|WikiProject Classical music|
|WikiProject Music/Music genres task force||(Rated Start-class)|
There's no citation covering the uncertainty over the etymology of motet. A number of dictionaries, including the OED, as well as the Norton Encyclopedia of Music, say nothing of the "movere" influence. Does anyone have a source? Mcwabaunsee (talk) 07:39, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Deleted from the Baroque section due to lack of citation:
- The Baroque grand motet eventually merged with the cantata.
--Wahoofive 18:43, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- I assume you argue that it is incorrect? Hyacinth 00:28, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yes, that's right. Not only did they both phase out around the same time, mid-18th century, but it doesn't make sense that a French form and a German form would merge. --Wahoofive 01:19, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- The statement, IIRC, came from the liner notes of a Naxos recording of Lully's grand motets. I don't have it handy here, but I suspect it was the same one that had Plaude lætare Gallia on it. I suspect that what the author meant to say was something like "multi-movement pieces like these, with parts for soloist, chorus, and instrumental obbligatos, would usually be called a cantata but Lully called his motets instead." -- Smerdis of Tlön 05:17, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
"Increasingly in the 14th and 15th centuries, motets tended to be isorhythmic; that is, they employed repeated rhythmic patterns in all voices"
I was under the impression that isorhythm is a general term, whereas panisorhythm means isorhythm employed in all voices (see Grove articles).
- I agree, this sentence struck me as being inaccurate as well. Tjonp (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:24, 11 December 2009 (UTC).
Who wrote this section? At least in italy, motets where a VERY important and spread form. It is not a 'cantata with crude latin words'! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 126.96.36.199 (talk) 17:36, 6 January 2008 (UTC) What Is A Motet?
Isorhythmic Motet redirects to this page.
I seem to remember that there was a separate article for Isorhythmic Motets at one point though a history search does not seem to bear that out. Perhaps there was not, but rather this page contained at some point a satisfactory brief description of the definition of an Isorhythmic Motet with a more in depth exploration left to the entry for Isorhythm.
I guess I'm rather surprised to see all treatment of Isorhythm in a separate article even though it is discussed quite a lot on this entry.
Am I incorrect in thinking that I used to be able to send people to this entry (Isorhythmic Motet) and have them come away with a rudimentary knowledge of Talea and Color w/o having to refine their focus to another entry to find these two terms?
Perhaps this is the best way, but it struck me as odd to have the redirect here and then not actually _say_ what an Isorhythm is when it's at home with it's slippers off.
Restoration of Earlier version
This article seems to have undergone an undergraduate student treatment and while scads of references were added, they are not that valuable. Worse, the prose style was practically unreadable. I have, as a result, reverted back to the pre-assignment version. Editors may wish to consult the longer version here and add in those details that are deemed judicious. Eusebeus (talk) 13:14, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- No. Why, should it be?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:14, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
- In modern French it would be silent. In the 12th century, all final consonants were pronounced, and this only gradually changed over the course of the 13th cent. In any case, the putative derivation from a French source was for a Latin word and it was from the Latin motectum that the English form of the term was derived. It is unlikely that the T was silent in the Medieval Latin pronunciation, especially because it followed a C and in turn was followed by a vowel.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:06, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
- It would be fascinating to trace the modern anglicized [mo tet] back to the 12c. form, if this were only remotely possible! I can't easily document my own pet theory either, which is that English musicologists would have been well aware of the German Mottete to describe part of Bach's oeuvre. A surprise for this anglophone is the open [ɔ] given here. Sparafucil (talk) 00:01, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
- As far as the specific English form "motet", the OED indicates that this only became the usual spelling from the time of Thomas Morley in 1597. Prior to that date, various spellings were used, and these probably tell us something about the way the word would have been pronounced at those earlier points in history: "mootetis" (1392), "motetis" (c1430), "motytes" (1475)—all of these are the plural form. Of course when seen in context, the question of what English sounded like in general in those days is raised. For example, that earliest citation, from the Wycliffe Bible, Eccl. 47:11 reads: "He made to stonden singeris aȝen þe awter, & in þe sown of þem he made sweete mootetis." (So much easier to understand in the Latin of the Vulgate, and also instructive as to the word Wycliffe translates as "mootetis:: "et stare fecit cantores contra altarium et in sono eorum dulces fecit modos.") I would assume that, prior to the 16th century, most written references to the musical form would have been in Latin rather than vernacular sources, and while Latin certainly had its local pronunciations, they do not necessarily correspond to the cognate terms in the local language, just as is the case today. As to the French pronunciation, it is worth mentioning that the putative source word mot has a silent T at the end (in modern French), but this letter becomes pronounced in the derived French word motet where, as Freshacconci pointed out at the beginning of this discussion, the final T is once again silent.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:50, 14 June 2014 (UTC)