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Guillaume de Machaut’s motets constitute a cycle. This study focuses upon Machaut’s six Latin texted motets and their influence upon these cyclical contexts. Former research into these motets has uncovered references to contemporary poetry, liturgical texts, literary sources, particular persons, and historical events. Through an examination of recent research into the cyclical nature of the motets it is possible to critically evaluate these hypotheses in the light of the past historical, codicological, liturgical, musical and poetic analysis of these works to create a rounded picture of each motet. In this way it was found that many of the previously researched aspects of the motets follow in line with recent theories surrounding motet grouping structures. In this way when placing these works within a mystical theological literary context their sacred nature, evident within the tenor chant fragments upon which many of them are built, becomes evident and a greater plan apparent. Beyond this, with an examination of Machaut’s life and the events which occurred in his lifetime the context for composition of the remaining motets is unearthed. Within these motets elements have now been identified which link them to Machaut’s canonries at both Saint Quentin and Reims as well as the events of the Hundred Years’ War. In this way the deep connection between Machaut’s motets and all levels of his life is becoming increasingly apparent. Through an examination of these six Latin texted motets it is found that a liturgical context is key to the analysis of all voices. This is apparent in the mere use of vocabulary idiomatic to the liturgy present within these texts. In this way the selection of words within motet 21 points to a Marian allusion and the apocalyptic, drawing motet 21 even closer in context to motets 22-23. This apocalyptic reference is also seen in specific words within in triplum text of motet 22. Furthermore, the Marian allusions discovered throughout these last three motets in their upper voices are apparent only with a close examination of the Salve Regina texts. In this way the influence and importance of liturgical context to the analysis of the motet has been extended to all voices. This study has also uncovered allusions to other fourteenth century works in the analysis of Machaut’s motets. In the case of motet 9 a connection between its chant tenor and another from the Roman de Fauvel reveals a political context which brings an added richness to the interpretation of these texts. Furthermore, as with motets 18-19, it may be gleaned that as Machaut and Vitry were both canons at Saint Quentin that perhaps it was here and with these two motets that Machaut began his tutelage with the older master of the motet. These conclusions may be drawn by the striking similarities between Machaut’s works and those believed to have originated from within the Vitry circle. In the course of this study there have been additions to evidence the necessity of looking to all aspects of Guillaume de Machaut’s motets in their analysis. This includes use of numerical symbolism in varying aspects as shown in motet 9 as well as a thorough exploration of Machaut’s use of vocabulary within his texts to find its literary, historical, motet, and liturgical allusions. The identification of these sources may either serve to reinforce or expand the context of the motet leading to a deeper understanding of its purpose within a group of motets or individually.

The Cecilian movement was a reactionary movement made up of composers who sought to restore the musical principles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by placing emphasis back on the liturgy, reviving the idea that the music should be subservient to the text. In his article "The Cecilian Movement in the Nineteenth Century: A Summary of the Movement," Patrick Liebergen introduces the term "Cecilian Ideal" as a means of describing the way in which Franz Liszt and Anton Bruckner incorporated elements of Cecilianism into their compositions. Though the two composers never belonged to the Cäcilien-Verband für Deutschland, analysis of various style features commonly found in their music reveals that they accomplished many of the goals of the Cecilian movement while retaining their own individual compositional styles. Analysis of the Latin-texted choral motets of Camille Saint-Saëns reveals that they share stylistic features that were endorsed by the Cecilian movement. That these features were a result of conscious decisions made by the composer is suggested by the fact that similar style traits were praised by Saint-Saëns in two articles he wrote about liturgical music that were published near the end of his life. Moreover, Patrick Liebergen already has shown that many of the Saint-Saëns' beliefs can be understood through the application of what he terms the "Cecilian Ideal" concept. The Latin-texted choral motets of Camille Saint-Saëns have largely been overlooked by the scholarly community. Perhaps it is the uncomplicated nature of these pieces that has led many to dismiss them as an unremarkable portion of the composer's repertoire. Six of the Latin choral motets which are the most similar in terms of style and function were chosen for this study, as they best represent the consistent compositional features of the composer in this genre. These works span a fifty-eight year time period covering a broad portion of the composer's life and career. By analyzing Saint-Saëns' liturgical music in the light shed by his prose writings on the subject we can better understand both his compositional style and his view of the Cecilian movement.

The revisions to the biography of Josquin des Prez that followed new archival discoveries in the late 1990s has encouraged critical reappraisal of much of Josquin’s life and works, especially his periods of service in Milan (mid-1480s), Rome (1489 – ca. 1494/95), and Ferrara (1503-4). Yet the period of his life between his departure from Rome and arrival at Ferrara remains a lacuna as regards both his biographical details and his compositional activities. We can be relatively certain that he lived and worked in the orbit of the French royal court of King Louis XII (r. 1498-1515) during some of this time, although exactly when and in what capacity remains unclear. Alongside the gap in Josquin’s biography lies a gap in our understanding of certain consequential developments in style and genre of European sacred polyphony during these years. Early in the sixteenth century, a new iteration of the motet supplanted the polyphonic mass setting as the most widely-transmitted musical genre. The prolix cantus firmus-based motets on neoclassical devotional texts of the fifteenth century were replaced by more transparent and repetitive settings of liturgical and scriptural texts, rarely integrating a cantus firmus at all. Doubtlessly due to their new accessibility, multi-functionality, and the rise of music printing, these motets began to appear in many sources, often with a composer’s name attached—a distinct shift from the one or two often anonymous extant sources for most motets in the second half of the fifteenth century. It has already been suggested that these trends originated early in the century at the French royal court, where court singer-composers such as Jean Mouton, Antoine de Févin, Denis Prioris, and others appear to have played a central role in the development of this new motet style. Josquin, too, contributed to the genre, as a handful of motets in French court sources from ca. 1505-15 attest. This dissertation investigates these questions that follow: (1) When and in what capacity might Josquin have lived and worked in the orbit of the French royal court? (2) What might he have composed during these years, and how does the stylistic profile of that music compare to the music he had written earlier, in Milan and Rome? (3) How does Josquin’s French-court music relate to the music written by his colleagues and immediate successors there? In approaching the music at hand, I analyze motets by Josquin and his French-court contemporaries through the lens of form. We do not talk much about form in this period, insofar as it lacks the regulated conventions that we typically associate with the term as it applies to music from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Rather, I use the concept of form to describe how Josquin and others organized their motets globally—i.e., in horizontal space from start to finish—vis à vis the texts being set and, when applicable, a long-note cantus firmus. In this dissertation, I demonstrate how Josquin displayed a particular interest in the repetition of text and music—in the form of what I call text-music elements—which manifested itself in various ways for the duration of his career. Second, I examine how Josquin’s particular deployment of this principle manifested itself in the form of literally-repeated paired duos in motets that were circulating at the French royal court in the first decade of the sixteenth century and, as I further argue, were likely composed during his association with the court ca. 1499-1503. Finally, I contextualize these motets of Josquin with those by his peers at the French court chapel, such as Loyset Compere, Jean Mouton, and Antoine de Févin—suggesting that Josquin may have brought to the court an underlying repetitive impulse that led to the coalescence of the consequential “French-court motet.”

3v. : / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (D.Mus.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Music, 1977

abstract: Peter N. Schubert in "Hidden Forms in Palestrina's `First Book of Four-Voice Motets'" (Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2007) defines significant blocks of vertical relationships in imitative and non-imitative duos in the thirty-six motets of Palestrina's Motectus festorum totius anni cum communi sanctorum, published in 1564. Schubert describes these blocks of vertical relationships that proceed from duos as modules and organizes them according to categories of construction and function. Palestrina's parody Mass, O Rex glóriæ, reveals the same duos and modules that Schubert discovers in Palestrina's motet of the same name. Palestrina transfers these duos and modules from the motet into the parody Mass, using them as building blocks for points of imitation. The duos, modules, and their motives appear in all but a few places, and are in some cases prominent throughout movements of the Mass, such as the Kyrie. Palestrina manipulates and elaborates these duos and modules according to the character and text of each movement. He borrows them consistently in their original order, which he changes only for reasons of textual meaning or verbal similarity. The module approach to recurring vertical combinations, although a recent application, is valuable for recognizing and treating systematically the duo relationships and their elaboration that are described by late-Renaissance theorists, especially Fray Tomas de Sancte Maria. The identification and analytical interpretation of duos and modules in Palestrina's motet O Rex glóriæ and the parody Mass based on it yields insights not only into his compositional decisions as he adapts material from the motet for its new setting, but also into the potential value of modules as the basis for an analytical approach to the sacred vocal polyphony of the sixteenth century. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Music 2013

Une trentaine d’œuvres attribuées à Hesdin (messes, motets, Magnificat et chansons) figurent dans des nombreuses sources du XVIe siècle, provenant principalement de France, Italie et anciens Pays-Bas. Pourtant, la vie et la carrière de ce compositeur demeurent inconnues de nos jours, aucune des multiples hypothèses concernant l’identité de Hesdin ne reposant sur des éléments concrets. Cette thèse se propose d’offrir un panorama le plus complet possible du cas Hesdin, à travers l’étude de ses œuvres, de la dispersion des sources, mais aussi de la perception de sa musique au fil des siècles. L’étude stylistique des œuvres montre d’une part les rapports multiples avec celles d’autres compositeurs actifs dans la première moitié du XVIe siècle, notamment Josquin, Willaert et Gombert ;d’autre part, elle suggère que le toponyme « Hesdin » pourrait cacher deux compositeurs distincts. La partie finale de la thèse est consacrée à l’édition critique de tout le corpus attribué à Hesdin. / About thirty compositions attributed to Hesdin (masses, motets, Magnificat and chansons) are included in plenty of musical sources copied or edited during the sixteenth-century, in France, Italy and the Netherlands. However, nothing is known about the biography and the career of this composer. Among the many hypothesis proposed on Hesdin’s identity, none is based on objectives informations. This study attemps to offer an overview as comprehensive as possible of Hesdin, through the study of his compositions, of the diffusion of the musical sources and of the reception of Hesdin’s music during the centuries. The style of his music reveals clear links to the compositions of other composers of the first half of the sixteenth-century, Josquin, Willaert and Gombert above all. Moreover, it shows that the toponym « Hesdin » may possibly hide two different composers.The final section of this study is devoted to the critical edition of the whole corpus ascribed to Hesdin. / Doctorat en Histoire, histoire de l'art et archéologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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Une trentaine d’oeuvres attribuées à Hesdin (messes, motets, Magnificat et chansons) figurent dans des nombreuses sources du XVIe siècle, provenant principalement de France, Italie et anciens Pays-Bas. Pourtant, la vie et la carrière de ce compositeur demeurent inconnues de nos jours, aucune des multiples hypothèses concernant l’identité de Hesdin ne reposant sur des éléments concrets. Cette thèse se propose d’offrir un panorama le plus complet possible du cas Hesdin, à travers l’étude de ses oeuvres, de la dispersion des sources, mais aussi de la perception de sa musique au fil des siècles. L’étude stylistique des oeuvres montre d’une part les rapports multiples avec celles d’autres compositeurs actifs dans la première moitié du XVIe siècle, notamment Josquin, Willaert et Gombert ; d’autre part, elle suggère que le toponyme « Hesdin » pourrait cacher deux compositeurs distincts. La partie finale de la thèse est consacrée à l’édition critique de tout le corpus attribué à Hesdin / About thirty compositions attributed to Hesdin (masses, motets, Magnificat and chansons) are included in plenty of musical sources copied or edited during the sixteenth-century, in France, Italy and the Netherlands. However, nothing is known about the biography and the career of this composer. Among the many hypothesis proposed on Hesdin’s identity, none is based on objective informations. This study attempts to offer an overview as comprehensive as possible of Hesdin, through the study of his compositions, of the diffusion of the musical sources and of the reception of Hesdin’s music during the centuries. The style of his music reveals clear links to the compositions of other composers of the first half of thesixteenth-century, Josquin, Willaert and Gombert above all. Moreover, it shows that the toponym “Hesdin” may possibly hide two different composers. The final section of this study is devoted to the critical edition of the whole corpus ascribed to Hesdin

The discussion of citation and allusion has become an important area of research in Medieval Studies. The application of postmodern intertextual theories has brought scholars to a deeper understanding of the reuse of borrowed material, shedding new light on a culture of music and literature that was once dismissed as dully repetitive. This thesis builds on this work by examining in depth the manner in which citation and allusion was deployed in the fourteenth-century motet. Motets are a particularly fertile ground for discussion of the reuse of material, drawing as they do on a range of citational techniques such as borrowed liturgical tenors, modelling of rhyme schemes on existing works, and quotation of refrains and authorities. The polyphonic and polytextual nature of the motet enabled composers to juxtapose different registers, languages and genres, and thus to create an array of competing possible interpretations. This study is situated against several strands of recent scholarship. It draws on critical theory, as well as discussions of refrain definition, memory, manuscript compilation, and notions of voice, authority and authorship. Each chapter examines a particular body of work: the interpolated Roman de Fauvel, the works of Guillaume de Machaut, the motets of the Ivrea and Chantilly manuscripts, and finally those of Manuscript Torino J.II.9. In each case, looking at the use of citation and allusion connects to other concerns. In the Roman de Fauvel, citation in the motets can be seen as functioning alongside use of the vernacular, manuscript layout and illuminations to elucidate the narrative. In the works of Guillaume de Machaut citation is linked to his ambiguous self-presentation and authorial presence, and connects individual pieces in his complete works’ manuscripts. The Ivrea and Chantilly motets, while not linked by the same strength of context, demonstrate continuing use of thirteenth-century tradition. In this case, studying compilation choices may help us to understand how scribes interpreted citational material. Finally, I argue that understanding the internal use of symmetry in MS J.II.9 and its motets, and the reuse of material between the motets and the chansons of that repertory, vindicates the view that the music and poetry was composed by a single author well versed in mainstream tradition. I have been able to propose some previously unnoted allusions in the major works, and draw out the benefits of a holistic approach to understanding these motet and manuscripts. All this points to motets both continuing the writing traditions of the thirteenth century throughout the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, but also shows individual writers and compilers choosing to cite in a creative and innovative manner.