Motet Music Essays - Medieval Music, Renaissance Music,

Motet Music The genesis of the motet is, like the biblical birth of Eve, a matter of appendage. In the case of Eve, a rib was removed from Adam and fashioned into a women; the motet was a rib added to pre-existing clausulae. James C. Thomson describes this development as follows: ?In the thirteenth century, perhaps sooner, it became the practice to add a new text to the upper voice of a clausula. The newly worded, was then called motetus.? (Thomson, 56) Despite its somewhat haphazard birth, the form was widely accepted. Grout describes its popularity as: ?Thousands of motets were written in the thirteenth century; the style spread from Paris throughout France and to all parts of western Europe.? (Grout, 99) Originality was not a hallmark of the thirteenth century motet. In fact, of the two essential characteristics of the motet, one was that ?it was constructed on a cantus firmus, some pre-existent melody (Thomson, 57) The other was that it had at least two different texts. As Grout points out, ?the stock of motet melodies, both tenors and upper parts, lay in the public domain; composers and performers freely helped themselves to the music of their predecessors without acknowledgment and altered it without notice.? (Grout, 99) A unique characteristic of the motet of this period is the mixing of melodies and rhythms. Alfred Einstein described this technique as: ?This may be called polymelody, the compulsory combination of the two or more distinct melodies with different rhythms (Einstein, 26) With the acceptance of such combinations came the development of stranger mixtures. Side by side with a sacred liturgical text appeared secular texts of sometimes outrageous contrast. The mixture of sacred and secular text was a result of the fact that less and less notice was taken of the connection between the texts of the tenor and duplum. Einstein theorized this development was arbitrary, however most belief the music is premised on an, ?internal perception? (Bukofzer, 28) and to the musician, ?to them a detail was a value in itself.? (Mathiassen, 70) The motet blended the different planes of music. An additional development in the technique of mixing and adding is that not only was it polyphonic, polyrythmic, and polytextual, but music was now polyglot: ?one or more vernacular (French) texts might be substituted for Latin ones.? (Thomson, 57) During this time, composers of the Notre Dame School concerned themselves with the development of clausulae in ?rhythmically identical patterns.? (Harman, 53) Harman writes: ?This was not only the culmination of the Notre Dame preoccupation with rhythm, but was also a very important innovation, because it eventually developed into the chief structural device of the fourteenth century motet.? (Harman, 53) The structural device alluded to above, goes under name of ?isorhythm?, (same rhythm). At first, this concept of single rhythm was applied solely to the tenor part, but gradually the principle was applied to the other parts. Creating a greater unity and sense of whole to the listener. Philippe de Vitry (1291-1361) ?was a master of the isorythmic motet.? (Thomson, 59) It was he who pioneered the application of the principle to the other parts. He and Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-c.1377), whose ?claim that the ear should be used to check a completed composition was the first indication that the combination of the given melodies? was beginning to yield to a freer, more individual attitude towards creative art.? (Einstein, 34) Machaut was the most prominent practitioner of the strophic motet and preferred the use of French text. (Saide, 625) The fourteenth century also witnessed a change in attitude toward text. The polytextual thirteenth-century motet was replaced by the fourteenth-century forms, which typically had a single text, treated either as a solo (the French ballad) or distributed between the voices in such a way as to keep the words always clearly understandable. (Grout, 157) The development of the motet from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries can be characterized as a gradual turning away from the abstract, nonsensuous principles of construction toward pleasure of sounds for their own sake, and toward a clarity of structure immediately apparent from the music itself, without reference to esoteric meanings. (Grout, 157) Many of the motets written during the fourteenth century were constructed in

Strongest and Weakest Parts of a Magnet

Strongest and Weakest Parts of a Magnet Did you know that the magnetic field of a magnet is not uniform? The strength of the field varies depending on its location around the magnet. The magnetic field of a bar magnet is strongest at either pole of the magnet. It is equally strong at the north pole when compared with the south pole. The force is weaker in the middle of the magnet and halfway between the pole and the center. If you were to sprinkle iron filings on a piece of paper and place the magnet beneath it, you could see the path of the magnetic field lines. The field lines are closely packed at either pole of the magnet, widening as they get farther from the pole and connecting to the opposite pole of the magnet. The magnetic field lines emerge from the north pole and enter the south pole. The magnetic field gets weaker the farther you get from either pole, so a bar magnet is only useful for picking up small items over short distances. Where Is the Magnetic Field Strongest? Iron filings make a pattern tracing field lines because each bit of iron is itself a tiny dipole (the separation between magnetic fields). The force the dipole experiences is proportional to the strength of the dipole and proportional to the rate at which the magnetic field changes. The dipole tries to align itself with a magnetic field, but at the ends of a bar magnet, the field lines are very close together. What this indicates is that the magnetic field varies strongly over a short distance compared to the variation closer to the middle of the magnet. Because the magnetic field changes so dramatically, a dipole feels more force.