5 - The Motets of 1608

Summary

THE MOTETS WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF LITURGY

THE MOTET WAS THE MOST POPULAR sacred genre of the sixteenth century. It was a medium for the expression of devotion, both private and public: it could be heard, and interpreted by one individual in the privacy of his own private apartments or chapel, or it could find its place in a wider religious community, to be used as a vehicle for corporate devotion in a liturgical context. This may be what Guerrero had in mind when, in dedicating his Sacrae cantiones of 1555 to the duke of Arcos, he claims that his motets (or ‘certain songs’ as he calls them) are suited to divine worship, but also may be found useful in ‘alleviating the sadness of any unoccupied hours’. Given the importance of the motet, it is not surprising that Esquivel should wish to make public his own contribution to this highly flexible genre.

A general description of the contents of the 1608 motet volume was given in Chapter 3. There it was noted that Esquivel's ordering of his motets follows the cycle of the liturgical year, a well-established principle by the time the composer published his volume, though not one followed by all composers; Esquivel's Zamoran contemporary, Alonso de Tejeda (c.1556–1628), for example, grouped his motets non-liturgically in three separate volumes for four, five, six and eight voices, and he was not alone in this. Although books of motets with an expressed liturgical purpose had begun to appear during the 1530s, their liturgical designation was incomplete; moreover, examples of such collections are by no means numerous. The increased degree of calendrical organisation after the Council of Trent may reflect an increasing sensitivity on behalf of Church composers and a desire to respond to criticisms of Church music made by the council.

Esquivel's Motecta festorum shares common ground with the published collections of some of his contemporaries, notably Guerrero, Rimonte, Zorita and Vivanco. One of the distinctive features of all these is the appearance of cycles of works for the penitential seasons: Advent, Septuagesima (the third Sunday before Lent and, in the Tridentine Rite, the beginning of the penitential season) through Lent. Lenten texts received special attention: as Robert Snow has observed, Spanish composers ‘produced an unusually large number of motets based on Gospel passages sung at mass on the Sundays from Septuagesima through Passion Sunday’; Vivanco went further and provided motets for Wednesdays and Fridays.