Cultural Features During The Development Of European Motet

Motet is a genre of musical pattern emerging during the late Middle Ages. At the first beginning, it just existed as a part of liturgical music, including 3 voice parts,and uses rhythmic models thus possesses typical features of church music. Later this genre absorbed much from secular art under the influence of humanism in Renaissance, developed and won wide popularity in France, England, Italy, and Germany. Hence the medieval motet became the blending of religion and secularization, and individuality and commonness and was developed to the top by Lassus. Since the 17th Century, the original 'function and value' in motet was substituted gradually by numerous newly rising secular genres, as a result, it went down as an individual type.This paper takes the motets ranging from 1220 to 1750 as objects, with the composite way of technical and cultural analysis, from the angle of the relation between religion and secularization, investigates thoroughly and illustrates the changes of forms, nature and functions of motets in different stages and, the change of the relation between liturgical and secular factors in motets while the social and relational ideas changed. Then this paper sums up the 'double-culture' (both opposed and adaptive to each other) property the motet showing when it encountered the transformation of secular environment and the invasion of secular factors.The whole paper consists of the following two chapters:Chapter 1 Retrospection of the Development of the Motet and its Transformation of Forms With specific composition examples, this paper retrospects historically and takes a close analysis on the features and changes of the motet in different periods. According to the diverse key historical events and its features, the development consists of 5 stages:1. The Origination and Preparatory Development of the Motet (13th Century)2. The Diversification and Popularization of the Motet (14th Century)3. The Blending of the styles of European Countries (from the late 14th Century to the 15th Century)4. The Height of the development of the Motet (16th Century)5. The Eclipse of the Motet (after 17th Century)Chapter 2 Cultural Analysis to the Development of the Motet Here this paper does a general investigation on the cultural phenomenon-the motet by means of sociology and culture studies. Based on thorough studies of the environment in which the motet existed, the author analyzes deeply transformation of the cultural nature and social functions from the two relations between religion and secularization, and opposition and adaptation, then sums up the cultural properties that in motets religion opposed to and adapted to secularization and then both combined at various interfaces.Due to the size limit,only a part of composition examples are illustrated in this paper,and not all quoted composition are attached. As for the complete compositions,there is an reference index with full soures at the end of the paper. Sorry for the unconvience brings to you!...