Showing posts with label motet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label motet. Show all posts

01 February 2008

The Motet

The two pieces for Monday are examples of the isorhythmic motet, a specialized type of music that was saved for special occassions. In the isorhythmic motet, there is often a proportional relationship in the length/speed/duration of the individual sections of the work to each other. That is, Section A may be twice as long as Section B (2:1) or one and a half times as long as Section B (3:2) etc. The article by Charles Warren tries to read something into the proportions of the DuFay motet. This was a very controversial argument when it was put forth and was rebutted in two other articles: one by Craig Wright, an expert on Early Music at Yale, and more recently by Marvin Trachtenberg, an architecture professor at NYU, among others. So:
1) What about Warren's article?
2) Consider the motet in light of Notker's insertion of words into a chant.