The Motet is a notoriously elusive genre and its definitions rarely transcend general descriptions. This holds true for writers in the fifteenth and sixteenth as much as in the twenty-first centuries. Tinctoris famously defined it in his Terminorum musicae diffinitorium (Treviso, 1495) as a cantus with ‘any kind of text, but usually sacred’, and the New Grove Dictionary describes it (in its form since the fifteenth century) as ‘a sacred polyphonic composition with Latin text’. The ambiguity relates to its form and its use, both of which were subject to significant change in its long history. Frequently composed, copied and printed in the early modern period, motets seem omnipresent, yet we often struggle to determine exactly when, where and by whom they were performed. The recent volume Mapping the Motet in the Post-Tridentine Era sheds light on this question. Despite the diversity of their approaches the individual chapters all contribute significantly to our understanding of the specific place and function of the motet in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe. Taken together, they greatly enhance the understanding of one of the most important elements of early modern (religious) music.
Broadly speaking, in their aim to place individual pieces the authors take one of three starting points: the liturgy, the composer or a specific city. Additionally, three contributions locate the motet in areas for which they have to transcend real or perceived boundaries. The first four chapters look at the genre's most traditional role, that is, as part of the (Catholic) liturgy. These form a homogeneous, if not to say homophonic, unit. Frequent references between them – and in the case of Rees and Chemotti a specific aim to complement each other – are testimony both to the effects of valuable discussions at the conference (from which this volume stems) and to careful editorial work. David Crook starts from the calendrical ordering of printed motet books to locate individual pieces in the liturgical year. Where these liturgical assignments differ, he uses them to understand their role in liturgical exegesis. To what extent we are indeed able to deduce ‘the meaning that musicians and listeners’ attributed to individual pieces, as he writes, will remain difficult to know (p. 20). Crook's contribution does, however, point to the important and sometimes overlooked role of editors of sacred collections. Evidently they carefully chose specific motets on the basis of their exegetical meaning. Similarly, Jeffrey Kurtzman uses close readings of printed sources, specifically the wording of the titles and the placement of certain pieces, to further the argument for the interchangeability of antiphons and motets in vesper services as first presented by Stephen Bonta in the 1960s, specifically for Monteverdi's Vespers. Building on his own well-known research on Monteverdi's Vespers, Kurtzman extends this to include a range of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Italian sources.
Focusing on one particular liturgical performance context, both Antonio Chemotti and Owen Rees explore the motet's place in the liturgy for the dead, in Italy and the Iberian world respectively. Chemotti's extensive overview (in Table 3.1) of motets for the liturgy of the dead is particularly useful, as is Rees's collection of motets for Requiem Masses by Iberian composers (Table 4.1), providing a valuable resource for further source-based research.
Two further contributions discuss mainly the liturgical function of the motet, this time though starting from the perspective of one composer's oeuvre. In a study of Palestrina's three mid-career motet prints, Noel O'Regan shows how they reflect the various career stages of their composer in this period. In doing so he also places the individual compositions in the context of the places of employment and their requirements. In addition to the common liturgical use that can be expected from these publications, he adds, for example, their use in processions in early modern Rome. Taking on the other grand-master of the late sixteenth-century motet, Victoria, Marco Mangani and Daniele Sabaino present the most analytically dense paper on modality as an exegetical tool. They interpret Victoria's choice for overall modally orthodox motet settings, for example, as partly a consequence of Spanish musical apprenticeship, but also use it to place them in the practical needs of the post-Tridentine church.
The city is the starting point for two other chapters: Daniele V. Filippi demonstrates instances of motet performance in Milan, while Juan Ruiz Jiménez situates them in Seville and Granada. The former is of particular use in understanding the genre's role in the city's culture, adding a crucial component to the city's soundscape. The latter draws our attention in particular to the fascinating project from which this chapter arose, which resulted in the website www.historicalsoundscapes.com. Both of these contributions focus their gaze outwards – not only out of the cathedral and into the city, but also, to some extent, outside of musicology.
The place and function of the motet becomes of particular interest when it crosses the (real or perceived) established boundaries, as is seen with three chapters concerned with such ‘border-crossing’. Christian Leitmeir addresses the crossover potential of the motet within the confessionally contested climate of the German-speaking areas in the late sixteenth century. Highlighting a plethora of occasions when motets transcend the perceived confessional divide, he strongly expresses a sentiment that has often been posited or alluded to in recent research: to argue against the long-held paradigm of clear confessional division. In Elizabethan England the motet not only straddled, but also firmly crossed another boundary, when it turned from a sacred or liturgical genre into a decidedly private genre for the secular space. Kerry McCarthy gives an insightful overview of the status of the motet in this period, usefully defining terminology (in particular, ‘anthem’) and bringing together many better and lesser-known examples. Clearly written and with a broad perspective, both this and the preceding chapter will make very welcome additions to reading lists in courses on the sixteenth century.
A third – often fictional – boundary is that between vocal and instrumental music, at times also associated with the misleading dichotomy of professional and amateur music-making. John Griffiths demonstrates in his chapter how motets moved in both these spheres on the example of printed (organ and lute) intabulations of the late sixteenth century – a notion worthy of further consideration, particularly also by using the numerous manuscript sources. Griffiths reminds us here to abandon the boundary between vocal and instrumental music often upheld in research of the period.
By the end of the book the reader is left with a wealth of instances and occasions for performing the late sixteenth-century motet, amounting to a much clearer idea of this genre. The focus on this one particular genre in one particular time allows for musicological depth and cross-referencing, which is often missing from collected volumes. In this disciplinary focus, however, lies an only partially realised opportunity to open this up for interdisciplinary exchanges. The book overall would have benefited from pointing more frequently to connections with other aspects of (religious) sound in this period. The sound of the reformations and subsequently the period of confessionalisation – extending into the seventeenth century – are of great interest to scholars in and beyond musicology. Especially since the ‘sonic turn’ sound has become one of the prime experiences on which scholars have focused. Often, the exchange with musicologists (and vice versa) in this field still leaves room for improvement. Part of the specific role of musicology in this discourse is not only to provide focused insights into the repertoire, to highlight the specific time and place for music, but also to show how this connects with other areas of research into historical sound and listening more generally. This is, in fact, a particular strength of Daniele Filippi's work (one of the volume's editors) and the explicit aim of another of his recent collections (Listening to Early Modern Catholicism: Perspectives from Musicology, edited with Michael Noone).
There would have been opportunities (beyond the final two chapters) to point to this in the present volume as well. When describing the religious sound of the period, specifically historians have turned away from ‘elite’ genres such as the Mass and Motet in favour of street song, music in processions, catechisms, bells as markers of time and confessional space and other ephemeral genres. It would have thus been all the more interesting to use this opportunity to add the Motet back into this varied soundscape, creating a basis for musicologists and non-musicologists alike to place this well-known yet often elusive genre into the wider (sonic) picture.
This might be a task for a follow-up volume – one for which the geographical reach could also be expanded, as the range of Mapping the Motet leaves room to explore the Motet elsewhere. Although counteracted in particular in the contributions by Leitmeir, McCarthy and Griffiths, central and southern Europe remains the focal point in this volume and Italy and the Iberian peninsula are best represented. It is unquestionable that these regions were responsible for the production of much of the repertoire. However, a particular strength of the motet (mainly due to it being usually in Latin) is its international appeal. This collection would thus have benefited from a look at the development of the motet in different parts of Europe (e.g., France, eastern Europe and some parts of northern Europe) as well as an exploration of how the motet coming from Italy moved in and beyond Europe. The role of Antwerp in the dissemination of the motet, for example, is revealing – particularly also in relation to Spain. So is the trade with areas outside the European continent. The relatively narrow geographical focus is somewhat surprising given the geographical metaphor of the book's title. The editors point out in the preface that ‘mapping’ is understood in many different ways and how its aim is to ‘map the richness and diversity’ of the functions of the motet (p. 2) – a promise certainly delivered within the book. However, the term ‘mapping’ procures a geographical image that asks to be filled more widely. Broadening the geographical reach would also allow for an understanding of the Motet as a commodity in a transnational society as well as a genre that is and always was in a state of transformation. This final point goes to show how there is still much room for exploring other roles, functions and places for the Motet in and beyond the sixteenth century. Mapping the Motet with its rich sample and expert knowledge certainly leaves us in a good position for further exploration.
