Juan de anchieta and the iberian motet around 1500

Abstract

This research focuses on the Iberian devotional motet, addressing its technical and stylistic characteristics as a result of the engagement of Iberian composers with a common toolbox first developed by northern composers working at the Sforza court in Milan in the 1470s, eventually spreading throughout Europe around 1500. Particularly through consideration of the earliest extant motets by Juan de Anchi eta (1462-1523) contained in the well-known Segovia manuscript, the composition of which cannot postdate the middle 1490s, this article surveys the provenance and nature of the motet texts, and how the genre quickly spread through the Iberian kingdoms and was sustained in subsequent manuscript collections in Spain, Por tugal, and the New World; it proposes resolution to long-disputed and conflicting authorial attributions; and examines how the genre evolved in the early decades of the sixteenth century, mostly through the works of Francisco de Penalosa (ca. 1470-1528) and Pedro de Escobar (documented from 1507-14), placing it within the European motet tradition as the product of a specifically distinct cultural context.