Virgil’s Eneid secular motets

the Dactil hexameter on 16th-century “Dulces exuviae” settings

Abstract

The secular Latin motet, developed from everyday themes in the 15th-century, assumed a humanistic bias from the 16th-century on-wards, disseminated mainly by Conrad Celtis in northern Europe, based on lyrical works of Greek and Roman authors, arranged ac-cording to metric standards that do not fit the conventional metrics of polyphony. Composers such as Senfl and Hofhaimer represent the apogee of this writing, which especially contemplated Horace’s Epodes; other texts, such as Virgil’s Aeneid verses, would also be arranged in the typical models of the sacred motet, but probably under the influence of Isaac’s metrical arrangements at the end of the 15th-century; one of these texts, “Dulces exuviae”, under goes no less than eighteen arrangements throughout the 16th-century. Analysis of these arrangements points to a greater commitment to the Dactil hexameter when the texture tends to homophony.