The motet-chanson was a specialized musical form of the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

, developed in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

during the 1470s and 1480s, which combined aspects of the contemporary

motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margar ...

and

chanson A (, , french: chanson française, link=no, ; ) is generally any lyric-driven French song, though it most often refers to the secular polyphonic French songs of late medieval and Renaissance music. The genre had origins in the monophonic s ...

. Many consisted of three voice parts, with the lowest voice, a

tenor A tenor is a type of classical music, classical male singing human voice, voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The lo ...

or a

contra Contra may refer to: Places * Contra, Virginia * Contra Costa Canal, an aqueduct in the U.S. state of California * Contra Costa County, California * Tenero-Contra, a municipality in the district of Locarno in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland ...

, singing a sacred text in Latin, drawn from

chant A chant (from French ', from Latin ', "to sing") is the iterative speaking or singing of words or sounds, often primarily on one or two main pitches called reciting tones. Chants may range from a simple melody involving a limited set of notes ...

, while the two upper voices sang a secular text in French. Some were written for four to five voices, with the ''bassus'' taking the Latin part. Generally, the French text was either a commentary on the Latin text or had some symbolic relation to it. The lowest voice served as a

cantus firmus In music, a ''cantus firmus'' ("fixed melody") is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition. The plural of this Latin term is , although the corrupt form ''canti firmi'' (resulting from the grammatically incorrect tr ...

, and usually sang in long notes, with phrases separated by long rests, while the upper voices, singing more quickly, followed the rigid formal structure of the contemporary ''

formes fixes The ''formes fixes'' (; singular: ''forme fixe'', "fixed form") are the three 14th- and 15th-century French poetic forms: the ''ballade'', '' rondeau'', and ''virelai''. Each was also a musical form, generally a ''chanson'', and all consisted of ...

'', particularly the rondeau and the

bergerette A bergerette, or shepherdess' air, is a form of early rustic French song. The bergerette, developed by Burgundian composers, is a virelai with only one stanza. It is one of the "fixed forms" of early French song and related to the rondeau. Exampl ...

. The three most prominent composers of motet-chansons were

Josquin des Prez Josquin Lebloitte dit des Prez ( – 27 August 1521) was a composer of High Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, he was a central figure of the ...

Loyset Compère Loyset Compère ( – 16 August 1518) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. Of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, he was one of the most significant composers of motets and chansons of that era, and one of the first musicians ...

, and

Alexander Agricola Alexander Agricola (; born Alexander Ackerman; – 15 August 1506) was a Netherlandish composer of the Renaissance writing in the Franco-Flemish style. A prominent member of the ''Grande chapelle'', the Habsburg musical establishment, he wa ...

, all of whom were in Milan, Italy, during the late 15th century as part of the progressive and opulent musical establishment of the

Sforza The House of Sforza () was a ruling family of Renaissance Italy, based in Milan. They acquired the Duchy of Milan following the extinction of the Visconti family in the mid-15th century, Sforza rule ending in Milan with the death of the last me ...

family. Other composers who wrote motet-chansons included

Johannes Prioris Johannes Prioris (c. 1460 – c. 1514) was a Netherlandish composer of the Renaissance. He was one of the first composers to write a polyphonic setting of the Requiem Mass. On the basis of documents surrounding Saint-Sauveur in Blois, Theodor D ...

and

Johannes Martini Johannes Martini (c. 1440 – late 1497 or early 1498) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. Life He was born in Brabant around 1440, but information about his early life is scanty. He probably received his early training in Flan ...

. Of these, only Prioris is not known to have been in Milan, but then relatively little is known about his life. Josquin wrote three motet-chansons: "Que vous madame/In pace", "A la mort/Monstra te esse matrem", and "Fortune destrange plummaige/Pauper sum ego". "Que vous madame" had circulated widely by 1490; it was one of the earliest of Josquin's compositions to do so. Two of Agricola's motet-chansons, "L'eure est venue/Circundederunt" and "Revenez tous regretz/Quis det ut veniat", are preserved in manuscripts of the chanson albums of

Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy Archduchess Margaret of Austria (german: Margarete; french: Marguerite; nl, Margaretha; es, Margarita; 10 January 1480 – 1 December 1530) was Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands from 1507 to 1515 and again from 1519 to 1530. She was the firs ...

, as are two of Compère's, "Plaine d'ennuy/Anima mea" and "O devotz cocurs/O vos omnes". It has been inferred that the motet-chanson repertory may once have been much larger than is now known, since many of the surviving sources give only the Latin text for three-voice compositions of otherwise similar texture. It may be that the uppermost voices for some of these once had secular French words, now lost.David Fallows, Grove, "Chanson-motet".

References and further reading

Richard Sherr Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'stron ...

, ed., ''The Josquin Companion''. Oxford, Oxford Univ. Press, 2000. *

Gustave Reese Gustave Reese ( ; 29 November 1899 – 7 September 1977) was an American musicologist and teacher. Reese is known mainly for his work on medieval and Renaissance music, particularly with his two publications ''Music in the Middle Ages'' (1940) ...

, ''Music in the Renaissance''. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. * Gustave Reese (biography) and Jeremy Noble (works), "Josquin Desprez," Howard Mayer Brown, "Chanson", in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980.

Notes

{{reflist Renaissance music Classical music styles