(Lat.: ‘Lord’s Day mass’).
The term normally designates a ‘mass for Sunday use’, that is, in the traditions of Catholic plainchant, a mass using the plainchants brought together in the Roman Gradual as Mass XI (‘In dominicis infra annum’) and using one of several Credo melodies. Such masses, for use when there was no higher feast day, were needed especially in the summer, for the Sundays after Pentecost. In the polyphonic tradition the missa dominicalis was a setting of the Ordinary that paraphrased several or all of these plainchants and normally alternated sections of text sung in plainchant with sections sung in polyphony. An early example using chants from Mass XI is the Missa dominicalis by Johannes Martini (d 1497), while the first one to be published seems to be that of Marbrianus de Orto (1505). German composers of the period especially favoured this type of mass, and important settings were made by Heinrich Finck and Senfl, among others. Palestrina wrote a setting on Mantuan plainchants that was published in 1592 together with other masses of the same kind by Italian contemporaries. A Missa dominicalis by Viadana for solo voice and basso continuo alternating with plainchant is printed in Wagner (p.534ff).
P. Wagner: Geschichte der Messe (Leipzig, 1913/R)
O. Strunk: ‘Guglielmo Gonzaga and Palestrina’s Missa dominicalis’, MQ, xxxiii (1947), 228–39
LEWIS LOCKWOOD/ANDREW KIRKMAN