The authority and widespread of the term "parody" as applied to sixteenth-century music stem from a reference by Ambros in 1868, based on the title of Jacob Paix's Missa Parodia Mottetae Domine da nobis auxilium of 1587. Theorists such as Vicentino, Zarlino, Pietro Ponzio, and Cerone discussed the concept as it applies to music but did not use the Greek term "parody," most often using the Latin "imitatio." While other terms would be more acceptable, the widespread use of the word "parody" makes necessary a concise definition as it has come to be used. The term "parody" can be applied preeminently to music in the sixteenth century, and its major area of cultivation was the Mass. A distinctive feature of sixteenth-century "parody" is that its unit of procedure is the motive and that the skill and art of "parody" lay in the transformation that composers could achieve from previously formed motivic constructions. A drastic change in the concept of composition was an apparently essential condition for "parody" to develop in music.

Works: Jacob Paix: Missa ad imitationem Mottetae In illo tempore (564-65), Missa Parodia Mottetae Domine da nobis auxilium (561-66, 568). WJM

Index Classifications: General, 1500s