Introduction To Renaissance Choral Music

Guillaume Dufay (1400-1474) And The Isorhythmic Motet

Table Of Contents

Introduction To Renaissance Choral Music
History Of The Mass
Palestrina And The Counter-Reformation
Josquin Desprez And His Motets
Senfl And The Germanic Territories
Morales And Spain
Tallis And England

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Dufay is considered one of the early founders of the motet and the isorhythmic motet was his most significant contribution to the literature? An the isorhythm is a periodic repetition or recurrence of rhythmic periods,often with changing melodic content in the tenor and other parts of 14th- and early 15th-century compositions, especially motets. The number of times that the rhythmic period changes can vary from 2 to 8. How many times it does change will depend on the length of the period. These rhythmic formations, when they appear in multiplevoices are varied; other wise there would be no polyphony. 'Talea' is the term used to refer to the repeated rhythmic period. 'Color' refers to the repeated melody. The earliest Italian uses of rhythmic repetition are not in motets but in madrigals in which short units are immediately followed by their own diminutions and the resulting larger patterns are repeated. A madrigal is a poetic and musical form of 14th-century Italy. Only after 1400 did isorhythm enter the Italian tradition of ceremonial and occasional motets. Isorhythm had come to be linked with compositions written to celebrate festal and ceremonial occasions, the strength of that tradition maintained its use in the motet until the mid-15th century. The isorhythmic motet has usually been considered mainly a French phenomenon but it became a decisive technique that spread throughout Europe culminating in the motets of Dufay's 13 isorhythmic motets. Among the better-known composers of altogether nearly 250 'isorhythmic' motets are Vitry, Machaut, Ciconia, Dunstaple and many motets are anonymous. By the middle of the fifteenth century these motets acquired many mathematical properties and other complications that they were no longer able to fulfill a role in a humanistic and more expressive society. They can be considered either a close to medieval composition or the birth of the Renaissance.

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