Motetten = Motets

In Bach's voluminous output of music the motets form a small group of modest proportions, particularly as compared to the 200 or so surviving cantatas. In historical perspective, however, the corpus of motets is especially distinguished, being the only part of Bach's vocal oeuvre whose post-1750 tradition has remained unbroken to the present day. Viewed in the context of music history, J. S. Bach's motets are late additions to a genre which had already reached its point of culmination many years previously. During the high and late Baroque periods the predominant form of Protestant music was the cantata. The motet was, in a manner of speaking, marginalized to the subsidiary category of occasional pieces of church music which were written and performed by the cantor on special order and for a fee. Even so, it enjoyed an active posthumous existence in funeral and, to a lesser extent, congratulatory celebrations well into Bach's time, particularly in the musical output, whatever its artistic stature, of the choirs and cantors of central Germany. - Preface.