Mapping the Motet in the Post-Tridentine Era

<p><em>Mapping the Motet in the Post-Tridentine Era</em> provides new dimensions to the discussion of the immense corpus of polyphonic motets produced and performed in the decades following the end of the Council of Trent in 1563. Beyond the genre’s rich connections with contemporary spiritual life and religious experience the motet is understood here as having a multifaceted life in transmission performance and reception. By analysing the repertoire itself but also by studying its material life in books and accounts in physical places and concrete sonic environments and by investigating the ways in which the motet was listened to and talked about by contemporaries the eleven chapters in this book redefine the cultural role of the genre. The motet thanks to its own protean nature not bound to any given textual functional or compositional constraint was able to convey cultural meanings powerfully give voice to individual and collective identities cross linguistic and confessional divides and incarnate a model of learned and highly expressive musical composition. Case studies include considerations of composers (Palestrina Victoria Lasso) cities (Seville and Granada Milan) books (calendrically ordered collections non-liturgical music books) and special portions of the repertoire (motets <i>pro defunctis</i> instrumental intabulations).</p>