Describe The Relationship Between Clausula And The Early Motet

21.  Composers began to write polyphonic songs that were not always based on chant, what were they based on instead?

Throughout the history of music, there have been few styles that not only have opened doors to masterwork compositions in their own genres, but have also led the way to other musical techniques over the musical eras and one of these magical music styles is the motet. The motet can easily be confused with other musical structures but what separates the motet from other types of group-performance based styles of music is "a piece of music in several parts with words."1 This is the closest definition of motet as can be said without overgeneralization and will operate from the beginning of the 13th century well into the late 16th century and beyond. Some scholars

Music is present in every culture’s past, present, and future. It has been around since 500 B.C. and was especially important in the Elizabethan Era. There were reinventions of music as it was widespread and popular. Without this essential time in history, modern music may have been completely different from what we have today. This era brought new uses for music, styles of compositions, new instruments, and the uprising of popular composers.

Music of the baroque period was considered very complex and similar to the other forms of art of this time. Additional brass, woodwind and string instruments had been created to add additional depth to the works of this time. Composers of this time attempted to give voices to their works and invoke emotions. The works were created to tell a story.

The main objective in the performance of Renaissance music is that everything done by the singer is subservient to the text. Musicians of the Renaissance were fixated on the concept of music serving the text. Composers set poems to text attempting to imitate natural speech and inflection pattern in the rhythms of the music, and wished to write the music in such a way that the words could be understood. Singers should strive toward clear diction, making sure their vowel shapes and ornamentation do not obscure the text.

Sacred music played a prominent part in ritual of the church. Motets and hymns became a part of Mass. The motet became a sacred form with a single Latin text. Motets in praise of the Virgin Mary were extremely popular because of the many religious groups devoted to Marian worship. Josquin Desprez, a popular master of the motet and influencer of many composers, composed more than a hundred motets and numerous secular pieces.

The Renaissance period, from 1450 A.D. to 1600 A.D., comprised of two main types of music, sacred and secular. In comparison with the Medieval period, where music was usually reserved for church purposes, the Renaissance period allowed music to expand beyond the church into upper aristocratic society. Sacred music included motets and mass, while secular included madrigals, instrumental and dance music. Motets initially came about during the late Medieval period, but grew sizably during the Renaissance,

​ Life in the Middle Ages revolved around the Church, which was the Roman Catholic. So, we can imagine early music was pretty much from church. Every morning at 9 o’clock was Mass, a significant ceremony done to commemorate the Last Supper. At this church service, the music was the Gregorian Chant. The Gregorian chant is performed in the Latin language, unison voice and accompanied by no instruments which was believed that the text of the song which carried the divine message from God was more important. The music was just to help you get to a spiritual place (Wright, 4-1a).

Thus, it would anachronistic to suppose that by acknowledging that publishers of the Middle Ages printed music, they did it in the same way it is done today. Printing did, all things considered, increase the volume of publications, but it was still at a slow rate. This did not, however, hinder the new applications of printed music, but rather gave sheet music new life. Musical pieces could now be produced at higher volumes and spread throughout churches around the world. Printed music, moreover, was cheaper due to the higher quantity available, which enabled amateur and professional musicians alike to, as Grout and Palisca note, “form vocal, instrumental, and mixed ensembles to perform the available repertory.”3 Furthermore, higher quantities and easier reproduction of printed music ensured it

The development of the suite in French keyboard and lute music during the 17th century

Parallel to the developments that led from the vocal chanson, in France, to the instrumental canzona, primarily in Italy, was the development of the dance suite. Early sixteenth-century dance tunes in all countries of Western Europe usually had appeared in pairs: one was slow, stately in mood and in duple metre (i.e., with two beats to the bar); the other fast, lively in mood, usually in triple metre, and often melodically similar to the first. Through much of the sixteenth century, composers in the several countries sought to expand the dance pair into a unified dance suite. Suites based on variations of one movement appeared in England; suites in which each of four dances had its own rhythmic character, melodically based on the first dance, were written in Germany; sets of dances with no internal relationships to each other were common in Italy. The most influential steps were taken in France by composers for the lute or the clavecin (harpsichord).

The oratorio and cantata of the eighteenth century were both linked, unlike opera, to religious themes. Although intended for very different uses and circumstances of performance, all three genres contained musical commalities. Not surprisingly, the three genres would

Bergeron, paradoxically yet successfully, chooses to get to the core of the French mélodie by looking at it from a distance. Her focuses on the mélodie’s complex relationship with the German Lied, the pedagogical movements of the French language in the late-nineteenth century, and Claude Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Melisande in order to “examine the range of French expression [Debussy] puts on stage and how he represents that range in music” are all indirect yet inventive ways in which Bergeron embraces the challenges of defining this elusive vocal genre (xiii). Perhaps Bergeron sets out to define the French mélodie through indirect methods for exactly that reason; a genre as complex as the mélodie could not be fully understood if one attempted to get to its center through traditional means. Stating that French art song is “a musical repertory based on […] delicacy and restraint […]”, Bergeron clearly has a grasp on

This work was composed during the Classical period, 1750- 1820. One aspect of the classical music style beign applied to this work includes the reoccurance of two or more contrasting themes. Another is the use of short and clearly defined musical phrases. Lastly, this piece, on a purely musical level, was simply more to hum along to. This type of melody took over the complex polyphony of the Baroque period.

The motet was one of the most important forms of polyphonic music from 1250 to 1750. The Italian mottetto was originally a profane polyphonic species of music, the air, or melody, being in the Tenor clef, taking the then acknowledged place of the canto fermo or plainchant, theme. It originated in the 13th century resulting from the practice of Pérotin and his contemporaries in Paris. The term "motet" can be translated as "the word of movement". Sometimes two upper voices had different words. In the beginning, Latin texts involving topics of the Virgin Mary were used. Later, French secular pieces became common due to the fact that the motet terminated its connection with church and liturgy.