Motet Style and Structure in Central Europe around 1490: Some Remarks on Selected Pieces from the Codex Speciálník
Abstract
Recent research on the structure and contents of the Codex Speciálník, preserved in the East Bohemian Museum in Hradec Králové, has elucidated that its vast amount of mass cycles and isolated mass ordinary settings, as well as of motets and spiritual songs (partly contrafacts of secular songs), although composed elsewhere, seem to have been copied in the manuscript quite soon after the presumed date of their composition. The repertory copied by the scribe B offers a more or less homogeneous group of motets, which, on one side, gives evidence of the rapid dissemination over Central Europe of recent compositions by leading composers of the period; on the other hand, it demonstrates the extent to which modern compositional techniques were taken over by local composers towards the turn of the century.