Booking is now open for Mapping the Post Tridentine Motet and details can be found here.
All the most relevant composers of the late sixteenth century (from Palestrina to Byrd, from Guerrero to Lassus) composed and published motets, undoubtedly responding to the needs of both their employing institutions and the printing market. Likewise, they were surely receptive to contemporary shifts in spirituality and religious life (although the real extent of the Council of Trent's direct influence still needs to be determined). The sacred counterpart to the madrigal, the motet became a workshop for experimenting with text-tone relationships, form organization, and rhetorical strategies. It often featured intriguing instances of imitatio and all sort of intertextual cross-references. Moreover, it proved a versatile medium suitable for fulfilling different functions in a wide array of contexts. This versatility also applied to the choice of texts.
In spite of all that, the post-Tridentine motet has been surprisingly neglected in recent scholarship, and many crucial questions remain unanswered. With this conference we aim to re-open the discussion on the immense corpus of polyphonic and polychoral motets produced and performed all over Europe in the period ca. 1560 to ca. 1610.
Invited speakers will include David Crook, Christian Leitmeir, Kerry McCarthy and Noel O'Regan.
There will also be two discussion panels, one on the influence of the Council of Trent on the late-sixteenth century motet and the other on performance issues, led by Noel O'Regan and Christian Leitmeir, and Owen Rees and Michael Noone respectively.
Posted on Monday 9th March 2015