motetus

Whilst the text of the motetus is in Latin and is religious in character, the text of the triplum is secular and in a northern French dialect scattered with words from the Picardy dialect.

Archive 2009-04-01 Lu 2009

It is striking, however, that the composer ignores the usual hierarchy between motetus and triplum and treats all three voices equally, or both higher ones as a kind of duo, the lower one as “harmony carrier” though not rhythmically separated.

Archive 2009-04-01 Lu 2009

The motetus meant a considerable step toward the independence of the various voices or parts.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 7: Gregory XII-Infallability 1840-1916 1913

Another form of composition, the motetus (prototype of our present day motet) consisting of a Gregorian theme with two or more added original melodies, the latter sometimes having differing texts, originated at the beginning of the thirteenth century.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 7: Gregory XII-Infallability 1840-1916 1913

Back then, the four voices (tenor (todays bass), counter-tenor (todays taille), motetus (todays haute-contre) and triplum (todays dessus)) all sang from the same clef.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: champion of among other things, mezzos! Celeste Winant 2008

Sacred music also developed in accordance with innumerable liturgical and non-liturgical factors to give rise to the diverse forms and creative techniques demonstrated in the sphere of the “motet”, which by the last third of the 15th century had become so broad and diverse a concept that Johannes Tinctoris (c.1473-74) defined motetus only vaguely as a polyphonic cantus of moderate length, to texts of various kinds but generally sacred in character (the expression “moderate length” is to be understood in comparison with the longer mass on the one hand and the shorter secular song on the other).

Archive 2009-06-01 Lu 2009