How to make a motet
The basic procedures can best be seen by examining a specific example. Here I choose one of my favorites, Qui es promesses / Ha! Fortune / T. Et non est qui adiuvet (M8). This was one of Machaut’s most widely transmitted motets, and it can be found not only within the Machaut manuscripts, but in three other manuscripts; it is also cited in a theory treatise.
It may be useful as well to consider what Machaut does in light of a mid-fourteenth-century treatise that outlines how to make a motet. As the author, Egidius de Murino, states, the first step is to choose a tenor, in light of the subject of the motet to be written. He does not say specifically how to do this, but composers seem usually to try to consider aspects of both pitch content and symbolic potential.
(image of M8 in MS C fromhttp://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449043q/f431.image and http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449043q/f432.image )
It may be useful as well to consider what Machaut does in light of a mid-fourteenth-century treatise that outlines how to make a motet. As the author, Egidius de Murino, states, the first step is to choose a tenor, in light of the subject of the motet to be written. He does not say specifically how to do this, but composers seem usually to try to consider aspects of both pitch content and symbolic potential.
(image of M8 in MS C fromhttp://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449043q/f431.image and http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449043q/f432.image )
The tenor and its context
Our motet is based on a fragment drawn a responsory, Circumdederunt me. Machaut borrows a sixteen-pitch segment from the end of the verse. The chant is in mode 2, with a D final, but the excerpt ends on F; this use of a major-third tonality is typical for both Machaut and his fourteenth-century French contemporaries. The melody moves mostly by step, but there are two leaps up a perfect fourth, and one down a perfect fifth. The fragment ends with a descending step to the final, F, which allows for the strongest kind of cadence available in this style.
The symbolic possibilities of this fragment come from the chant’s placement in the liturgy and from its text’s original biblical context. This responsory is used for several occasions during Lent at various churches, but it is particularly associated with Passion Sunday, the week before Palm Sunday, though some sources use it for Palm Sunday itself. (To see a range of medieval uses of a chant from the Divine Office, check out the CANTUS database at http://cantusdatabase.org/ .) The full responsory follows, with the fragment borrowed for this motet underlined:
Circumdederunt me viri mendaces, sine causa flagellis ceciderunt me: sed tu, Domine defensor, vindica me.
[Verse] Quoniam tribulatio proxima est, et non est qui adjuvet.
Lying men have surrounded me, without cause they have struck me with whips: but You, Lord my defender, avenge me. For trouble is near, and there is no one to help.
(text and translation from Robertson 307)
The text borrows loosely from Psalm 21(22), Deus meus, but with some important differences. (For the full Latin text from the Nova Vulgata, go to http://www.vatican.va/archive/bible/nova_vulgata/documents/nova-vulgata_vt_psalmorum_lt.html#PSALMUS%2022 .) The responsory verse comes from verse 12 of the psalm:
Ne longe fias a me,
quoniam tribulatio proxmia est,
quoniam non est qui adiuvet.
Here the borrowing is fairly straightforward. The respond, however, is more heavily altered: where the psalmist is surrounded by animal enemies such as bulls and dogs (who are pretty clearly allegorical stand-ins for human enemies), the chant speaks clearly of lying men with whips. Still, this psalm is routinely read as typologically in the voice of Christ on the cross, who cries in the Gospel the same words that open the psalm: Deus, deus meus, quare me dereliquisti? (My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?)
Both the biblical and liturgical contexts of this chant, then, focus on Jesus’ betrayal and crucifixion. The upper-voice texts, as we will see, similarly speak of betrayal, but here it is the poet who has been betrayed, by his lady and by Fortune. This combination may seem strange to a modern reader/listener, but it is in fact common in medieval culture, where the boundary between sacred and secular was blurred. In a case like this, where the narrator seems to be comparing his sufferings to those of Christ on the cross, the liturgical tenor may either reinforce his complaint in a straightforward manner or provide a subtle corrective, showing that his own troubles are in fact not as great as he claims.
The symbolic possibilities of this fragment come from the chant’s placement in the liturgy and from its text’s original biblical context. This responsory is used for several occasions during Lent at various churches, but it is particularly associated with Passion Sunday, the week before Palm Sunday, though some sources use it for Palm Sunday itself. (To see a range of medieval uses of a chant from the Divine Office, check out the CANTUS database at http://cantusdatabase.org/ .) The full responsory follows, with the fragment borrowed for this motet underlined:
Circumdederunt me viri mendaces, sine causa flagellis ceciderunt me: sed tu, Domine defensor, vindica me.
[Verse] Quoniam tribulatio proxima est, et non est qui adjuvet.
Lying men have surrounded me, without cause they have struck me with whips: but You, Lord my defender, avenge me. For trouble is near, and there is no one to help.
(text and translation from Robertson 307)
The text borrows loosely from Psalm 21(22), Deus meus, but with some important differences. (For the full Latin text from the Nova Vulgata, go to http://www.vatican.va/archive/bible/nova_vulgata/documents/nova-vulgata_vt_psalmorum_lt.html#PSALMUS%2022 .) The responsory verse comes from verse 12 of the psalm:
Ne longe fias a me,
quoniam tribulatio proxmia est,
quoniam non est qui adiuvet.
Here the borrowing is fairly straightforward. The respond, however, is more heavily altered: where the psalmist is surrounded by animal enemies such as bulls and dogs (who are pretty clearly allegorical stand-ins for human enemies), the chant speaks clearly of lying men with whips. Still, this psalm is routinely read as typologically in the voice of Christ on the cross, who cries in the Gospel the same words that open the psalm: Deus, deus meus, quare me dereliquisti? (My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?)
Both the biblical and liturgical contexts of this chant, then, focus on Jesus’ betrayal and crucifixion. The upper-voice texts, as we will see, similarly speak of betrayal, but here it is the poet who has been betrayed, by his lady and by Fortune. This combination may seem strange to a modern reader/listener, but it is in fact common in medieval culture, where the boundary between sacred and secular was blurred. In a case like this, where the narrator seems to be comparing his sufferings to those of Christ on the cross, the liturgical tenor may either reinforce his complaint in a straightforward manner or provide a subtle corrective, showing that his own troubles are in fact not as great as he claims.
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