Die lateinische Evangelien-Motette des 16. Jahrhunderts: Repertoire, Quellenlage, musikalische Rhetorik und Symbolik

Abstract

Die lateinische Evangelien-Motette des 16. Jahrhunderts: Repertoire, Quellenlage, musikalische Rhetorik und Symbolik. By Wolfgang Krebs. (Frankfurter Beitrage zur Musikwissenschaft, 25.) Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1995. [634 p. ISBN 3-7952-0817-3.] Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century motets used a variety of biblical and nonbiblical sources for texts. Biblical texts might be taken from the Psalms, the Song of Solomon, the Gospels, or they might be a free combination from various books. Wolfgang Krebs's study (originally his doctoral dissertation at Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universitat in Frankfurt-am-Main) discusses those motets based upon texts from the four Gospels and, to a lesser extent, from the Acts of the Apostles. Musical settings of Gospel texts can be found throughout Western history. Plainchant settings were used as Antiphons and Communion in the liturgy. Medieval polyphonic settings exist, but these have no direct association with the Gospel motets (Evangelien-Mottete) discussed in Krebs's book. Krebs defines the Evangelium as a polyphonic motet in which the text has a particularly dramatic, narrative quality. These motets are first found in Italian sources dating from around 1500. As the sixteenth century progressed, composers throughout Europe wrote motets based on the Gospels, although interest in these works seems to have been particularly strong in Protestant areas of Germany. Early in the century, Gospel motets appeared in anthologies with other types of works by various composers; later publications tended to be devoted to a single composer. Krebs's study covers a variety of aspects of the Gospel motet. He surveys the repertory, describing specific works and composers from Josquin Desprez through the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. There is an overview of manuscript and printed sources containing these motets. He discusses variants on the biblical texts and approaches to text-setting used by different composers. The function of these works in the church, school, and home is described. A substantial portion of the dissertation deals with the techniques composers used, focusing on the application of rhetorical elements in the music: word-painting, and the highlighting of certain passages through musical means. Roughly one-third of the book (pp. 428-617) consists of extensive indexes, including bibliographies of publications devoted to a single composer, and both printed and manuscript anthologies. Individual motets can be located by composer, title, source, or biblical text. Contents are provided for publications of Gospel motet cycles by Philipp Dulichius, Homer Herpol. Romulo Naldi, Georg Otto, and Johannes Wanning, as well as the six volumes of Evangelia published by Montanus and Neuber in the 1550s. There are weaknesses in Krebs's survey. Too much space is devoted to criticism of Hans Joachim Moser's theory that these motets originally functioned as substitutes for Gospel readings in the liturgy, when Moser's work (Die mehrstimmige Vertonung des Evangeliums [Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hartel, 1931; 2nd rev. …