Music and Time Annotation << Back «Between Mass and Chanson»: About the Term Motet in the XV Century A.S. Teplova The article is devoted to the consideration of the term motet, which has been filled with different meanings over its long history. The 15th century is especially indicative in this respect, when the range of its interpretations was extremely wide. According to early Renaissance sources – theoretical treatises, archival documents, music manuscripts – information is scattered about how the motet was understood by Dunstable and Dufay’s contemporaries. According to these data, in terms of genre, the motet occupied an intermediate position (between the mass and the secular song) and allowed freedom in the choice of texts, writing techniques, the scale of compositions and their functions. In the subsequent evolution, the motet continued to change radically, therefore, as a term, it requires obligatory historical and stylistic concretization. Keywords: motet, term, genre, polyphony, manuscript, treatise, Prosdocimo de Beldomandi, Ugolino da Orvieto, Johannes Tinctoris, Paolo Cortesi, John Dunstable. Pp. 16-20.