We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Powerful conclusions are central to the esthetic world this book describes. Many pieces trade on the so-called drive to the cadence; others feature deliberate ratchetings down. This chapter discusses seven heterogeneous examples, each extraordinary in its own right: songs by Johannes Okeghem and the little-known Malcort, a motet by Johannes Regis, and mass music by Jacob Obrecht, Josquin des Prez, Alexander Agricola, and an anonymous composer.
This chapter and the next probe genres and subgenres whose formal schemes, whether fully codified or not, afford powerful energetic templates. Chapter 9 focuses on the polyphonic mass, laying out some of the genre’s conventions while wrestling with recent discourses about the idea of musical unity in five-movement mass cycles. A concluding section explores the limitations of a holistic, genre-based approach through the example of the five-voice tenor motet.
A new theoretical clarity for the motet arose not from its musical-compositional features, but rather from its textual dimension. In the early fifteenth century, an author of probably German origin attempted to define the motet as a "cantus ecclesiasticus" based solely on the status of its texts. A motet's "function" is largely determined by the circumstances of its commissioning: the institution, occasion, performance conditions, ritual context, and compositional standards. These factors comprise the so-called "complex of expectations" of a particular work. The compositional pluralization of the motet in the fifteenth century was initially focused on this complex of expectations. The early fifteenth century saw a late flourishing of the isorhythmic motet. The growing number of collections that combine Ordinary cycles and motets in the second half of the century testifies to an increasing sacralization of the genre. Psalm composition is inextricably tied to the antiphon, even though this tradition derives from non-psalmic Marian antiphons of the mid-fifteenth century.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.