This book makes bold claims: that it ‘dispels the mystery surrounding these outstanding works of vocal polyphony’ and that ‘all motets of the fifteenth century originated as ceremonial vehicles’. All motets? The dust jacket more cautiously confines the claim to documented instances, which makes the claim circular. And what mystery? It ought perhaps to be the nettle that this book circles without grasping: the definition or classification of what motets are at this period, in all their plurality. Is ‘the genre’ defined by its musical characteristics or by its liturgical or ceremonial context, if any? These criteria are often irreconcilable. Nosow bypasses much previous scholarship, including historiography, and sidelines the important book by Julie Cumming,Footnote ¹ which with its technical and stylistic classification of musical genres and subgenres stands as a relatively recent counterbalance to some of his larger claims. Other scholars have identified ‘motets’ suited to ritual function apart from ‘true’ motets (musically defined as having some of the characteristics of isorhythm, cantus firmus, two texts); but the central problem of conflicting criteria can lead to the anomaly of musical twins being differently categorised on grounds of text or cantus firmus, or substantial compositions being downgraded as settings of liturgical texts.Footnote ² Previous attempts to address such questions, in general or individually, receive little comment, though Nosow's thesis invites consideration of these issues. For a book that makes claims about all motets, the case studies are arguably short on range of reference, and too few to support the generalisations.

Nosow invokes the theorist Paulus Paulirinus in defence of including both polytextual motets and song motets within a general definition, taking an ‘inclusive approach’ to ‘the genre’. He is in good company: some fifteenth-century compilers (notably Q15, ModB) adopt a similarly broad umbrella. He goes on to make an exception for ‘English antiphon settings … [which] constituted a separate genre … side by side with motets’ (p. 5), and writes of ‘new motet styles’, following the English Old Hall manuscript, which segregates complex motets from simpler antiphons; but he then reverts to using ‘motets’ to describe the works he has just sequestered as a separate genre. He assigns liturgical and other functions to individual works of both types, continental and English, prompting the reader to question whether both kinds are equally appropriate for ritual use on grounds of their texts alone.

The book is structured around four pairs of chapters with case studies and contextual discussion, dealing respectively with England, the Veneto, Bruges and Cambrai. The second chapter for each of these places is coupled respectively with ‘The Motet as Ritual’, ‘The Motet as Ritual Embassy’, ‘Contemplation’ and ‘Choir and Community’. This is a neat scheme, though it could be argued that those categories overlap for the motets assigned to them, and that the motets in turn are not confined to the place or category to which they are yoked. The chosen places and many of the case studies are well known precisely because, exceptionally, they offer contexts, pegs on which compositions have already been hung. It is hard to avoid the impression that what has singled them out for this study is the attention they have received from other scholars, including lines first staked out by Julie Cumming, Anne Hallmark and John Nádas (Ciconia and doge motets), myself (Italian motets and motet classification), Reinhard Strohm and Rob Wegman (Bruges), Alejandro Planchart, Craig Wright and Barbara Haggh (Cambrai), Andrew Wathey, Roger Bowers and myself (Old Hall motets and Henry V).

The heavy lifting in Bruges had previously been done by Strohm, Wegman and Haggh. Nosow thanks library staff in Bruges, so we can at least presume that transcriptions from foundations and charters in Bruges in Appendix B are his own. But there is no acknowledgement to other archives for direct or photographic access to primary materials: Appendices A and C excerpt original documents from Treviso,Footnote ³ Cambrai and Lille: despite some general scholarly acknowledgements, it is often unclear which primary documentation is being reported at first hand. Scholars who have laid the foundations of his book are mostly named, but often under-credited. By going back to their sources, he sometimes leaves the reader with the impression of deeper original research than appears to be the case. There are many surprising absences from the bibliography, including some items not so recent.Footnote ⁴

Some of the suggested linkages seem plausible, but involve assumptions and careless reporting of a kind he might not allow in others. For Vicenza, he reports accounts of elaborate entries by later fifteenth-century bishops, but then asserts that Feragut's motet Excelsa civitas Vincencia ‘would have been sung’ at Malipiero's installation in 1433, and that Feragut ‘would have joined Vicenza Cathedral's own musicians for the rehearsal and performance of the motet’ (p. 220). I more cautiously stated that the motet ‘welcomes a new bishop to Vicenza’.Footnote ⁵ He wrongly credits Daniela Rando and not me with linking the motet to bishop Malipiero.Footnote ⁶ She repeats only the older view attaching it to the entrance of bishop Emiliani (Miani) in 1409.Footnote ⁷ He then goes on to make an imaginative case for the performance of Lymburgia's modest little Song of Songs motet Veni dilecte mi on the same occasion, seeing it as an allegory for the reception of the ‘bridegroom’ Malipiero into the ‘bridal chamber’ of the city of Vicenza: ‘the citizens meet the bishop and take the bridle of his horse’ followed by a ‘procession … to the cathedral’. Both claims ignore a contemporary report that Malipiero did not make his entry in person, but through the archdeacon as proxy.Footnote ⁸

Nosow states that Bologna Q15 was compiled ‘at the chapels of’ bishops Emiliani and Malipiero (p. 71), assuming institutional commission for what was in that case, to the contrary, a personal and idiosyncratic compilation by one man over a fifteen-year period, both before and after the death of Emiliani, but in no sense for Malipiero, whose familia was entirely separate. His assertion that Ciconia's Petrum Marcellum Venetum was ‘likely composed’ for Marcello's installation stands on stronger ground; in that case, we do have a report of the ceremony, and Marcello was admitted in person.Footnote ⁹ Zabarella did indeed officiate although, as Nosow notes, his own election by the chapter as their bishop had been rejected by Pope Gregory XII who subsequently accepted the Venetian Senate's nomination of Marcello. Slight discouragement for the thesis that Ciconia's motet was performed at the installation is that the custos-singer Johannes de Riveriis is named as present, but not Ciconia; and that the only music mentioned is the Te Deum. In another case where only the Te Deum was named, albeit there with ‘other’ items, the Canterbury service mentioned below, Nosow treated this as negative testimony for the performance of motets. By association, he is rather confident that Ciconia's Albane motet was for that bishop's undocumented entry in 1407 – likely but still hypothetical. He proposes that the image initial of the martyrdom of St Christopher in its unique source, cut from a discarded composition and pasted in to a late recopying of Ciconia's motet, is suitable to it, reflecting the text which speaks of Padua previously ‘widowed’ by the enforced flight of its preceding Carrara bishop. But he forgets that this pasting-in took place about twenty-five years later and could not possibly have expressed any subversive feelings at the relevant time (‘the true feelings of the people and singers’, p. 61).

Nosow nicely expands his earlier discussion of Missus est Gabriel angelus by Petrus Rubeus, an unusually well-documented motet. And he is to be congratulated on identifying the tenor and structure of Lymburgia's ‘motet’ Surrexit Christus with a melody in Vicenza MS U.VIII.11, Bartolomeo da Carpi's testamentary manuscript which also contains the De Quadris Lamentations, and the formal reconstruction and interesting argument he develops about the form and performance of this piece.Footnote ¹⁰ Had this been an English composition, he might have designated it an ‘anthem’; it is in any case a highly suitable processional piece. He assumes that ‘chorus’ means more than one to a part, rather than a3 as opposed to a duo, and therefore that at least five singers are required; this is debatable. Nor does the very interesting scoring of Surrexit Christus documented by Cattin from a Liber sacerdotalis of 1523 (two soloists for the strophes, a choir of eight for the Alleluia) necessarily hold a century earlier. Nosow aligns its alternation of harmony and monophony respectively with ‘divina et humanitas’ (sic, p. 91).

Chroniclers rarely mention music; with good reason, most motets cannot be firmly attached to occasions. If only it were true that ‘in most cases the ceremony itself can be reconstructed in considerable detail’ (p. 2). The elusive evidence that occasionally permits such connections illustrates the fragility of hypotheses, the ease with which they can be challenged, and the dangers that can arise from allowing them to harden into fact. Caveat lector.

All the more remarkable are the chronicle reports adduced here in Chapter 1. In thanksgiving for the victories over the French, Henry V attended a mass in Canterbury cathedral and added a new series of daily memorials to the liturgy of his chapel. These are detailed in two contemporary and partly complementary chronicles, the Gesta Henrici Quinti (April 1413–July 1417), Chapter 22, and Elmham's Liber metricus (dated 1417–18), Chapters 16–18. Nosow aligns the reports in two tables (1.1, 1.2). This is fascinating material which invites stronger anchorage in surviving liturgical books and known practices. Nosow's purpose here, rather, is to attach polyphony, surviving motets, to the liturgical texts.

Elmham does not specify the liturgical additions listed in the Gesta, but adds the extremely rare and precious specification of clearly identifiable polytextual motet titles, sandwiched suggestively between chapters reporting the king's giving thanks and meeting the emperor in Canterbury, and the emperor's departure from Dover (Liber metricus, Chapters 16–18). In bringing these texts to musical notice, I suggested that at least Dunstaple's Veni sancte spiritus and Preco preheminencie might have been sung at that mass on 21 August 1416, following Harfleur and the Battle of the Seine, and as reported in the Gesta (Chapter 22). Nosow rightly states that ‘there is no solid justification for the supposition that any motets were sung at the Mass … for which the only music specified [in the Gesta] is the Te Deum’. But mention of the Te Deum does not necessarily exclude other music (see above), and in this case the chronicle adds ‘and other offerings of propitiation’ (et aliis placacionum libaminibus deo dederunt gloriam et honorem); nor need everything that is new in Elmham's Liber metricus postdate what is reported in the earlier Gesta.Footnote ¹¹ What remains certain is the early dating of Dunstaple's motets. Both Nosow and I treated the two accounts as complementary: I favouring the performance of the motets at the Canterbury thanksgiving, he their use in Henry's new daily memorials to be observed after compline. There is room for both hypotheses, but we may never know precisely how they were used. Indeed, the motet subjects strikingly follow the same sequence as the liturgical specifications, for the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and saints Edward, John, George and Mary; the two surviving Dunstaple motets named above fit this sequence perfectly. Nosow uses Elmham's testimony to propose incorporating these large-scale motets, extant or lost, into the prescribed ritual setting, where one would expect chant or only modest polyphony. But the motet incipits do not coincide with the specified antiphons and versicles. So was the general subject more important than the form of words? Were the motets commissioned or offered simply by subject matter with free choice of texts? Were they intended as substitutes for the prescribed texts? Maybe one motet at a time could have been substituted for the relevant specified antiphon, but it is hard to imagine that six large-scale motets would have been performed in succession every evening after compline. I would have welcomed more discussion of the implications of proposing processional or regular liturgical use of these long, complex works.

One such proposed substitution is that Cooke's motet Alma proles regia / Christi miles / Ab inimicis nostris would have been used for the daily procession and litany of the Chapel Royal, with hindsight from the Liber regie capelle of thirty years later (1448), which prescribes the processional antiphon Ab inimicis nostris. Although this antiphon may well have been used at the earlier date, it is a bit of a stretch to consider the motet tenor's slow and incomplete rendition of the chant as meeting the requirement that it is ‘to be sung through solemnly as in the Processional’. He sidelines my own hypothetical linking of the texts of this group of Old Hall motets to reports of the 1415 Agincourt celebrations by saying ‘Scholars have had difficulty in associating the work with a specific time or event because of the nature of the texts.’Footnote ¹² I am not persuaded that his proposal supplants mine.

An ingenious new suggestion deserving further scrutiny is that Dunstaple's motet Preco preheminencie refers not only to the advent of John the Baptist as precursor of Christ, but also to the arrival of the naval fleet to lift the siege of Harfleur in 1416, imparting a topical reading to this alone of Dunstaple's motets. Nosow argues that the baptist's namesake, John Duke of Bedford, similarly ‘prepares a way for the warrior king’ Henry V. To what extent ‘the suffering homeland was hard pressed’ may need further explanation; but ‘the royal court receives the ones restored’ could certainly fit, and is consistent with veiled double meanings in other topical English motets, here also constrained by a tour de force of rhyme and alliteration. But double meanings can be problematic: it may be a step too far to apply directly to the Plantagenet brothers ‘May the prayers of the precursor secure through intercession the protection of the holy Saviour coming after’.Footnote ¹³ Cooke's motet Alma proles adopts a more normal mode of topical intercession – here the motetus asks George and Mary to bring victory and protect the king from his enemies – rather than making the whole text do double duty. It may not be clear from the discussion of Ave rex [gentis] anglorum / Flos mundi / Miles Christi that this motet does not survive, nor why he designates Flos mundi the triplum text. He could have brought into play several fragmentary English royal motets that have not yet received much attention; for example, the incomplete motet Ave miles triumphalis which is on the dorse of the Canterbury source of Preco.

Affinities between motets are often reflected numerically, but conclusions can be forced. Nosow computes the proportions of Cooke's Alma proles by counting section II twice. He adds the number of minims in sections I+II, then in sections II+III, to make the numbers come out the same as for Veni and Preco, where each section is counted separately. Those two motets, however, have overall proportions of 3:2:1, whereas the three sections of Alma proles are related in the proportion 9:6:4, the same as Sub Arturo plebs, an affinity that raises yet more questions about the date and occasion of that motet. However, observation of overall proportions does not necessarily mean that their derivation is proportional. In the case of Alma proles and Sub Arturo plebs (to which he does not refer), the homographic tenor is not proportionally but mensurally reinterpreted: the thirty-six breves are read successively in , and , containing respectively nine, six and four minims (totals of 324, 216 and 144 minims), and it is this mensural process that accounts for the overall proportions shared by those two motets. To link them to the Dunstaple works in this way involves fake counting and false comparison, unworthy of the rest of his argument.Footnote ¹⁴ Nor does he distinguish numerical construction from the much shakier area of number symbolism.

The book is a readable compilation and amplification of original work by many scholars, with some misunderstandings, some perceptive observations, many interesting details, and a few new contributions. It is quite elegantly written and produced,Footnote ¹⁵ and it is a pleasurable convenience to have footnotes on the page. In the final analysis, however, some central questions are not addressed, and it falls short of establishing that all fifteenth-century motets ‘originated as ceremonial vehicles’.