ''clausulae'' and motets is very complicated. ''Clausulae'' eventually became used as substitutes for passages of original plainchant. They occur as melismatic figures based on a single word or syllable within an ''organum''. Origins ''Clausulae'' emerged from the compositional practices of the Notre Dame school in Paris c. 1160–1250 (during the stylistic period known as ''ars antiqua''). The composers Léonin and Pérotin in particular contributed heavily in composing ''clausulae''. Rather than write entirely new music, the preference was to take exis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Der Geist Hilft Unser Schwachheit Auf
' (The Spirit gives aid to our weakness), 226, is a motet by Johann Sebastian Bach, composed in Leipzig in 1729 for the funeral of Johann Heinrich Ernesti. History For ' , the autograph score survives. Bach himself noted on its title: "." (' – Motet for two choirs for the funeral for the blessed Rector, Professor Ernesti, by J. S. Bach). Ernesti was professor of poetry at Leipzig University and director of the Thomasschule. The first performance took place in the Paulinerkirche, the university church). Scholars debate if the performance was 24 October, or rather 21 October, as indicated by the title page of the sermon. Bach wrote a number of works for occasions of Leipzig University. Twelve such works survive: they are mainly festive in character (in German they have been categorised as ''Festmusiken zu Leipziger Universitätsfeiern''). As well as being part of a series of works connected with the university, ''Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf'' as a funeral motet is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Renaissance Music
Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century '' ars nova'', the Trecento music was treated by musicology as a coda to Medieval music and the new era dated from the rise of triadic harmony and the spread of the ' '' contenance angloise'' ' style from Britain to the Burgundian School. A convenient watershed for its end is the adoption of basso continuo at the beginning of the Baroque period. The period may be roughly subdivided, with an early period corresponding to the career of Guillaume Du Fay (c. 1397–1474) and the cultivation of cantilena style, a middle dominated by Franco-Flemish School and the four-part textures favored by Johannes Ockeghem (1410's or 20's – 1497) and Josquin des Prez (late 1450's – 1521), and culminating during the Counter-Reformation in the florid counterpoint of Pal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pérotin
Pérotin () was a composer associated with the Notre Dame school of polyphony in Paris and the broader musical style of high medieval music. He is credited with developing the polyphonic practices of his predecessor Léonin, with the introduction of three and four-part harmonies. Other than a brief mention by music theorist Johannes de Garlandia in his '' De Mensurabili Musica'', virtually all information on Pérotin's life comes from Anonymous IV, a pseudonymous English student who probably studied in Paris. Anonymous IV names seven titles from a '' Magnus Liber''—including '' Viderunt omnes'', ''Sederunt principes'' and ''Alleluia Nativitas''—that have been identified with surviving works and gives him the title ''Magister Perotinus'' (Pérotinus the Master) meaning he was licensed to teach. It is assumed that Perotinus was French and named Pérotin, a diminutive of Peter, but attempts to match him with persons in contemporary documents remain speculative. Ident ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guillaume Du Fay
Guillaume Du Fay ( , ; also Dufay, Du Fayt; 5 August 1397(?) – 27 November 1474) was a French composer and music theorist of the early Renaissance. Considered the leading European composer of his time, his music was widely performed and reproduced. Du Fay was well-associated with composers of the Burgundian School, particularly his colleague Gilles Binchois, but was never a regular member of the Burgundian chapel himself. While he is among the best-documented composers of his time, Du Fay's birth and family is shrouded with uncertainty, though he was probably the illegitimate child of a priest. He was educated at Cambrai Cathedral, where his teachers included Nicolas Grenon and Richard Loqueville, among others. For the next decade, Du Fay worked throughout Europe: as a subdeacon in Cambrai, under Carlo I Malatesta in Rimini, for the House of Malatesta in Pesaro, and under Louis Aleman in Bologna, where he was ordained priest. As his fame began to spread, he settled in Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isorhythm
Isorhythm (from the Greek for "the same rhythm") is a musical technique using a repeating rhythmic pattern, called a ''talea'', in at least one voice part throughout a composition. ''Taleae'' are typically applied to one or more melodic patterns of pitches or ''colores'', which may be of the same or a different length from the ''talea''. History and development Isorhythms first appear in French motets of the 13th century, such as in the Montpellier Codex. Although 14th-century theorists used the words ''talea'' and ''color''—the latter in a variety of senses related to repetition and embellishment—the term "isorhythm" was not coined until 1904 by musicologist Friedrich Ludwig (1872–1930), initially to describe the practice in 13th-century polyphony. Ludwig later extended its use to the 14th-century music of Guillaume de Machaut. Subsequently, Heinrich Besseler and other musicologists expanded its scope further as an organizing structural element in 14th- and early 15th-ce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guillaume De Machaut
Guillaume de Machaut (, ; also Machau and Machault; – April 1377) was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the style in late medieval music. His dominance of the genre is such that modern musicologists use his death to separate the from the subsequent movement. Regarded as the most significant French composer and poet of the 14th century, he is often seen as the century's leading European composer. One of the earliest European composers on whom considerable biographical information is available, Machaut has an unprecedented amount of surviving music, in part due to his own involvement in his manuscripts' creation and preservation. Machaut embodies the culmination of the poet-composer tradition stretching back to the traditions of troubadour and '' trouvère''; well into the 15th century his poetry was greatly admired and imitated by other poets, including Geoffrey Chaucer and Eustache Deschamps, the latter of whom was Machaut's student. Machaut c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Notre-Dame School
The Notre-Dame school or the Notre-Dame school of polyphony refers to the group of composers working at or near the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris from about 1160 to 1250, along with the music they produced. The only composers whose names have come down to us from this time are Léonin and Pérotin. Both were mentioned by an anonymous English student, known as Anonymous IV, who was either working or studying at Notre-Dame later in the 13th century. In addition to naming the two composers as "the best composers of organum," and specifying that they compiled the big book of organum known as the ''Magnus Liber Organi'', he provides a few tantalizing bits of information on the music and the principles involved in its composition. Pérotin is the first composer of ''organum quadruplum''—four-voice polyphony—at least the first composer whose music has survived, since complete survivals of notated music from this time are scarce. Léonin, Pérotin and the other anonymous compose ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philippe De Vitry
Philippe de Vitry (31 October 1291 – 9 June 1361) was a French composer-poet, bishop and music theorist in the style of late medieval music. An accomplished, innovative, and influential composer, he was widely acknowledged as a leading musician of his day, with Petrarch writing a glowing tribute, calling him: "... the keenest and most ardent seeker of truth, so great a philosopher of our age." The important music treatise ''Ars nova notandi'' (1322) is usually attributed to Vitry. It is thought that very little of Vitry's compositions survive; though he wrote secular music, only his sacred works are extant. Life and career Details of his early life are vague. While some medieval sources claim that he was born in the Champagne region, more recent research indicates that he may have originated in Vitry-en-Artois near Arras.Anne Walters Robertson, "Which Vitry? The Witness of the Trinity Motet from the ''Roman de Fauvel''" in ''Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adam De La Halle
Adam de la Halle (1245–50 – 1285–8/after 1306) was a French poet-composer '' trouvère''. Among the few medieval composers to write both monophonic and polyphonic music, in this respect he has been considered both a conservative and progressive composer, resulting in a complex legacy: he cultivated admired representatives of older trouvère genres, but also experimented with newer dramatic works. Adam represented the final generation of the ''trouvère'' tradition and "has long been regarded as one of the most important musical and literary figures of thirteenth-century Europe". Adam's literary and musical works include chansons and jeux-partis (poetic debates) in the style of the ''trouvères''; polyphonic rondel and motets in the style of early liturgical polyphony; and a musical play, ''Jeu de Robin et Marion'' (), which is considered the earliest surviving secular French play with music. He was a member of the Confrérie des jongleurs et bourgeois d'Arras, a fratern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
