ABSTRACT
The formation of confessional identities lay at the heart of social, cultural and political processes of the sixteenth century, a period often referred to as the ‘Age of Confessionalisation’. Yet, while historians have long recognised that these processes operated on a cross-confessional level, music history tends to compartmentalise the practices of different denominations. This study demonstrates that the boundaries between confessions were especially porous for motets of all kinds, a genre not tied to any particular liturgy. Case studies attest to the extent of cross-confessional exchange of repertoire and elucidate demonstrable strategies of confessional (re)appropriation.
