Motets - text/music examples

Question 1

Christopher Page - two quotations

Answer 1

“I am not sure I can follow much”

modern listeners ‘will find themselves unable to follow the conversation…however diligently they study the texts and translations’

Question 2

What example does Page discuss?

Answer 2

Par un matinet / Hé sire / Hé bergier

Question 3

Contemporary evidence for performance practice - who?

Answer 3

Jacobus de Hispania - known as Jacobus de Liège until recently

Question 4

Contemporary evidence for performance practice - Latin

Answer 4

‘voces concordantes’ - voices that blend

Question 5

Page quotation about performing motets

Answer 5

“Motets reshape the human dynamic of the singing group”

Question 6

Suzannah Clark - quotation about polytextuality

Answer 6

= motet’s ‘most characteristic feature’

Question 7

What example does Clark use to support her view that the meaning of text may be comprehended in performance?

Answer 7

Joliement en douce Desirée / Quant voi la florete / Je sui joiliete / APTATUR

Question 8

Clark - claim about comprehension in APTATUR

Answer 8

listener would immediately grasp from the duplum’s opening tune that the motet involves a nun, a feature not yet revealed in the text - i.e. listener recognises allusion to sacred chant

Question 9

Assumption made by Clark?

Answer 9

Well-educated and highly musically-literate audience

Question 10

Catherine Bradley - objects of her analysis?

Answer 10

‘self-conscious experiments in polytextuality’

Question 11

Bradley - textual play in the earliest motets - example of complementary setting

Answer 11

Christe via veritas / [AUDI]TORI[UM]

Unusual poetic form of text suggests strict accommodation to an established musical structure

Question 12

Bradley - deliberate cultivation of tension between musical and poetic structures - example

Answer 12

Forman hominis / GLORIA

phrase structure of pre-existing clausula reinterpreted to cultivate rhythmic and poetic diversity