In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.

The name comes either from the Latin movere, ("to move") or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian mottetto was also used. If the word is from Latin, the name describes the movement of the different voices against one another.

According to Margaret Bent (1997),

"a piece of music in several parts with words" is as precise a definition of the motet as will serve from the 13th to the late 16th century and beyond. This is close to one of the earliest descriptions we have, that of the late 13th-century theorist Johannes de Grocheio.

Grocheio believed that the motet was,

"not intended for the vulgar who do not understand its finer points and derive no pleasure from hearing it: it is meant for educated people and those who look for refinement in art."

The earliest motets arose in the 13th century (Bent, 1997) from the organum tradition exemplified in the Notre Dame school of Léonin and Pérotin. The motet probably arose from clausula sections, usually strophic interludes, in a longer sequence of organum, to which upper voices were added. Usually the clausula represented a strophic sequence in Latin which was sung as a discant over a cantus firmus, which typically was a plainchant fragment with different words from the discant. The motet took a definite rhythm from the words of the verse, and as such appeared as a brief rhythmic interlude in the middle of the longer, more chantlike organum.

Jordi Savall i Bernadet (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈʒɔrði səˈβaʎ]; born January 14, 1942, in Igualada, Catalonia) is a Catalan viol player, conductor and composer. He has been one of the major figures in the field of Western early music since the 1970s, largely responsible for bringing the viol (viola da gamba) back to life on the stage. His characteristic repertory ranges from Medieval to Renaissance and Baroque music, though he has occasionally ventured into the classical or even the romantic period.

Savall's musical training started at the age of six in the school choir of his native town (1947–55). After completion of training at the Barcelona Conservatory of Music (1959–65), he specialised in early music, collaborating with Ars Musicae Barcelona of Enric Gispert and studying under August Wenzinger at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland (1968–70). In 1974 he succeeded Wenzinger as professor of viola da gamba at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.

In 1974 he formed the ensemble Hespèrion XX (known since 2000 as Hespèrion XXI), together with the soprano Montserrat Figueras (his wife, who died in 2011), Lorenzo Alpert and Hopkinson Smith. Hespèrion XX favoured a style of interpretation characterised by great musical vitality and, at the same time, ultimate historical accuracy.

Francesco Antonio Bonporti (11 June 1672 – 19 December 1749) was an Italian priest and amateur composer.

He was born in Trento. In 1691, he was admitted in the Collegium Germanicum in Rome, where he studied theology. There, he studied composition under the guidance of Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni and, although it's not confirmed, violin with Arcangelo Corelli.

Back in the native Trento he was ordained a priest in 1695. In 1740 he moved to Padua, where he lived until his death.

He influenced Johann Sebastian Bach in the development of the invention, and in fact several of his works were mistakenly included in a set of Bach's inventions. In reality, Bach had transcribed for harpsichord four violin pieces from Bonporti's op. X (1712).

Bonporti's musical work consists of twelve opera, published between 1696 and 1736. He died in Padua in 1749.

This is a listing of his twelve opera, first the Italian original generally by Giuseppe Sala in Venice, then the French edition as published by Estienne Roger in Amsterdam and finally the English edition by John Walsh in London. Notice not every opus seem to have survived in all languages. As listed in an article published by Studi Trentini in 1973, author Clemente Lunelli. His sources on European editions are François Lesure's Bibliographie des éditions musicales publiées par Estienne Roger..., Paris, 1969, and William C. Smith's A bibliography of the musical works published by John Walsh..., London, 1968.

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃sis ʒɑ̃ maʁsɛl pulɛ̃k]) (7 January 1899 – 30 January 1963) was a French composer and a member of the French group Les Six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music. Critic Claude Rostand, in a July 1950 Paris-Presse article, coined the term "half monk, half thug" (translated by Ivry from "le moine et le voyou"), a phrase that would often be used to describe Poulenc.

Poulenc was born in Paris in 1899. His father Emile Poulenc was a second generation director of the Poulenc, and later Rhône-Poulenc, chemical corporation. His mother, an amateur pianist, taught him to play. He was introduced to Ricardo Viñes in 1914, a champion of the music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and became his pupil shortly afterwards. He was a capable pianist, and the keyboard dominated his early compositions.

In 1916 a childhood friend, Raymonde Linossier (1897-1930), introduced Poulenc to Adrienne Monnier's bookshop, the Maison des Amis des Livres. There he met avant-garde poets such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Paul Eluard and Louis Aragon. He was to set many of their poems to music.

William Byrd (1540 or late 1539 – 4 July 1623) was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard (the so-called Virginalist school) and consort music.

Knowledge of Byrd's biography expanded in the late 20th century, thanks largely to the research of John Harley (Harley, 1997). Following the discovery of a document dated 2 October 1598 in which Byrd's age is given as "58 years or there abouts," it now appears that he was born in 1540. The older dating 1542–3 is derived from Byrd's will (endorsed on 22 November 1622) which describes him as 'in the 80th year of my age'. It now becomes clear that it must have been drafted about three years earlier than the date of endorsement. Byrd was born in London, the son of a Thomas Byrd (not Thomas Byrd of the Chapel Royal) about whom little is known. Byrd had two brothers, Symon'd and John, and four sisters. It is clear from a reference in the prefatory material in the Tallis/Byrd Cantiones of 1575 that Byrd was a pupil of Thomas Tallis, then the leading composing member of the Chapel Royal Choir. Byrd also worked in collaboration with two other Chapel Royal singing-men, John Sheppard and William Mundy, on one of his earliest compositions, a contribution to a joint setting of the alternatim psalm In exitu Israel composed for the procession to the font at the Paschal Vigil. As an item for the Sarum liturgy this was presumably composed near the end of the reign of Mary Tudor (1553–1558), whose Catholic beliefs impelled her to revive Sarum liturgical practices during her brief reign. In view of these contacts it is reasonable to speculate that Byrd was a Chapel Royal choirboy, though the surviving records do not name the choristers individually.