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.^[1] 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".^[2]

^ 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. ISBN 9780520210813.
^ Johannes de Grocheio, Ars Musice, edited and translated by Constant J. Mews, John N. Crossley, Catherine Jeffreys, Leigh McKinnon, and Carol J. Williams; TEAMS Varia (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2011): 85 [section 19.2]. ISBN 9781580441643 (cloth); ISBN 9781580441650 (pbk).

[bent-1] 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. ISBN 9780520210813.

[2] Johannes de Grocheio, Ars Musice, edited and translated by Constant J. Mews, John N. Crossley, Catherine Jeffreys, Leigh McKinnon, and Carol J. Williams; TEAMS Varia (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2011): 85 [section 19.2]. ISBN 9781580441643 (cloth); ISBN 9781580441650 (pbk).

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