Naive and folksy as these texts seem, they are cast in a very urbane musical construction that belies
their rustic nature. That jocular incongruity, which (along with polytextuality) intensified the essential
heterogeneity of the motet genre, is already one delightful aspect of ars combinatoria, the art of
combining things. And it is already a reason why Grocheio, the intellectual connoisseur, placed the motet
at the summit of Parisian genres, for it was “a song composed of many voices, having many words or a
variety of syllables, [but] everywhere sounding in harmony.”^7 The harmonization of contrarieties
(discordia concors) encompassed the texts as well as the tunes, even including the unsung, incongruously
Latinate and liturgical text of the tenor. The duplum text, with its reference to “Eastertime” (tens
pascour), alludes obliquely to the source of the chant melisma on which the whole polyphonic
superstructure of the motet has been erected. Motets are full of in-jokes.
But that was not the only reason for Grocheio’s devotion to the new genre. As usual, the theorist
prescribes as well as describes, and this is his prescription for the motet:
This kind of song ought not to be propagated among the vulgar, since they do not understand its subtlety nor do they
delight in hearing it, but it should be performed for the learned and those who seek after the subtleties of the arts. And it is
normally performed at their feasts for their edification, just as the song they call rondeau is performed at the feasts of the
vulgar.Very interesting, this: a song all about the shepherds and their faithful lassies, but not to be sung before
Robin, Roger, and their gang, because they’d never understand it. In fact, the complicated polytextual song
itself served to mark off the occasion at which it is sung—a university recreation or, as Grocheio
charmingly puts it, a “feast of the learned”—as an elite occasion, at which and through which the
members of Grocheio’s new class could celebrate and demonstrate their superiority to the “vulgar.” Now
that seems to ring a bell. Where have we heard sentiments like these before? We heard them a few
chapters back when we listened in on a mock debate (joc parti) between two troubadours, one of whom
(Raimbaut d’Aurenga, alias Linhaure) espoused the values of trobar clus, the “difficult” poetry of the
courtly elite. Do not prize “that which is common to all,” he warned, “for then would all be equal.”
Grocheio’s echo of these exclusionary values on behalf of the motet is a wonderful example of the way in
which newly emerging elites—in this case an urban and literate elite, many of whose members had been
drawn from the lower classes—ape or aspire to the status of an older, established aristocracy.
The self-congratulating “learned” class represented by Grocheio provided an audience that
encouraged composers to experiment and vie with one another in the creation of tours de force, feats of
ingenuity. The motet became a hotbed of technical innovation and “combinatorial” adventure. The one in
Ex. 7-5 is an attempt to combine three disparate musico-poetic styles in one “harmony of clashes.” The
triplum is in the style of a motet enté like the one in Ex. 7-3: its non-repeating melody quotes an old
refrain, Celle m’a s’amour douné Qui mon cuer et m’amour a (“She who has my heart and love did give
her love to me”). The motetus is an actual rondeau, minus the opening refrain (also a famous one):