When the motet is transformed through parody technique into a Mass, what had been affective and
rhetorical becomes syntactical and structural. The “uncanny” progression that launches the motet on a note
of awe serves the Mass as a suitably ear-catching “head motive.” Each of its five constituent liturgical
units opens by invoking the phrase before proceeding to other business, stirring memories of its
predecessors and thus integrating the service by structuring its duration around a series of strategic returns
to symbolic, hence inspiring, sounds (Ex. 16-5). Within the Mass, the symbolism or semiosis is entirely
“introversive” (inward-pointing). What is emblematized or signaled is precisely the integration of the
service—already an emotionally intensifying, uplifting, effect, but one that carries no external concepts
with it.
(This remains true even if, as suggested, the motet is also performed as part of the same Mass service.
Places where motets might be sung, so far as we know, are the same sorts of places as those where a
ricercare might be played: during the elevation of the host or during Communion, when there is an activity
that takes up time that is otherwise unfilled by sounds. Thus the motet O magnum mysterium, if performed
at Christmas Mass, would be performed only after three or four Ordinary items had already been sung.
Once it has been performed, of course, the referents for its harmonic and declamatory effects will be both
introversive and extroversive at the same time. That kind of mixture or complexity of reference is the
normal state of affairs for music, which is why musical symbolism or “expression” has always been such
a complicated, contentious, and even mysterious issue.)
PALESTRINA AND THE BISHOPS
Palestrina placed the ancient elite and ecumenical art to which he claimed the key at the service of “the
one holy, catholic and apostolic church” at the very moment when the church, under pressure from the
northern Reformation, was renewing its age-old mission as the “Church Militant” (ecclesia militans). As
we will see in a later chapter, that rekindled militancy was ultimately subversive of the ars perfecta. But
in its early stages it created the demand for a new clarity in texture that could be seen as the ultimate
refinement—the ultimate perfecting—of the traditional style. Clearly that was how Palestrina saw it. By
seizing the opportunity to satisfy that demand, he created a prestigious masterwork, an influential style he
could call his own, and a durable personal legend.