YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

FROM VARIETY TO REPETITION: THE BIRTH OF IMITATIVE POLYPHONY
Example 5. Anonymous, Ave beatissima, bb. 55–103, TrentC 89 (Trent, Castello del Buon Consiglio,
Monumenti e Collezioni Provinciali, MS 1376), fol. 352v–354. Material in
boxes is the only music that is repeated.
A NEW KIND OF MOTET
While the song motet and the chant-paraphrase motet do make use of imitation, they
do not yet quite resemble Ave Maria. They are still melismatic, use imitation somewhat
erratically, and lack the repeated duos and paired imitation so typical of the style
we are looking for. In the 1470s or 1480s, however, a new subgenre of motet emerged:
the subgenre of which Ave Maria is a member, and which includes the Milanese
motetti missales. I will therefore call it the ‘Milan motet’. 29 This new, simpler kind
of four-voice motet is very different from the great bipartite tenor motets that aspired
to the status of the cyclic Mass. It uses a much larger selection of texts, drawn from
29 This is inspired by Joshua Rifkin’s description of the style in J. RIFKIN, Munich, Milan, and a Marian
Motet.
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