Translatio panegyricum: eine Begrüßungsmotette Senfls (?) für Kaiser Karl V. (1530)

The six-part canonic motet Martia terque quater (together with Senfl’s Lied Aus guetem Grund) survives as an unicum in a very unusual medium: as one of two artfully embroidered sets of part books, which today are preserved in a pouch at Ambras Castle near Innsbruck. I argue that this motet was a gift from Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria upon meeting the newly crowned Emperor Charles V at his brother’s castle in Innsbruck in May 1530, hence directly in advance of the Diet of Augsburg. For historical, innermusical, and declamatory reasons, I advocate Ludwig Senfl as the composer of the anonymously handed-down motet. It represents a compositional anomaly, in that its prosody is consistently represented musically. In coordination with an author who was obviously educated in the humanities, Senfl tried to transfer into a polyphonic context the prosodic declamation of the Herrscherpanegyrik (the practice of which is well documented for the court of Emperor Maximilian I), and in this way to enrich the musical genre of the Herrschermotette (or Staatsmotette) with an added reference to antiquity that goes beyond considerations of form and content. I would like to refer to this experiment, rooted in its composer’s experience at Maximilian’s humanistic court, as “translatio panegyrici,” in analogy to the “translatio imperii” or “translatio artium.” In its conception, the motet is structurally, materially, symbolically, and performatively like a Gesamtkunstwerk that, for its gesture towards representative dedication, likewise secured the prominent position of the giver