Motet
Polyphonic vocal work on a liturgical text.
What it means
The motet is a polyphonic vocal composition, usually on a sacred, often Latin text. It arose in the thirteenth century and has since counted among the most enduring genres of European music, though its shape changed considerably. What remains common is the layout as a closed, through-composed piece for voices, in which the text prescribes the organization.
Musical use
In its early form, one or more voices with their own, partly secular text are set over a liturgical tenor, so that several texts sound simultaneously. In the Renaissance the motet becomes a texture worked through in imitation, in which every line of text receives its own motif, which all voices take up in turn; textual intelligibility thereby recedes behind the art of the setting. In the Baroque, instrumental accompaniment and concertante layouts are added; in the nineteenth century the unaccompanied form is deliberately taken up again. The motet differs from the Mass setting through its free relation to the text, from the cantata through its closed, single-movement layout.
Performance practice
Work from the text: determine the units of meaning, because each line usually carries its own musical motif. Make the entries audible without voices jumping out, and keep the articulation of the same motif the same in all voices. With unaccompanied works, watch the intonation and practise chords slowly as sustained sonorities. Fix pronunciation and syllable distribution in a binding way. Decide deliberately on solo or choral scoring, since both are possible.
Bear in mind that the genre had very different shapes over the centuries: a motet of the thirteenth century, one of the Renaissance, and one of the nineteenth century have little in common besides the name. Check first, therefore, which kind you are dealing with, and orient scoring and manner of performance accordingly. With imitative textures it holds to let every line of text keep its motif and to make entries audible. Determine whether instruments play colla parte, as was widespread in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Check, with unaccompanied works, the key, because a transposition by a whole tone can noticeably ease the range for all voices.