Comparing Compositional Process in Two Thirteenth-Century Motets: Pre-existent Materials in Deus omnium/REGNAT and Ne m'oubliez mie/DOMINO

Abstract

Scholars of the earliest motets continue to be faced by questions of compositional chronology which cannot readily be resolved by the application of general theories. This article offers a detailed analysis of interactions between pre-existent and newly created musical and textual materials in two thirteenth-century motets. The first is Deus omnium/REGNAT, a two-voice Latin motet created through the addition of a text to the music of a pre-existing two-voice clausula and recorded uniquely in the Florence Manuscript. The second is the ‘newly composed’ two-voice French motet Ne m'oubliez mie/DOMINO, a motet framed by the citation of two widely disseminated vernacular refrains and extant only in the later Montpellier Codex. Such contrasting pieces are typically considered to belong to different subgenres and chronological phases of motet development and are thus rarely compared or examined in conjunction. This article draws attention to fundamental similarities in the approaches to pre-existing materials in these motets and to the compositional processes and priorities they share, despite surface disparities and differing musical and textual components.