oa The ‘Mass-Motet Cycle’ Revisited

Coinciding with the rise of chansons with Latin cantus firmi, composers in the 1450s and 1460s started using the tenors of vernacular songs as cantus firmi for masses and motets. These two groups of pieces have significant similarities, and their transmission in three cases has led to the idea that they were often conceived as pairs both in composition and for performance. This theory has oversimplified a rather more complex reality, wherein few if any of these pairs were composed as such. Nevertheless, the interchangeability of structural techniques shows a high level of compositional exchange between genres.