Motets

He wrote many of his motets for four voices, an ensemble size which had become the compositional norm around 1500, and he also was a considerable innovator in writing motets for five and six voices.

While the texts of the motets included by Byrd and Tallis in the 1575 Cantiones have a High Anglican doctrinal tone, scholars such as Joseph Kerman have detected a profound change of direction in the texts which Byrd set in the motets of the 1580s.

The four Bruckner motets gave the choir the opportunity to show their dynamic range – a notable feature of these short works - and to exploit the acoustic, allowing the sound to reverberate around the stonework.

Also, there will be a selection of Catalan carols and motets; Joan Brudieu’s Seven Joys of Mary; Tomas Luis de Victoria’s mass and motet for Christmas morning – O Magnum Mysterium; and Guerrero’s motet for six voices Pastores Loquebantur.

A few motets, especially in the 1591 set, abandon traditional motet style and resort to vivid word painting which reflects the growing popularity of the madrigal (Haec dies, 1591).

As is the case with his motets, many of the songs were written for specific occasions, and many are datable, thus supplying useful biographical information.

A special feature of the four-part and five-part Masses is Byrd's treatment of the Agnus Dei, which employ the technique which Byrd had previously applied to the petitionary clauses from the motets of the 1589 and 1591 Cantiones sacrae.

Byrd's contribution to the Cantiones also includes compositions in a more forward-looking manner which point the way to his motets of the 1580s.

Byrd's set includes two consort fantasias (a4 and a6) as well as eleven English motets, most of them setting prose texts from the Bible.

Coming before the innovation of imperfect tempus, this practice inaugurated the era of what are now called "Petronian" motets.

De Monte wrote his own motets in response, such as the "Super Flumina Babylonis".

Fauser, p. 228 Saint-Saëns composed more than sixty sacred vocal works, ranging from motets to masses and oratorios.

Francis Poulenc 's Motets pour le temps de noël, Gloria, and Mass in G are often performed.

Furthermore, this kind of polyphony influenced all subsequent styles, with the later polyphonic genera of motets starting as a trope of existing Notre Dame organums.

Heinrich Schütz wrote many motets in a series of publications called Symphoniae sacrae, some in Latin and some in German.

He was one of the first composers of chansons to make all voices equal parts of the texture; and many of his chansons contain points of imitation, in the manner of motets.

His motets published in Nova ac diversimoda sacrarum cantionum composition, seu motettae (Vienna, 1613) are in a similar tradition to Gabrieli's music.

However he did use melodic repetition, especially where the lines of text rhymed, and many of his chansons had a lighter texture, as well as a faster tempo, than his motets.

Increasingly in the 14th and 15th centuries, motets tended to be isorhythmic ; that is, they employed repeated rhythmic patterns in all voices not only the cantus firmus which did not necessarily coincide with repeating melodic patterns.

It was a collection of 34 Latin motets dedicated to the Queen herself, accompanied by elaborate prefatory matter including poems in Latin elegiacs by the schoolmaster Richard Mulcaster and the young courtier Ferdinand Heybourne (aka Richardson).