Fugue in the Renaissance Motet

This chapter explores fugal writing in the genre that contemporary writers indicated was the “home” of fugue: the motet. Beginning with the establishment by Jean Mouton and others of the classic Renaissance motet—based on serious counterpoint within a point-of-imitation structure—in the first two decades of the century, the fugal motet received its most important features at the hands of Nicolas Gombert in the 1530s when he expanded the use of imitation beyond a single thematic statement in each voice to feature a texture based on multiple returning statements. This approach then formed the basis for motet writing by Thomas Crecquillon and Jacobus Clemens non Papa around mid-century and later by Francesco Guerrero and G. P. da Palestrina. By century’s end, composers had grown weary of fugue’s use in vocal music, such that it plays a lesser role in the motets of Lassus, but English composers contributed their own efforts in the 1580s and 1590s.

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