Your Favourite English Anthem

[Vile Consort]

Parsons: Ave Maria
Tallis: Videte Miraculum
Jackson: Audi Filia

[David Underdown]

Surely by definition if it's in Latin it's a motet and not an anthem...

[ardcarp]

I think, to be fair, the words 'anthem' and 'motet' are a bit flexible in their usage. 'Motet' has changed its meaning radically since medieval times (scholars please chip in!) though it is now generally used to mean a piece of sacred music with a Latin text intended for use in the Catholic church. 'Anthem' however is a real umbrella word, and in the Anglican church at least can embrace almost any choral piece in any language and any genre. Its words don't need to be biblical and are occasionally only vaguely sacred. So in a Venn diagram 'motet' would be in a small circle entirely encompassed by a big 'anthem' circle.

[Vile Consort]

Definition of "motet" from the OED:

a. A melody.
b. A vocal composition in harmony, set usually to words from Scripture, for church use.

No hint of the language being of any relevance.

In quires and places where they sing, a work setting Latin words oftentimes followeth ye third collect and is invariably referred to as "the anthem" not "the motet".

[decantor]

When I was doing O Level Music, back when the world was still young, Stanford's Three Motets was a set work. We were told that a "motet" should be unaccompanied. Just more grist to the mill.....

[jean]

'Motet' has changed its meaning radically since medieval times (scholars please chip in!)

I'm not a scholar - I only know that motet had a very specific meaning in medieval times to do with its form, which has no relevance to its use today.

I don't think I would use the word anthem except for a piece being performed at the point in the service where the BCP asks for one.

If I were singing a piece in the context of a Catholic service, I might describe it rather as introit or gradual or antiphon according to its place in the service as defined by the Missal. A communion motet fills a space but has no liturgical function.

Extraliturgically, I would use motet for any short piece especially one on which a Mass setting is based.

[ardcarp]

The Oxford Companion to Music (ed Latham) has a fairly comprehensive piece about 'motet'. I won't type it out here, but it's a good basic guide for anyone who's interested.

Then there's Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motet

...a bit of a combined effort, maybe.

[ardcarp]

Post #50. You mean O-level Musicke, surely Decantor.

[jean]

The Oxford Companion to Music (ed Latham) has a fairly comprehensive piece about 'motet'. I won't type it out here, but it's good basic guide for anyone who's interested.

Don't forget that if your library subscribes, you can log into Oxfor Music Online which will give you the Oxford Companion to Music, and Grove, and more.

[jean]

Here is the article, in case anyone hasn't got the subscription:

Motet.

The most important form of polyphonic vocal music in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Over its five centuries of existence there is no one definition that would apply throughout, but from the Renaissance onwards motets have normally had Latin sacred texts and have been designed to be sung during Catholic services.

The medieval motet evolved during the 13th century, when words (Fr.: mots) were added to the upper parts of clausulae—hence the label ‘motetus’ for such an upper part, a term that came to be applied to the entire piece. Whereas the lower part of such a composition (a tenor cantus firmus) moved in slower notes and was derived from a plainchant with Latin text, the upper part or parts might carry unrelated Latin or even French secular texts, and such parts were being freely invented by about 1250. During the 14th century, the structural principle of isorhythm was applied to the tenors of motets (in the works of Machaut, for example); up to the early 15th century, it was applied in some cases to all voices, as in Dunstaple's Veni Sancte Spiritus or Dufay's Nuper rosarum flores. The last named was written for the consecration of Florence Cathedral in 1436; indeed, many medieval motets were occasional in function, their several simultaneously sung texts ‘glossing’ on one another.

During the time of Dunstaple and Dufay, however, a freely composed type of motet, often in simple style and with a single text, came into being, and by the late 15th century the motet had become a choral setting of sacred works in four or more parts. Its choral texture was more unified than before, the individual voices moving at the same sort of pace (though the tenor cantus firmus in long notes can still be found in some of Josquin's motets). The practice of imitation, whereby each voice entered in turn with the same distinctive musical idea, became fundamental to the motet as to other types of polyphonic music; at the same time composers reflected a new humanist spirit in their careful choice of motet texts and attention to the way the words were enunciated in the music. The motet, unlike the mass, the psalm, the hymn, or the Magnificat setting, remained a form not strictly prescribed by the liturgy, but added (or substituted) at an appropriate place in the service on the appropriate day—in the same way as the English anthem. The occasional ‘ceremonial’ type of motet survived too, and would be written or commissioned to mark any kind of event or honour any person, religious or otherwise.

The imitative motet style flowered with the generation after Josquin, and the device of ‘pervading imitation’, whereby successive phrases of the text are set to overlapping points of imitation, was developed by Gombert and refined by Palestrina and the other great late Renaissance polyphonists: Lassus, Byrd, and Victoria. Palestrina wrote some 250 motets, Lassus twice that number (including a fair proportion of occasional pieces), and Byrd published three collections of Cantiones sacrae—a Latin name often given to motets at that time. In Venice a polychoral type of motet developed with the Gabrielis, and Giovanni Gabrieli's later motets, which belong to the early years of the 17th century, are massive works scored for soloists, full choir, and instrumental ensemble (largely consisting of cornetts and sackbuts).

Although the old style (stile antico) of Palestrina was still sometimes cultivated in motets written during the Baroque period (and even later), from 1600 onwards composers largely adopted the new styles for their motets, writing pieces for one or more voices with continuo and sometimes also including independent instrumental parts, usually for strings. This was especially so in Italy, where by 1700 the solo motet, a cantata-like piece for one voice and strings, often setting a picturesque non-liturgical text, had become the most common form of motet. German composers including Schütz adopted the modern ‘affective’ style in certain works, but retained a more contrapuntal, choral texture for others—a tradition that was continued in Bach's motets for choir and organ. In Louis XIV's France the grand motet for solo voices and chorus with instrumental accompaniment, produced for great occasions by such composers as Charpentier and Couperin, was one of the chief forms of sacred music.

Since the Baroque era motet composition has declined, though Mozart, Schumann, and Brahms all contributed to the genre, and there are 20th-century examples by Messaien and Poulenc. But motets from earlier centuries have continued to be heard in church services of many denominations, as anthems, or at appropriate points during Mass.

Jerome Roche / Elizabeth Roche

[DracoM]

X

[Despina dello Stagno]

In this year (this is not the place to deprecate the prevalent BBC practice on hanging programmes on anniversaries) I would nominate C.V. Stanford's powerful response to the outbreak of The Kaiser's War: "For Lo I raise up that bitter and hasty nation".
Not only emotionally powerful, it includes one of the classic and never-failing sources of choirboy mirth, a quote (from Habbakuk, I.I.R.C.: "I will stand upon my watch".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXhHpWgZkVs

[Despina dello Stagno]

Ah, sorry.

I didn't at the time realise that my last post was a tribute to (no, let's not be coy; plagiarism of) Finzi4ever's posting in the dogwatch hours of the late 30s, replying with exactly the same salient features.

So an offering on the anthem motet debate; It's a class thing.

A high proportion (I haven't quantified it exactly) of collections of motets to say 1600 (includes such composers as Byrd) include in the frontispiece the formulae "Motectae vulgo appellatae", or "Cantiones quae vulgo motectae vocantur" or something similar. Those known to Andrew Mitchell (allegedly) to be NQLU call them motets.
For the C of E in the 1662 post-Restauration settlement toffs generally (and the conservative party at prayer particularly) were in the ascendant. "In quires and places where they sing" (you can tell they were posh - they spelled dirty) the word "anthem" was inserted in the BCP, to await inclusion, ultimately, as a favourable signifier in Nancy Mitford's (and others') "Noblesse oblige". Motet is non-U, anthem is U, notwithstanding it doesn't include one.

[Vox Humana]

In quires and places where they sing, a work setting Latin words oftentimes followeth ye third collect and is invariably referred to as "the anthem" not "the motet".

And this is not at all unreasonable since it actually has some historical precedent. Originally the word "anthem" (or, more commonly, "antem") was the early pre-reformation English vernacular for "antiphona", i.e. antiphon. Before the reformation choirs would sing one or more votive antems daily, in Latin of course, typically after compline. In 1548 a royal commission famously ordered the choir at Lincoln Cathedral to stop singing them in Latin and only to sing antiphons to Our Lord, in English, to music that had one note per syllable. These votive antiphons were extra-liturgical in the sense that they were not stipulated in the service books, so it is not surprising that they were not mentioned when the first prayer book combined vespers and compline into one, shorter, vernacular service. This extra-liturgical observance continued, maybe because there was nothing to forbid it. In 1559 Elizabeth I expressly permitted choirs to sing "an hymn or such like song, to the praise of Almighty God" at the beginning or end of Morning or Evening Prayer. The singing of an anthem at the end of Evensong was eventually formalised liturgically in the 1662 prayer book.

[Vox Humana]

As for my favourite anthem (/ motet), I am tempted to say almost all of the above-mentioned. It seems unnecessary to choose, yet there is one piece to which I do return more often than any other: Harris's Faire is the heaven. A good performance that not only begins and ends in pitch, but also stays there throughout, moves me to depths no other anthem manages to reach (though I do have to keep swatting memories of a girl I used to know called Felicity).