Quodlibet

A humorous type of music in which well-known melodies or texts are combined in an advisedly incongruous manner.  In the polyphonic type, different melodies or snatches of melodies are used simultaneously in different voice-parts of a polyphonic composition.  This method appears in some 13th-century motets, in which refrains of trouvere songs occur in the upper voice against the liturgical melody (borrowed from Gregorian chant) in the tenor.  The successive quodlibet is a simpler type in which various melodies are quoted in succession.  In the textual quodlibet borrowed text is used either simultaneously or in succession.