Roth: Complete Motets from Florilegium Portense

Martin Roth was a student and later cantor at the Pforta school near Leipzig. His sixteen surviving motets are contained in the anthology Florilegium Portense, issued in two volumes in 1618 and 1621. Consisting largely of double-choir motets, this collection is a retrospective of late Renaissance style, intersecting with seventeenth-century usage in Lutheran churches. The collection consists of 165 pieces by about ninety composers and was used widely in schools and churches throughout central Germany. These motets were performed on a weekly basis as late as 1770 for services at the main churches in Leipzig; J. S. Bach purchased new copies in use at the St. Thomas School in 1729, mentioning that the old copies had been sung to pieces (zersungen). The fact that such late-Renaissance motets were performed in rotation for some 150 years in Leipzig lends depth to our understanding of baroque performance practice.