# Medieval Multi-texted Motet



## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

Lately I have been really intrigued by the sheer weirdness of the medieval polytextual motet, with its often jarring combinations of overlapping meanings, not to mention the near-impossibility of comprehension at the moment of performance necessitating a relationship with the written/visual form as much as with the auditory experience... That said, I've found it difficult to find recordings that satisfy me in terms of - advancing a coherent argument for a performance practice that's believable as 'real' music; and/or just being enjoyable to listen to. What are your favorite recordings of medieval multi-texted motets, or your favorite theoretical/analytical writings on them?


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I love these guys <3


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

cheregi said:


> Lately I have been really intrigued by the sheer weirdness of the medieval polytextual motet, with its often jarring combinations of overlapping meanings, not to mention the near-impossibility of comprehension at the moment of performance necessitating a relationship with the written/visual form as much as with the auditory experience... That said, I've found it difficult to find recordings that satisfy me in terms of - advancing a coherent argument for a performance practice that's believable as 'real' music; and/or just being enjoyable to listen to. What are your favorite recordings of medieval multi-texted motets, or your favorite theoretical/analytical writings on them?


This is the discussion about performance in the Hilliard Machaut motets, which is an interesting recording I think.



> Performers' Note
> 
> The tenor parts of these motets, based on music familiar to Machaut and his fellow mu-sicians and clerics, are now a source of some puzzlement to performers of this music. What was familiar, even commonplace, to a Parisian of the 14th century is now entirely obscure. Clerics, religious and church musi-cians of the time, seeing the title and first few notes of one of the tenors, would have known immediately what it was - either a piece of chant they had been singing for years at Mass or one of the Offices or a pop-ular song. Lives change, even the music of the liturgy changes and, inevitably, popular music ceases to be popular.
> 
> ...


More generally I find Pedro Memelsdorff's work with Mala Punica -- a sensual approach to interpretation of the motets, interesting (though maybe not ideally recorded) -- and those singers, like Jill Feldman who worked with him, have brought this fluid approach to performances with other ensembles (like Tetraktys) Memelsdorff's booklet essays are often informative.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

A couple of others which have been consistently rewarding over a long period of time, though I can’t comment on the authenticity of the approach. 

1. Ensemble Organum Codex Faenza - maybe a bit too borderline renaissance style, I don’t know. He seems to me to adopt the approach Christopher Page pioneered with Gothic Voices - he does it very well. Gothic Voices and Orlando Consort not to be discounted in this of course, there are some very fine things. 

2, Studio Der Frühen musik in Landini, Ciconia and indeed Dufay. They are relaxed, and I like Andrea van Ramm!


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Anna Zayaruznaya, a musicologist at Yale who specializes in this and related subjects has written a paper you may find interesting:

https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.17.23.2/mto.17.23.2.zayaruznaya.pdf


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Anna Zayaruznaya, a musicologist at Yale who specializes in this and related subjects has written a paper you may find interesting:
> 
> https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.17.23.2/mto.17.23.2.zayaruznaya.pdf


What's the word for a motet which uses different languages in the triplum and motetus -- it's gone out of my head.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> What's the word for a motet which uses different languages in the triplum and motetus -- it's gone out of my head.


Stuck some Latin in the text and called it 'macaronic'.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Ah yes, thanks. That's a good mnemonic! 

Reading that paper just brought to mind what an astonishing genre it is! It really is like music from Mars. I'm going to buy Christopher Page's book I think.

The tenors can be completely unexpected. There's a Machaut one, M16 "Se j'aim mon loyal ami / Lasse! comment oublieray / Pour quoy me bat mes matris?" Why does my husband beat me?


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> The tenors can be completely unexpected. There's a Machaut one, M16 "Se j'aim mon loyal ami / Lasse! comment oublieray / Pour quoy me bat mes matris?" Why does my husband beat me?


And to think, that's only for speaking to her lover. In the bawdier _ pastourelle_ version from which Machaut borrowed, the wife is beaten after being caught embracing her lover, then complains that if her husband refuses to let her carry on leading the good life she will take her revenge on him by sporting around town naked with her lover!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

cheregi said:


> Lately I have been really intrigued by the sheer weirdness of the medieval polytextual motet, with its often jarring combinations of overlapping meanings, not to mention the near-impossibility of comprehension at the moment of performance necessitating a relationship with the written/visual form as much as with the auditory experience... That said, I've found it difficult to find recordings that satisfy me in terms of - advancing a coherent argument for a performance practice that's believable as 'real' music; and/or just being enjoyable to listen to. What are your favorite recordings of medieval multi-texted motets, or your favorite theoretical/analytical writings on them?


I forgot one of the most interesting pioneering examples yesterday, Bjorn Schmelzer's rediscovery of Jean Hannel, it is IMO astonishing music making. This is motet singing like no other, the new wave.









Booklet here

https://static.qobuz.com/goodies/10/000097401.pdf

All Schmelzer's work on medieval multi texted motets is essential to hear, including the three recordings themed around the architect Villard De Honnecourt. He has some exceptional singers working with him, and he is an inspirational bold leader. But none is more "leading edge" than that Hannel CD.


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

I think that Jean Hannelle recording from Graindelavoix is probably the most plainly gorgeous thing I've heard from them - they seem to have really 'figured something out' about the rhythmic dimension to the music, and the many affectations or schmelzer-isms seem really natural. I think there's still room to record something like, say, the Cambrai manuscript motets that Graindelavoix did, with some _really_ non-professional-sounding singers and with much more rhythmic vigor, which in my totally non-specialist opinion the music really seems to want...

I'm just noticing now that there's a single example of what appears to be a multi-texted / medieval-style motet on the Cappella Pratensis Dufay CD, which is definitely worth (re-)listening to - I feel like the Rebecca Stewart approach is so good for unearthing a kind of subtle rhythmic pulse in music where such a pulse doesn't seem obvious, but for music like this where the rhythm is so explicit it's maybe a little jarring?

Thanks all for the recs, the Zayaruznaya essay especially hits home, once again, the idea that the 'past is a foreign country,' both in its unknowability and in its alienness, which is a big part of what draws me to this stuff in the first place...


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

See what you think of the way Schmelzer does Dufay, there's a handful of motets on youtube and in fact I heard them do a Dufay concert a couple of years ago -- it was clearly very beautiful but it all felt a bit all the same, the fluid approach was too similar for a whole concert. It's very much like what Pedro Memelsdorff did with Ciconia motets in some respects, though Schmelzer uses some more adventurous voice effects and creates some unexpected harmonies.


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