The Motet Text Database is an online reference tool that makes the texts of thirteenth-century motets digitally accessible, searchable, and discoverable.

If you're new here, see below for some Frequently Asked Questions. If you're an expert, use the navigation above to begin your search.

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What's a motet?

A motet is a genre of music from the Middle Ages that, when performed, features multiple singers declaiming completely separate texts simultaneously. Typically, this ranges from two to four voice parts. The bottom part is called a tenor, and the upper voices, depending on how many there are, can be called a motetus or duplum, triplum, and quadruplum. Broadly speaking, these texts are in (Old) French or Latin. The tenor is often derived from plainchant, or music used specifically for the Christian liturgy. Some motet upper voices have a lyrico-textual snippet associated with them called a refrain. Put very simply, refrains are normallly brief poetic lines associated with a specific melody, but the complexity of medieval citation practices makes this definition very general.

The term motet broadly refers to a musical genre that has changed significantly throughout history. This website focuses on the motet's earliest instantiations in the thirteenth century.

What is there to discover?

Motets of the thirteenth century are found in several manuscript sources. Some motets are unique, but many others are found in slightly different versions across multiple manuscripts. The Motet Text Database shows the interconnectedness of these sources as well as the complexity of multiple versions of voices in different motet iterations.

In short, the many interrelated parts of motets and their texts gets a bit confusing to conceptualize for a non-expert. See below for an example of how each part is broken down and displayed.

In the structure above, you can see how a motet (called Li douz maus m’ocit / Trop ai lonc tens en folie / Ma loiauté m’a nuisi / In seculum) breaks down into smaller parts, divided between upper voices (Li douz, Trop ai, and Ma loiauté) and a tenor (In seculum). Sometimes, the upper voices can be broken down further into refrains (for example, Li dous regars in Ma loiauté). You can click on each part of the motet above to view its item-specific metadata.