ABSTRACT
If there has not yet been an investigation of upper-voice “blocks” as a phenomenon of motet composition, the lacuna does not result from any willful omission. Rather, it is a side-effect of the scale of most recent studies on ars nova motets, which tend to focus on the individual work, or on small groups of related works, in order to give these dense compositions the space their exegesis requires. Where analysis is focused on just one or a few related motets, the presence of similar structuring procedures elsewhere might seem beside the point. And, yet, the analysis of individual works is usually situated against generic norms, whether stated or implied.
