It remains to be said that in our times the word cantata is used as a title to choral works which, if sacred and written in oratorio style, are too short for that title or have no _dramatis personæ_; or, if secular, such as lyric dramas set to music, are not intended to be acted. Sir Sterndale Bennett’s _May Queen_ is a good specimen of the latter, which may be said to bear the same relationship to opera that the sacred cantata of the present day does to oratorio. MOTETT AND ANTHEM. Winterfeld, a German writer on musical matters, derives the word motett from “mot,” the French for “a word,” referring to the verse of Holy Scripture which constitutes a motett; whilst other learned men connect it with the Latin verb “movere,” indicative of the livelier motion and the briskness it possesses, when compared with the Cantus Fermus; and there is yet a third derivation from “mutare,” to change—a reference to the changing sentiments and emotional characteristics of these musical settings, a noticeable feature in such stiff and formal times. At one time the motett was made up of a theme and its treatment in different variations, after the manner of the Spanish “moto” in poetry. Motetts were also set to profane words in the early periods of their history, and they were forbidden to be used in church in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Dr. Stainer, in his “Dictionary of Musical Terms,” mentions the term “motett” as being synonymous with “pulpitre” in the fifteenth century, but for the last three hundred years the term has meant a piece of sacred music adapted to Latin words, and to be sung at high mass in the Roman Catholic Church, either instead of or as an addition to the offertory, which was to be set to the music of the plainsong. Motetts by Philip of Vitrisco date back as far as the year 1300. At the commencement of that century the motett became a much more living form, when represented by such composers as our English John Dunstable, the Flemish Du Fay, and others. Following these composers came the Netherlanders of Okenheim’s school, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, and they more definitely separated their motetts from the style of the masses in vogue. In the latter there is a painful striving apparent, consequent on the feeling, almost of duty, that severe contrapuntal exhibitions must be displayed, whereas in the former there is breadth of style and general fitness of things, untrammelled by this artificiality.