Motet

Old French mot (word) gave motet — a diminutive form meaning 'little word' or 'motto.' The 13th-century motet was a specific polyphonic form: the tenor voice sang a slow-moving phrase (usually a Gregorian chant excerpt), while upper voices sang different texts simultaneously. The result was two or three texts being performed at once — a musical collage of words.

The 13th-century motet was the most intellectually complex music of its time. Composers at Notre Dame de Paris — Pérotin above all — developed polytextuality as a compositional technique. The upper voices in a motet might sing a sacred Latin text in one voice and a secular French text in another, simultaneously. The combination was neither random nor accidental; the texts were chosen to comment on each other.

By the Renaissance, the motet had simplified — one sacred Latin text, no longer polytextual — but had gained in harmonic sophistication. Josquin des Prez (1450-1521) wrote motets of extraordinary emotional depth; his Ave Maria is considered one of the great pieces of Renaissance music. Each generation redefined what a motet was while keeping the name.

The motet remained the prestige form for sacred choral music through Bach (whose 6 motets represent late Baroque perfection) into the 20th century. The word for a small word has accumulated four centuries of sacred choral tradition. Every choir that sings 'motet' is singing the diminutive of mot — the little word that became one of music's grandest forms.