Johannes Martini was not the first to cultivate borrowing from two or more voices of a polyphonic model, but he was the first to do so fully and consistently in his work. Perkins's "Communication" (1987) strengthens Martini's ties to the rhetorical tradition of imitatio, thereby supporting the labeling of masses based on a polyphonic source as "imitation masses." Masses based on a polyphonic source form a distinctive genre, separate from cantus firmus masses based on a monophonic source. Although the term "parody mass" is insufficient for the sixteenth-century mass based on a polyphonic model, it may serve to distinguish between the experimental fifteenth-century type and the later, mature type.

Index Classifications: 1400s, 1500s

Contributed by: Edward D. Latham