The motet was unquestionably one of the most important vocal genres from its inception in late twelfth-century Paris through the Counter-Reformation and beyond. Heard in both sacred and secular contexts, the motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance incorporated a striking wealth of meaning, its verbal textures dense with literary, social, philosophic, and religious reference. In Hearing the Motet, top scholars in the field provide the fullest picture yet of the motet's "music-poetic" nature, investigating the virtuosic interplay of music and text that distinguished some of the genre's finest work and reading individual motets and motet repertories in ways that illuminate their historical and cultural backgrounds.
How were motets heard in their own time? Did the same motet mean different things to different audiences? To explore these questions, the contributors go beyond traditional musicological methods, at times invoking approaches used in recent literary criticism. Providing as well a cutting-edge look at performance questions and works by composers such as Josquin, Willaert, Obrecht, Byrd, and Palestrina, the book draws a valuable new portrait of the motet composer. Here, intriguingly, the motet composer emerges as a "reader" of the surrounding culture--a musician who knew liturgical practice as well as biblical literature and its exegetical traditions, who moved in social contexts such as humanist gatherings, who understood numerical symbolism and classical allusion, who wrote subtle memorie for patrons, and who found musical models to emulate and distort.
Fresh, broad-ranging, and unique, Hearing the Motet makes vital reading for scholars, performers, and students of medieval and Renaissance music, and anyone else with an interest in the musical culture of these periods. Contributors include Rebecca A. Baltzer, Margaret Bent, M. Jennifer Bloxam, David Crook, James Haar, Paula Higgins, Joseph Kerman, Patrick Macey, Craig Monson, Robert Nosow, Jessie Ann Owens, Dolores Pesce, Joshua Rifkin, Anne Walters Robertson, Richard Sherr, and Rob C. Wegman.
Industry Reviews
"The concept behind Hearing the Motet inspired scholars to contribute a diverse array of essays representing major currents in motet research and detailing significant findings about composers, works, chronology, contexts, and interpretive strategies. The book also contains a number of inclusive speculations--most notably on matters pertaining to the liturgical function of motets and on details of specific interpretations--as well as suggestions for
further research, indicating that the future of motet research is wide-open and vital....In an era of increasing specialization, [this book] offers those interested in medieval and Renaissance motets a chance to
see beyond the limits of a particular repertory and benefit from a rich cross-fertilization of ideas and approaches."--Notes
"This collection of essays by leading scholars explores sacred vocal polyphony from the 12th through the late 16th centuries. The emphasis is less on broad stylistic or historical trends than on the insights offered by particular compositions and on the tools of critical interpretation....These essays are as different as the motets they consider, but all share a concern for the close reading of musical and verbal texts and an interest in exploring original and
present intellectual, political, and artistic contexts."--Choice
"[I]mpressive collection of essays by leading scholars in the field...This engaging collection of essays, in demonstrating the importance of a more integrated approach to the musico-poetic aspects of these works, succeeds also in showing ways in which comparative studies of motets might be profitably pursued in the future."--Journal of the American Musicological Society
"A fine collection of scholarly essays."--Early Music Review
"There is much to admire in this book, and its battery of scholars has allowed us to turn up the volume on the distant exchanges of past lives and hear them magnified in the music itself."--Times Literary Supplement
"The concept behind Hearing the Motet inspired scholars to contribute a diverse array of essays representing major currents in motet research and detailing significant findings about composers, works, chronology, contexts, and interpretive strategies. The book also contains a number of inclusive speculations--most notably on matters pertaining to the liturgical function of motets and on details of specific interpretations--as well as suggestions for
further research, indicating that the future of motet research is wide-open and vital....In an era of increasing specialization, [this book] offers those interested in medieval and Renaissance motets a chance to
see beyond the limits of a particular repertory and benefit from a rich cross-fertilization of ideas and approaches."--Notes
"This collection of essays by leading scholars explores sacred vocal polyphony from the 12th through the late 16th centuries. The emphasis is less on broad stylistic or historical trends than on the insights offered by particular compositions and on the tools of critical interpretation....These essays are as different as the motets they consider, but all share a concern for the close reading of musical and verbal texts and an interest in exploring original and
present intellectual, political, and artistic contexts."--Choice
"...one is constantly struck by the high levels of musical and intellectual engagement with the subject matter, and just how much there is to take away and re-use from each of the essays in the collection....Hearing the Motet is a valuable collection of essays; it has been carefully assembled and is well planned and well edited. It marks a particular point in the development of research on the motet, and will be the yardstick by which other studies
will be judged."--Music and Letters
"[I]mpressive collection of essays by leading scholars in the field...this engaging collection of essays, in demonstrating the importance of a more integrated approach to the musico-poetic aspects of these works, succeeds also in showing ways in which comparative studies of motets might be profitably pursued in the future."--Journal of the American Musicological Society
