ABSTRACT
According to what criteria did composers and editors assign motets to specific occasions? This chapter presents two case studies – one focussed on a specific motet text, the other on a specific feast. The first reveals the rationale that allowed different settings of the popular text Si bona suscepimus to appear in different sources with strikingly different festal assignments. The second surveys the textual themes treated in motets assigned to Easter, arguing that Palestrina’s textually anomalous Jesus junxit se discipulis functions as the key to a distinctive interpretation of the central Gospel readings of Easter and its octave.
