Mass

1. Early history.

It can be said that there was singing at the very first Mass. Matthew and Mark conclude their descriptions of the Last Supper with the same words: ‘While singing a hymn they went out to the Mount of Olives’. If, as the three Synoptic Gospels indicate, the Last Supper took place on the eve of Passover, this ‘hymn’ might have been the Hallel (Psalms cxiii–cxviii). It is significant that the Mass had its origins in a Jewish ceremonial meal; such meals were frequently accompanied by religious song, a characteristic that was maintained in early Christian communal suppers, whether eucharistic or not.

The earliest full description of a Christian Eucharist is that of Justin Martyr (d c165; First Apology, 67). It comes from a time when the Eucharist was no longer celebrated at an evening meal, possibly because of abuses such as those cited by Paul (1 Corinthians xi.17–34), but early on Sunday morning. The language of the document creates the impression of great precision:

And on the day named for the sun there is an assembly in one place for all who live in the towns and in the country; and the memoirs of the Apostles and the writings of the Prophets are read as long as time permits. Then, when the reader has finished, he who presides speaks, giving admonishment and exhortation to imitate those noble deeds. Then we all stand together and offer prayers. And when, as we said above, we are finished with the prayers, bread is brought and wine and water, and he who presides likewise offers prayers and thanksgiving according to his ability, and the people give their assent by exclaiming Amen. And there takes place the distribution to each and the partaking of that over which thanksgiving has been said.

The overall shape of the 4th-century Eucharist, and indeed of all later Christian eucharistic services, is already present here: an initial period of scripture reading, instruction and prayer – the so-called Service of the Word or Fore-Mass – followed by the eucharistic service proper, consisting of bringing in the sacred elements, saying the eucharistic prayer over them and distributing them to the people. The only essential event not mentioned, because it had yet to be introduced, is the dismissal of the non-baptized after the conclusion of the Fore-Mass, an action that would bring about the division into a ‘Mass of the Catechumens’ and ‘Mass of the Faithful’.

Justin's description of the Fore-Mass has caused some disquiet among music historians because of its failure to mention psalmody. Liturgical scholars and musicologists once broadly assumed that the Fore-Mass was an adoption en bloc of the Synagogue liturgy, a standardized service consisting of the four essential elements of reading, discourse, prayer and psalmody. It now appears, however, that the truth is not so simple: the Synagogue services were not nearly so formalized at the time of the first Christians, nor indeed were the services of the Christians themselves (see Bradshaw, 1992). The characteristic custom of the Synagogue was the reading of Scripture with attendant commentary, and it was this in particular that early Christians continued to include in many of their gatherings and that became an integral part of the pre-eucharistic service. The singing of psalms and hymns, as a discrete ritual act, is more obviously appropriate to communal evening meals than to early morning instructional services, and the practice of obligatory psalmody established itself in both the Synagogue service and the Christian Fore-Mass only in subsequent centuries as the two developed independently of each other (Smith, 1984; McKinnon, 1986).

This is not to say that psalms were never chanted in the Fore-Mass of Justin's time, but only that psalmody had not yet been recognized as a discrete and independent element of that service as it would be by the later 4th century. It must be assumed that psalms would occasionally have figured among the biblical readings of the Fore-Mass, where their lyric character might very well have called for a more melodious cantillation than that accorded to the other readings. This assumption is supported by the patristic evidence of the later 4th century, relatively abundant at that time as opposed to the meagre and scattered references of previous centuries. A psalm in the Fore-Mass was still spoken of as a reading; Augustine, for example, commented in Sermon 165: ‘We heard the Apostle, we heard the Psalm, we heard the Gospel; all the divine readings sound together’. But while still referred to as a reading, the psalm had come to be recognized at the same time as a discrete liturgical act, one appreciated, moreover, for its essentially musical character. As Augustine remarked of the congregational response ‘Ecce quam bonum’: ‘So sweet is that sound, that even they who know not the Psalter sing the verse’ (Ennarratio in psalmum cxxxii). Why the psalmody of the Fore-Mass came to achieve its later 4th-century status is a matter for speculation. No doubt one of the factors involved is the increasingly public and ceremonial character of the liturgy during the period after the emancipation of Christianity under Constantine in 313; it was a liturgy, moreover, conducted within the acoustical ambience of great stone basilicas as opposed to the house churches of earlier centuries. The Eucharist, too, must have felt the influence of that general, later 4th-century enthusiasm for psalmody that was more obviously manifested in the development of the sung Office and the rise of the popular psalmodic vigil (McKinnon, 1993).

In any event the 4th-century literature shows psalmody firmly established at two points in the Eucharist: in the Fore-Mass, and also during the distribution of Communion. The latter development occasions no surprise: the distribution of Communion is a joyous event, one not occupied by the reading of any texts or prayers and one that might well retain associations of the evening eucharistic meal. The psalm sung during Communion was usually Psalm xxxiii (Revised Standard Version: xxxiv) with its highly appropriate verse 8, ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good’.

The psalmody of the Fore-Mass is more problematic, largely because of a set of commonly held assumptions about its relationship to the readings. It was once widely believed that in all Christian liturgies there were two readings before the Gospel, one each from the Old and New Testaments. This in turn required the singing of two psalms, because a psalm in the Fore-Mass necessarily functioned as a response to a reading. The 4th- and 5th-century patristic evidence, however, demonstrates that each of these assumptions lacks a basis in fact: one reading only before the Gospel was at least as common at the time as more than one reading; a single psalm was considerably more common than more than one, particularly in the West; and the psalm was never described as a response to a reading but rather, as seen above in the quotation from Augustine, as an independent liturgical act on a par with the readings (Martimort, 1970, 1984, 1992; McKinnon, 1996).

This single psalm of the Fore-Mass was typically described in the patristic literature as a responsorial psalm and can therefore be viewed as the ancestor of the gradual. But it was not always so described; it is possible that it might have been sung on occasion – during penitential seasons perhaps – without response, and that such a psalm could be thought of as the ancestor of the tract. On other occasions, especially during Paschal Time, the response of the psalm was the acclamation ‘Alleluia’, so it might be said that the ancient gradual psalm sometimes took on the form of an alleluia. A genuine proto-alleluia, however, would seem to require the regular singing of two psalms in the Fore-Mass. Such a situation is in fact documented for the first time in early 5th-century Jerusalem. The Armenian Lectionary (see Renoux, 1969–71), which appears to reflect the liturgy of Jerusalem at that time, gives the incipits of two psalms in its pre-eucharistic synaxis, the second of which is regularly provided with an alleluia response. It is probable that this Hagiopolite alleluia exercised its influence on the liturgical centres of the East at a far earlier date than on those of the West, which were already becoming isolated in the 5th century by the barbarian incursions attendant upon the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Broadly speaking, by the turn of the 5th century, as Christian antiquity was drawing to a close, the Western Mass (or at least its African-Italian manifestation) had the following general aspect. The service opened abruptly with a greeting from the celebrant and the readings followed on immediately (the introductory items of introit psalm, Kyrie, Gloria and collect were not yet present). There was generally only one reading before the Gospel, the so-called Apostle (our Epistle), taken frequently from the epistles of Paul and less often from the Acts of the Apostles or the Old Testament. A psalm was chanted either before or after the Epistle by a lector; this psalm was frequently responded to by the congregation with melodious refrains, including alleluia refrains during Paschaltide, and it may also have been declaimed without refrains, particularly on penitential occasions.

The Gospel, the recitation of which would eventually come to be surrounded with great ceremony, was already preceded by a procession with lighted tapers. After the Gospel the celebrant preached a homily based on one of the readings (including sometimes the psalm), and there followed then the prayers of the catechumens and the catechumens' dismissal. The prayers of the faithful ensued and the bringing in of the eucharistic elements, not yet accompanied, apparently, by an offertory psalm. The celebrant began the Eucharistic Prayer over the elements by exchanging a series of greetings with the congregation. This prayer, which was chanted aloud, and the exchange of greetings was already very close to its early medieval form. The prefatory portion of the prayer concluded with the singing by all of the Sanctus, and the entire prayer ended with a solemn congregational ‘Amen’. Levy (1958–62) has argued persuasively that the melody of the Sanctus, and indeed of the entire eucharistic dialogue between clergy and faithful, is closely related to that of the early medieval Western sources (the Sanctus is the familiar one of the Requiem Mass). After the Eucharistic Prayer there followed the ‘Pax’, the Fraction of the consecrated bread, the Pater noster, and finally the distribution of the sacred elements to all in attendance, during which a psalm – usually Psalm xxxiii (Revised Standard Version: xxxiv) – was sung responsorially with ‘Taste and see’ as refrain.

(i) The Mass of ‘Ordo romanus I’.

2. The early medieval Roman-Frankish Mass.

(ii) The Mass Ordinary.

(iii) The Mass Proper.

Mass, §I, 2: Liturgy and chant: The early medieval Roman-Frankish Mass

(i) The Mass of ‘Ordo romanus I’.

Augustine died in 430 as the Vandals held the city of Hippo under siege. His passing is emblematic of the closing of the era of abundant patristic literature and the beginning of a centuries-long period of comparative silence during the barbarian ascendency. There is very little information about the development of the Roman Mass until the appearance of the celebrated Ordo romanus I, which describes in detail the Pontifical Mass of about 700. This service is of great importance because it became the model for the manner in which Mass was celebrated over much of Latin Christendom; moreover, virtually all the principal prayers, readings and chants of the mature medieval Mass (see Table 1) are already present in it.

table 1: The Mass

	Chants
Proper		Ordinary	Prayers and readings

fore-mass


Introit
		Kyrie
		Gloria
			Collect
			Epistle
Gradual
Alleluia/tract
(Sequence)
			Gospel
		Credo


mass of the faithful


Offertory
			Preface
		Sanctus
			Eucharistic prayer
			Pater noster
		Agnus Dei
Communion
			Post-communion
		(Ite missa est)

The pope celebrated Mass each day at a different one of the so-called stational churches, of which there were about 30 at the turn of the 8th century. He arrived at the church with his retinue and vested in the secretarium, a sort of sacristy near the entrance. During his procession through the nave of the church to the altar, the introit psalm was chanted by the Schola Cantorum, preceded by the singing of the Proper introit antiphon. On arrival at the altar the pope bowed before it in prayer, extended a greeting of peace to the clergy and then nodded to the Schola to curtail the chanting of the psalm and to go to the concluding Gloria Patri and repetition of the antiphon. There followed the singing of the Kyrie eleison by the Schola, and the Gloria in excelsis, intoned by the pope, and finally the declamation by the pope of the collect, a Proper oration that brought the introductory rites of the Mass to a close.

After the pope and clergy seated themselves in the apse behind the altar, a subdeacon mounted the steps of the ambo to recite the Epistle. Next a cantor, with ‘cantorium’ in hand, mounted the ambo and chanted the ‘responsum’ or gradual, no longer the complete responsorial psalm of patristic times, but rather an elaborate response followed by an equally elaborate verse and a repetition of the response. A second cantor followed with either the alleluia or tract, depending on the liturgical occasion. The alleluia, sung on most feast days of the Church year, consisted of a rhapsodic rendering of the response ‘Alleluia’, followed by a moderately florid verse and repetition of ‘Alleluia’. The tract, performed on a limited number of penitential occasions, lacked a response and was rather a psalm, or several verses thereof, sung to a limited number of elaborate formulaic tones. This portion of the service came to a climax with the chanting of the Gospel by the deacon; the deacon, holding the Gospel book, was led to the ambo by two acolytes with candles and two subdeacons with censers.

There is no mention of a homily in Ordo romanus I, nor indeed in the other ordines romani, an omission that occasions some surprise. A number of other omissions at this point in the Pontifical Mass are, by contrast, altogether expected. There was no Credo, because this chant of the Ordinary made its way into the Roman Mass only in the 11th century. Neither were there prayers of the catechumens, dismissal of the catechumens nor prayers of the faithful. These rites were no longer observed in the Roman Mass; the non-baptized were now admitted to the eucharistic portion of the Mass, while the prayers of the Fore-Mass had been moved to the introductory portion of the service, where they took the form of the Kyrie eleison, still a litany at the end of the 7th century. The absence of prayers from their traditional place in the Mass was marked by the vestigial ‘Oremus’, uttered by the celebrant at the beginning of the offertory.

The Proper chant called the offertory, which consisted of an initial chant of moderate melodic elaboration (referred to neither as a response nor as an antiphon in the sources) followed by two or three verses, was sung while a complex series of ritual acts were performed; among these were the reception by the pope of the gifts (including wine and leavened bread), the washing of the pope's hands, the preparation of the gifts by the clergy, and prayers said by the pope over the gifts. At the conclusion of these ceremonies the pope nodded to the Schola to complete the singing of the offertory, and he began his own chanting of the Preface with a series of greetings beginning ‘Dominus vobiscum’. The Preface concluded with the clergy singing the Sanctus, presumably in the simple ancient tone mentioned above. After the Sanctus, which now included its second portion, ‘Benedictus qui venit’ (Matthew xxi.9), the pope began the Canon with the words ‘Te igitur’. The Canon, which by the end of the 8th century would be read in silence, was at the time of Ordo romanus I recited in a subdued tone rather than being chanted aloud as it had been in the early Church. And it was not interrupted by the elevation of the host or chalice, acts of eucharistic adoration that would not be introduced until the 13th century. The Canon concluded with the words ‘per omnia saecula saeculorum’ and the response ‘Amen’.

The introductory communion rites of the early 8th century followed a different order from those of the early Church; the Pater noster came first, followed by the ‘Pax’ and finally the Fraction. During the Fraction the Agnus Dei was sung; it had been introduced under Pope Sergius I (687–701). Communion was distributed to the clergy in hierarchical order and then to the laity, first to the men and then the women, who occupied different sides of the church (in the following centuries there would be a sharp decline in the frequency of lay Communion). During the distribution the Schola sang the communion chant, which was much like the introit in external aspect, consisting of a psalm with Proper antiphon. And as with the introit the pope nodded to the Schola to cease the singing of the psalm and to conclude with the Gloria Patri and antiphon when the distribution was completed. After the communion the celebrant recited the oration called the post-communion, then announced ‘Ite missa est’ (to which the response was ‘Deo gratias’) and returned in procession with attendant clergy to the secretarium.

Mass, §I, 2: Liturgy and chant: The early medieval Roman-Frankish Mass

(ii) The Mass Ordinary.

The term ‘Ordinary’, as opposed to ‘Proper’, refers to any part of the Mass, sung or spoken, that has the same text at every enactment of the service. The sung Ordinary is usually said to consist of five items: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei. All but the Credo were in place in the Roman Mass of the early 8th century. The celebrant's announcement at the end of Mass, ‘Ite missa est’ (‘Benedicamus Domino’ when the Gloria is not sung), and its response ‘Deo gratias’, achieved something of the status of a sung Ordinary item in later centuries when it came to be chanted to the same melodies as the Kyrie. In the later Middle Ages and Renaissance the centrally important musical form of the polyphonic Mass Ordinary was created. Some liturgical historians consider this development to be unfortunate because they believe that the unified musical character of the five items belies their widely differing liturgical functions, and that the prominence afforded to the Ordinary serves to denigrate the importance of other parts of the Mass such as the Proper chants.

The early history of the Kyrie eleison remains controversial. It was once thought to have originated when the Deprecatio Gelasii, a litany purportedly adopted from the East by Pope Gelasius (492–6), was moved from its place at the end of the Fore-Mass to the present position of the Kyrie. This view is doubted now, however, not least because the response to the Deprecatio Gelasii was ‘Domine exaudi et misere’ rather than ‘Kyrie eleison’. The only certainty is that the Kyrie was originally a litany of some sort. It is frequently said to have lost its supplications under Gregory I (590–604), who wrote in his letter to John of Syracuse: ‘In daily masses we omit the rest that is usually said, and say only “Kyrie eleison” and “Christe eleison”’. But Ordo romanus I still refers to the Kyrie as a litany that was concluded only when the pope signalled to the Schola to do so. In any event the late 8th-century Frankish-Roman Ordo of St Amand (Ordo romanus IV) described the Kyrie in its classic medieval form, that is, a threefold Kyrie, threefold Christe and threefold Kyrie.

The Gloria in excelsis Deo had its remote origins in the Christmas story of Luke's gospel (chap.ii), where the angels sing ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men’. It was expanded during the first centuries of Christianity into a prose-like hymn that had a prominent place in the morning Office of the principal Eastern ecclesiastical centres. It made its way into the Roman Mass only gradually, being restricted at first to Christmas Day and later to episcopal services. By the 11th century it was sung at most masses other than those of penitential occasions.

The Credo is a Latin translation of a creed or ‘symbolum’, which was recorded first in Greek at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The Chalcedon text was an attempt to summarize the doctrine of the councils of Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381), hence its title the ‘Nicene’ or ‘Niceno-Constantinopolitan’ Creed. Like the earlier Apostles' Creed, its original liturgical function was to serve as a profession of faith for the newly baptized. It found a place in the eucharistic services of several Eastern rites of the earlier 6th century, and made its first appearance in a Latin liturgy later that century in Spain, where it was recited before the Pater noster. Charlemagne (d 814) introduced it into the Frankish-Roman Mass, but it was not included in the Roman Mass itself until the period of German liturgical influence during the 11th century.

The Sanctus, which occupies a prominent place in the Eucharistic Prayer as a sort of concluding doxology to the Preface, has a complex and controversial early history. Its original portion, the ‘tersanctus’, derived from Isaiah vi.3 (and Revelation iv.8), would appear to have been adopted from Jewish liturgical practice, but it does not figure in every preserved version of the early Christian Eucharistic Prayer. It had become almost universal, however, by the later 4th century. Its second portion, ‘Benedictus qui venit’ (Matthew xxi.9), from the narration of Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, is first attested by Caesarius of Arles (d 542). The Benedictus closes with the exclamation ‘Hosanna in excelsis’; eventually this was added to the Sanctus portion of the chant as well. In performances of the polyphonic Sanctus, the two portions were separated, with the Benedictus being sung after the Elevation.

The introduction of the Agnus Dei (‘Lamb of God’) into the Roman Mass by Pope Sergius (687–701) appears to have been an act of theological defiance against Byzantium. The chant was sung in Syria (Sergius himself was Syrian) but was not allowed in Constantinople because of a ban on depicting Christ in animal form. The Agnus may originally have been a litany; it was in any event at first repeated as often as necessary to cover the actions of the Fraction, always with the response ‘Miserere nobis’. By the 11th century the chant was limited to three repetitions of the Agnus, and the final response was changed to ‘Dona nobis pacem’ (‘Dona eis requiem’ in the Mass for the Dead), a reference to the just completed Pax.

Ordinary chants were probably originally sung to fairly simple tones: the Sanctus, for example, to the tone known from the Requiem Mass, and the Agnus, perhaps, to the similar tone given in the Vatican Edition under ‘Mass XVIII’. In the 9th century among the Franks, however, the process of providing a variety of new and more elaborate melodies had already begun; such melodies would eventually be organized into musically compatible chant ‘ordinaries’ after the manner of the polyphonic mass. The beginnings of this development were closely tied to the creation of tropes. Kyrie tropes for a particular feast, for example, might inspire the composition of a new Kyrie melody, which would in turn be associated with the festival in question. These melodies, with or without their tropes, came to be organized in portions of manuscripts referred to later as ‘kyriales’. The Kyrie melodies would be grouped together, followed by those of the Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus and sometimes Ite missa est; Credo melodies, of lesser number, would appear last. There was a departure from this practice in the reform liturgy of the 13th-century Papal Curia; here the kyriale consisted of about ten chant ‘ordinaries’ without tropes, arranged in Kyrie to Agnus order, with each set of chants assigned to a different class of festival. The chant Ordinary was much cultivated in the 15th and 16th centuries – after the model, apparently, of its polyphonic counterpart.

Mass, §I, 2: Liturgy and chant: The early medieval Roman-Frankish Mass

(iii) The Mass Proper.

The Proper consists of the introit (see Introit (i)); the gradual (see Gradual (i)); the alleluia (see Alleluia, §I), sung on festive days and replaced by the Tract on certain penitential occasions; the Offertory; and the Communion; the sequence (see Sequence (i)) was added by the 9th-century Franks as a poetic extension of the alleluia.

The gradual and communion were already in place in the Western Mass as the patristic period drew to a close towards the mid-5th century; but the first unequivocal testimony to the existence of the other items is to be found in Ordo romanus I, dating from approximately two and a half centuries later. As a general observation, it may be said that variable psalmody appears to characterize the Roman Proper more radically than the Propers of most other Christian liturgies, and this trait may shed light on the origins of certain chants. (For further discussion of origins see the individual articles mentioned above.) The entrance and offertory chants to the Byzantine Eucharist, for example, are Ordinary chants rather than psalmic Propers: the Trisagion was the original entrance chant and the Cheroubikon the offertory chant. These hymns were introduced in turn into Latin eucharistic liturgies such as the Mozarabic and Gallican, but not the Roman, which consistently manifested a preference for variable psalmody.

This preference may be explained by the influence on the Roman Mass of the Office psalmody of the Roman basilicas, the responsibility since the 5th century of monastic communities attached to them. Thus the introit psalm, for example, whatever the time of its introduction, would take on the general aspect of Office antiphonal psalmody, with a different psalm and antiphon sung at each service. The communion, perhaps, was transformed under the influence of Office psalmody into something different from its original state; it very likely began as virtually an Ordinary item, consisting of the singing of the same Psalm xxxiii on most days, but by the mid-8th century had achieved a repertory of nearly 150 Proper antiphons, far more than any other Christian communion chant, Eastern or Western. Its weekday Lenten series of numerically ordered psalmic texts, moreover, may betray the influence of the numerically ordered psalms of the Office.

In any event the core repertory of the Roman Mass Proper was in place by the time of its transmission to the Carolingian realm in the second half of the 8th century. That is to say there existed chants with the same texts as those of the so-called Old Roman (11th-century Roman) and Gregorian (9th-century Frankish-Roman) repertories; the precise nature of the 8th-century Roman melodies is not known, but it must be assumed that they share a basic relationship with the derivative Old Roman and Gregorian melodies, which are themselves obviously related. The number of introits and communions transmitted from Rome to the Frankish territories was slightly less than 150 for each genre, more than 100 for graduals, less than 100 for offertories, about 50 for alleluias and just 16 for tracts. The 9th-century Franks contributed relatively small numbers of chants to each genre, except for some 12 offertories and more than 40 alleluias.

While the repertory of the Mass Proper was substantially complete by the mid-8th century, very little is known about how it developed. At one time it was thought that Gregory I (590–604) supervised its completion; indeed according to medieval legend he personally composed the chants under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Many chant scholars now incline towards the view that much of the final composition, revision and organization of the Proper took place somewhat later than Gregory's time, perhaps during the second half of the 7th century and the early 8th. Aiding speculation on this point is the fact that considerably more is known about the development of the annual cycles of Proper prayers and readings than of the chants, and both prayers and readings, which may be at least as ancient as chants, became fixed at Rome only towards the mid-7th century. On the other hand, much of the chant repertory was certainly completed by the time of Gregory II (715–31), who added the Thursdays of Lent to the liturgical year. An analysis of the texts of the weekday Lenten chants shows them to have been organized before the addition of the Thursday chants.

The most fundamental consideration to be kept in mind when speculating on the development of any Proper is that all Christian liturgies observe a broad movement from the ad hoc selection of prayers, readings and chants each day by the celebrant to the permanent assignment of these items, and the recording of them in writing, for the entire year. An analysis of the patristic evidence makes it clear that the psalms sung in the Eucharist, except for rare exceptions such as the Easter gradual response ‘Haec dies’ (Vulgate Psalm cxvii.24), were not yet fixed in the 4th and 5th centuries. The same consideration also has chronological implications for the later stages of a Proper's development. There is reason to suspect that chants lacking stable assignments in the sources, that is, chants that vary from manuscript to manuscript (as does a large portion of the alleluia repertory), are later creations than chants with uniformly stable assignments.

Another factor to be taken into account when speculating on the time of a chant Proper's creation is the existence of a group of ecclesiastical singers capable of creating and maintaining it. The Roman Mass Proper comprises some 550 chants of considerable elaboration; the texts were recorded in writing but the melodies were not. The body responsible for their performance from year to year was the Schola Cantorum (see Schola Cantorum (i)), a clerical group that resided at the pope's Lateran palace. It was formerly thought that Gregory I (590–604) founded the Schola, but the evidence suggests a later date, perhaps the mid-7th century.

The examination of the Proper as a whole in the hope of discovering layers of compositional planning has proved to be a fruitful area of study. Peter Wagner was engaged in this kind of research in the early 1900s, revealing, among other things, patterns in the way that psalmic and non-psalmic texts were assigned over stretches of the liturgical year. One interesting result of his analysis is the conclusion that the final revision of the Mass Proper was carried out more genre by genre than festival by festival. This particular insight has received a measure of corroboration in later liturgical investigation, which shows that the Roman Gospel and Epistle cycles were developed independently of each other. A far more thorough employment of Wagner's method is needed, one that begins with an examination of the texts, where compositional planning is more easily discerned, and then moves on to an extensive analysis of the music.

3. Later medieval developments.

The Mass had achieved its classic medieval shape by the time of its transmission from Rome to Francia in the mid-8th century. Its subsequent history might be described as an initial phase of accumulation in which the basic structure was heavily elaborated, and a subsequent phase of reform in which there was an attempt to undo the elaboration and return to earlier forms of the service.

Liturgical additions to the Mass in the 9th century and thereafter were particularly prominent at the beginning and end of the service; musical additions were more pervasive, consisting especially of the accretion of tropes to most chants of the Ordinary and Proper (see Trope (i)). All the items of the Ordinary, except for the Credo, were subject to regular troping, while among the items of the Proper the introit was most often troped and the gradual least often. The alleluia came in for special treatment, tending to accumulate various additions after the verse; these include tropes, sequentiae (long melismatic extensions of the original jubilus) and, of course, the poetic genre known as the sequence. Independent chants were also added to the Mass: antiphons, for example, before the Gospel and after the Agnus Dei, and the chant that accompanied the sprinkling of the congregation before Sunday Mass with an aspergillum – the antiphon Asperges me with Psalm l throughout most of the year, and Vidi aquam with Psalm cxvii during Paschal Time.

These additions reached their climax during the 11th and 12th centuries. The Mass of the time, and the Office for that matter, must have been splendid spectacles. Conducted in great Romanesque monastic churches and cathedrals, the liturgy benefited from the literary contributions of the most talented citizens of Europe and was performed by these same individuals, monks and canons who had sung chant daily from early childhood. It could be said, however, that this form of liturgy was doomed to collapse under its own weight, sapping the energy of its executants and leaving them little time to keep abreast of other developments in the rapidly changing society of the High Middle Ages.

4. Reform.

Among the first to react against this liturgical grandeur, particularly in its Benedictine manifestations, were the 12th-century Cistercians; purporting to return to the pristine monasticism of St Benedict's time, they took aim at what they saw as liturgical excess, excising many of the Benedictine additions and even applying surgery to the melismas of the core chant repertory (Maître, 1995). But a reform of greater long-term significance was that undertaken in the Papal Curia of the 13th century. Motivated less, perhaps, by the sort of spiritual concerns that impelled the Cistercians than by the practical need to save time for harried bureaucrats, the Curial reform sought to pare down the liturgy to a form not far removed from that of the earlier 9th century. The Curial liturgy was embraced in turn by the Franciscan friars who – themselves active and itinerant in their efforts to bring religion to the laity – helped to propagate it throughout Europe (Van Dijk and Walker, 1960). The later medieval Mass, then, was less burdened in many localities by an excess of subsidiary chants than it had been in earlier centuries, but it came to labour under the abuses of a different nature. It differed so widely from diocese to diocese, not least from the proliferation of local saints' days, that it lost a good measure of its universality. And still worse, it degenerated in the minds of some into a sort of spiritual coinage: paying a stipend to have a Mass said or sung could save a soul or secure some temporal favour, and such masses were thought to be all the more efficacious if they took the form of a votive Mass or that of some favoured saint, rather than that called for by the liturgical calendar.

The Council of Trent (1545–63) addressed the problem of the late medieval Mass in general terms in its Decretum de observandis et evitandis in celebratione missarum of 1562, leaving matters of detail to be covered by the preparation of a reform missal, which appeared in 1570. The missal called for a lean Roman Order of the Mass to be observed precisely throughout the entire Church. A scaled-down version of the introductory prayers was retained, including the ‘Introibo’ (Vulgate Psalm xlii) and ‘Confiteor’, as was the ‘In principio erat verbum’ (John i) at the end of Mass. All tropes were eliminated, however, and also all sequences except for the highly favoured Victimae paschali laudes of Easter, Veni Sancte Spiritus of Pentecost, Lauda Sion of Corpus Christi and Dies irae of the Requiem Mass. As for the calendar, the celebration of sanctoral feasts and the use of votive masses was sharply curtailed. The general spirit of the reforms was to secure central Roman control and to prevent change. A point of considerable musical significance was the decision to retain the polyphonic Ordinary. The chant Propers did not fare so well: under the direction of Pope Paul V (1605–21), the composers Felice Anerio and Francesco Soriano prepared a reform gradual in which the medieval melodies were revised according to humanistic standards, a process that required, among other things, the excision of many melismas or their transferal from unaccented to accented syllables.

The mid-19th century saw the birth of the modern Liturgical Movement. Prominent among its early proponents were the French Benedictines of Solesmes, who made it one of their principal aims to restore the medieval chant. They achieved an undeniable success with the chant melodies, and while the rhythmic system they devised for the performance of the chant was historically questionable, it resulted nonetheless in the development of a practical church music of great beauty and refinement. At the same time groups such as the German Caecilians attacked the orchestral Mass Ordinary of the Baroque and Classical periods and called for a return to the a cappella Mass of the late 16th-century Roman school. By the early 20th century the ultimate liturgical ideal of Mass celebration was the scrupulous observance of the Tridentine rubrics by the presiding priest and the dignified chanting of his prayers in Latin, while an expert choir, preferably with boy trebles, sang a chant Proper and an Ordinary by Palestrina or some contemporary.

This was to change drastically as the Liturgical Movement entered into a new, more populist phase, which culminated in the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962–5). While it is not always easy to distinguish between the intentions of the Council and their realization at the local level, the central aim of the reforms may be characterized as an attempt to involve the lay congregation more actively in the Mass; in spirit and style there is a movement away from ritual to informality, and, historically, an abandonment of the medieval ideal in favour of the early Christian. The introit is generally replaced by a hymn of the chorale type (in the vernacular, of course, as is the entire ceremony); the introductory prayers such as the ‘Introibo’ and ‘Confiteor’ are omitted. The reading cycle on Sundays and festivals includes an Old Testament pericope, a psalm sung responsorially to a simple contemporary setting, a New Testament reading, a tuneful Alleluia with a few psalm verses and finally the Gospel. A homily is preached with due attention to the readings, followed by a period of variable prayer in the form of a litany. Members of the congregation bring in the gifts of bread and wine to the accompaniment of a hymn. The Eucharistic Prayer, now variable, is recited aloud; a simple congregational ‘Holy, holy, holy’ occupies its accustomed place, while the Elevation passes almost unnoticed without its medieval bells and genuflections. The congregational ‘Amen’ at the end of the prayer is given considerable emphasis, as is the Pax, an occasion for much informal greeting by those in attendance. A simple setting of ‘Lamb of God’ accompanies the Fraction, and a hymn the distribution of communion. After the final blessing (the ‘In principio’ is no longer read) the celebrant processes out to the accompaniment of a hymn.

A few Benedictine communities, not always with the blessing of the local bishop, have sought to work out compromises between the reforms and their medieval musical heritage. They might combine, for example, vernacular readings, prayers and Ordinary chants with a Gregorian Mass Proper sung in Latin. In 1974 the monks of Solesmes published a new Graduale romanum that retained the Latin Proper chants while integrating them with the changes wrought to the liturgical year. Chief among these changes is the abandonment of the named Sundays of the year, that is, the Sundays after the Epiphany, the pre-Lenten Sundays beginning with Septuagesima and the Sundays after Pentecost; in their place is a series of 34 ‘Ordinary Sundays’. The majority of the Proper chants occupy their medieval positions in the new gradual, but there are a substantial number of changes; alternative chants are frequently given to provide choice, and a number of chants have been reassigned to accommodate changes in the lectionary – the celebrated five Lenten Gospel communions, for example, have been transferred from Lenten weekdays to Sundays along with their corresponding Gospels.

Most find little to defend in the latest reforms from a strictly musical standpoint. It is true that the changes are well intentioned from a pastoral point of view and that the ideal of chant Propers combined with ‘Palestrina’ Ordinaries was not so frequently realized. But even less often realized are the opportunities for significant new musical composition that have been opened up within the reform Mass. Perhaps the single unqualified gain is the introduction of many fine Protestant hymns, while the most absolute failure is the so-called Folk Mass. (See also Roman Catholic church music.

1. Early organum to the school of Notre Dame.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

liturgy

G. Morin: ‘Le plus ancien Comes de l'église romaine’, Revue bénédictine, xxviii (1911), 296–330

A. Fortescue: The Mass: a Study of the Roman Liturgy (London, 1912, 2/1955)

E. Bishop: Liturgica historica: Papers on the Liturgy and Religious Life of the Western Church (Oxford, 1918/R)

V.M. Leroquais: Les sacramentaires et les missels manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France (Paris, 1924)

G. Nickl: Der Anteil des Volkes an der Messliturgie im Frankenreich von Chlodwig bis auf Karl den Grossen (Innsbruck, 1930)

W.H. Frere: Studies in Early Roman Liturgy (London, 1930–35)

M. Andrieu, ed.: Les Ordines romani du haut Moyen-Age (Leuven, 1931–61)

H. Jedin: ‘Das Konzil von Trient und die Reform der liturgischen Bücher’, Ephemerides liturgicae, lix (1945), 5–37

J.A. Jungmann: Missarum sollemnia: eine genetische Erklärung der römischen Messe (Vienna, 1948, 5/1962; Eng. trans., 1951–5/R as The Mass of the Roman Rite)

B. Botte and C. Mohrmann: L'ordinaire de la messe: texte critique, traduction et études (Paris and Leuven, 1953)

A.A. King: The Liturgy of the Roman Church (London, 1957)

S.J.P. Van Dijk and J.H. Walker: The Origins of the Modern Romance Liturgy: the Liturgy of the Papal Court and the Franciscan Order in the Thirteenth Century (London, 1960)

A. Renoux: Le codex arménien Jérusalem 121 (Turnhout, 1969–71)

F. van de Paverd: Zur Geschichte der Messliturgie in Antiocheia und Konstantinopel gegen Ende des vierten Jahrhunderts (Rome, 1970)

A. Zwinggi: ‘Der Wortgottesdienst bei Augustinus’, Liturgisches Jb, xx (1970), 92–113, 129–40, 250–53

A.G. Martimort: ‘A propos du nombre des lectures à la messe’, Revue des sciences religieuses, lviii (1984), 42–51

J.F. Baldovin: The Urban Character of Christian Worship: the Origins, Development, and Meaning of the Stational Liturgy (Rome, 1987)

G.P. Jeanes, ed.: The Origins of the Roman Rite (Bramcote, 1991)

P.F. Bradshaw: The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship (Oxford, 1992)

J.W. McKinnon: ‘Antoine Chavasse and the Dating of Early Chant’, PMM, i (1992), 123–47

A.G. Martimort: Les lectures liturgiques et leurs livres (Turnhout, 1992)

B.D. Spinks: The Sanctus in the Eucharistic Prayer (Cambridge, 1992)

A. Chavasse: La liturgie de la ville de Rome du Ve au VIIIe siècle (Rome, 1993)

G.G. Willis: A History of Early Roman Liturgy (London, 1994)

chant

FellererG

P. Wagner: Einführung in die gregorianischen Melodien: ein Handbuch der Choralwissenschaft, i: Urspung und Entwicklung der liturgischen Gesangsformen bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters (Leipzig, 2/1901, 3/1911/R; Eng. trans., 1901/R)

R.-J. Hesbert, ed.: Antiphonale missarum sextuplex (Brussels, 1935/R)

J. Froger: Les chants de la messe aux VIIIe et IXe siècles (Tournai, 1950)

L. Schrade: ‘News on the Chant Cycles of the Ordinarium missae’, JAMS, viii (1955), 66–9

W. Apel: Gregorian Chant (Bloomington, IN, 1958, 2/1990)

K. Levy: ‘The Byzantine Sanctus and its Modal Tradition in East and West’, AnnM, vi (1958–62), 7–67

C. Thodberg: Der byzantinische Alleluiarionzyklus, MMB, Subsidia, viii (1966)

P. Combe: Histoire de la restauration du chant grégorien d'après des documents inédits: Solesmes et l'édition vaticane (Solesmes, 1969)

P. Evans: The Early Trope Repertory of Saint Martial de Limoges (Princeton, NJ, 1970)

M. Landwehr-Melnicki, ed.: Die Gesänge des altrömischen Graduale Vat. lat. 5319, MMMA, ii (1970) [with introduction by B. Stäblein; incl. edn of Old Roman Gradual]

A.G. Martimort: ‘Origine et signification de l'alleluia de la messe romaine’, Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten, ed. P. Granfeld and J.A. Jungmann (Münster, 1970), 811–34

E.T. Moneta Caglio: Lo jubilus e le origini della salmodia responsoriale (Milan, 1977)

J. Claire: ‘Les psaumes graduels au coeur de la liturgie quadragésimale’, EG, xxi (1980), 5–12

J. Dyer: ‘Augustine and the “Hymni ante oblationem”: the Earliest Offertory Chants?’, Revue des études augustiniennes, xxvii (1981), 85–99

J. Dyer: ‘The Offertory Chant of the Roman Liturgy and its Musical Form’, Studi musicali, xi (1982), 3–30

M. Huglo: ‘Le répons-graduel de la messe: évolution de la forme: permanence de la fonction’, IMSCR XIII: Strasbourg 1982a [Schweizer Jb für Musikwissenschaft, new ser., ii (1982)], 53–73, 74–7

P. Jeffrey: ‘The Introduction of Psalmody into the Roman Mass by Pope Celestine I (422–32)’, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft, xxvi (1984), 147–65

K. Levy: ‘Toledo, Rome and the Legacy of Gaul’, EMH, iv (1984), 49–99

J.A. Smith: ‘The Ancient Synagogue, the Early Church and Singing’, ML, lxv (1984), 1–15

J.W. McKinnon: ‘On the Question of Psalmody in the Ancient Synagogue’, EMH, vi (1986), 159–91

J.W. McKinnon: ‘The Fourth-Century Origin of the Gradual’, EMH, vii (1987), 91–106

J.W. McKinnon: Music in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge, 1987)

J.W. McKinnon: ‘The Patristic Jubilus and the Alleluia of the Mass’, Cantus planus III: Tihány 1988, 61–70

R. Crocker and D. Hiley, eds.: The Early Middle Ages to 1300, NOHM, ii (1990)

P. Bernard: ‘Les alleluias mélismatiques dans le chant romain: recherches sur la genèse de l'alleluia de la messe romaine’, Rivista internazionale di musica sacra, xii (1991), 286–362

O. Cullin: ‘De la psalmodie sans refrain à la psalmodie responsoriale: transformation et conservation dans les répertoires liturgiques latins’, RdM, lxxvii (1991), 5–24

J.W. McKinnon: ‘The Eighth-Century Frankish-Roman Communion Cycle’, JAMS, xlv (1992), 179–227

D. Hiley: Western Plainchant: a Handbook (Oxford, 1993)

J.W. McKinnon: ‘Properization: the Roman Mass’, Cantus planus VI: Éger 1993, 15–22

C. Maître: La réforme cistercienne du plain-chant (Brecht, 1995)

J.W. McKinnon: ‘Preface to the Study of the Alleluia’, EMH, xv (1996), 213–49

J.W. McKinnon: ‘Liturgical Psalmody in the Sermons of St Augustine’, Three Worlds of Medieval Chant: Comparative Studies of Greek, Latin, and Slavonic Liturgical Music for Kenneth Levy, ed. P. Jeffery (forthcoming)

Mass

II. The polyphonic mass to 1600

2. Organa for the Mass in England, Spain, Germany and Italy.

3. The rise of the polyphonic Mass Ordinary in the 14th century.

4. 14th-century mass cycles.

5. The first half of the 15th century.

6. The cyclic mass in the later 15th century.

7. The mass in the earlier 16th century.

8. The Counter-Reformation; Palestrina.

9. The late 16th century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Early organum to the school of Notre Dame.

The beginnings of polyphony are closely associated with the chants of the Mass, particularly those of the Proper, which served as melodic material for early organum. Music examples and instructions in the Musica enchiriadis (c900) indicate that the sequence was performed polyphonically at a very early date; its syllabic pattern and clearcut melodic phrasing doubtless facilitated the improvisation of parallel or oblique organum in note-against-note style (see Organum, ex.1). Polyphony may thus have entered the Mass at a point traditionally reserved for the most elaborate musical performance, the sequence with organum forming a final link in the succession of soloistic chants (gradual and alleluia) that served as musical interludes between the scripture readings.

The earliest fragments of mass polyphony outside the treatises date from the 11th century and include two-voice settings of alleluias (12), responsories (three) and graduals (three) in manuscripts from Chartres (F-CHRm 4, 109 and 130; facs. in PalMus, i, pl.xxiii), which were destroyed by fire in 1944, and Fleury (now I-Rvat Reg.lat.586; facs. in H.M. Bannister, Monumenti Vaticani, ii, pl.43a). From these beginnings polyphony appears to have spread to other parts of the Mass, particularly to those chants or sections of chants that were originally performed by a soloist. The earliest extensive repertory of polyphonic (two-voice) Mass chants is that of the 11th-century Winchester Troper, which shows a strong preference for the alleluia (53 examples in its main corpus). Second in number among the Proper chants in this source are the liturgically closely related tracts (19), representing the only known instance of polyphony for this chant in medieval sources. Apart from a large number of Office responsories (54), seven sequences and some introit tropes (four) that were added later, the Winchester Troper also contains the first polyphonic examples from the Ordinary with seven troped Glorias, four troped and eight untroped Kyries. Significantly, the emphasis is on the troped sections, which were performed by soloists, and it is through these that polyphony became part of the otherwise chorally performed Ordinary. The cheironomic notation of the two-voice organa in the Winchester Troper and the 11th-century fragments from Chartres and Fleury cannot be transcribed precisely, but the neumes indicate a polyphonic practice with simultaneous voice movement (note against note), frequent voice-crossing because of the equal range of both parts, and the melodically dominating role of the plainchant.

This first stage of polyphony connected with chants from the Mass is still partly represented in 12th-century sources from St Martial in Limoges and from the famous pilgrimage centre of Santiago de Compostela (Codex Calixtinus). Liturgically the St Martial pieces are almost exclusively associated with new textual additions, the tropes and sequence. Only the latter count as Mass items, however, since the large number of Benedicamus tropes belong to the Office. Mass chants in two-voice organum settings are found again in the Codex Calixtinus with the troped Kyries Rex immense and Cunctipotens genitor, the prosa Portum in ultimo and the Alleluia, Vocavit Jesus Jacobum. Unlike the prosa and the Kyrie Rex immense, which continue an earlier practice of simultaneous voice movement with frequent crossing of the voices, the Alleluia, Vocavit and the Kyrie Cunctipotens represent a new stage of polyphony in which the added voice stays principally above the plainchant and introduces melismatic formulae. The borrowed Mass chant thus loses its melodic profile and becomes a structural basis of single sustained notes supporting a dominating ornamental voice; the once-lively liturgical melody stagnates and assumes the role of a given dogma. The basic techniques involved in this new polyphonic art are outlined in contemporary treatises, especially the Milan treatise Ad organum faciendum and, more exhaustively, the Vatican organum treatise (I-Rvat Ottob.3025), both from the late 12th century. The music examples in the Milan treatise are Mass chants (Kyrie, alleluia) which give the structural consonance only, leaving the possible inclusion of melismas up to the performer. Closer to the performance level are the richly melismatic organa at the end of the Vatican organum treatise (ed. Zaminer), the Alleluia, Hic Martinus from the Mass for St Martin’s Day and two similarly structured responsories, which foreshadow the elaborate organa dupla of the school of Notre Dame in Paris.

In the newly built Notre Dame Cathedral polyphonic music for the Mass was associated primarily with responsorial psalmody, specifically the solo sections of the gradual and alleluia. Leoninus provided a cycle of two-voice organa for these chants in his Magnus liber organi, and three- and four-voice settings were also composed by Perotinus, Leoninus’s successor at Notre Dame. In these compositions polyphony assumed such proportions that not only its artistic quality but also its length made it the main feature of the liturgical ceremony, particularly for the high feasts of the church year. Significantly, this achievement coincided with concentration on only a few specific liturgical items, whereas the earlier and less elaborate polyphonic settings were distributed among a wider variety of Mass chants, including items of both the Proper and Ordinary.

The development at Notre Dame of a notational system capable of fixing durational values made possible a fairly rapid evolution and diversification of polyphonic styles and forms in the mass (i.e. organum versus discant; see Discant, §I, 2–3). By Perotinus’s time (late 12th century) a rhythmically more sophisticated form of Clausula was being composed as a substitute for sections in the older discant or original organum style; by the beginning of the 13th century the addition of text to the upper voices of these newer discant sections resulted in the Motet. Like the clausula, the early motet had its place within the polyphonic gradual and alleluia, for which it furnished a kind of contemporary textual commentary to be performed simultaneously with the corresponding section of the cantus firmus in the tenor (for example, clausulas and motets with an ‘In seculum’ tenor were originally a part of the Easter gradual Haec dies). Once established as an individual form, however, the motet quickly developed into a separate composition and was no longer placed within a given gradual or alleluia. Some documentary evidence calls for the performance of motets later in the Mass, after the Benedictus.

The polyphonic Conductus was also somewhat loosely connected to the Mass ceremony. In its original function as a processional piece, accompanying the movements of the clergy, the conductus was generally sung immediately before and sometimes also after the readings of Epistle and Gospel while the reader or celebrant proceeded to or from the lectern. Examples of this kind occur in the 13th-century mass repertory for the feast of Circumcision in manuscripts from Sens and Beauvais, as well as in the 14th-century Magi play from Besançon.

2. Organa for the Mass in England, Spain, Germany and Italy.

Outside Paris, in provincial France as well as in other parts of Europe, two-voice organa of a less elaborate kind covered a wider range of Mass chants. This is apparent in a special collection of two-voice settings originating in England and attached to the Notre Dame manuscript W¹. The 11th fascicle of this source contains, in addition to various chants from the Proper (alleluia, tract, sequence, offertory), several troped chants of the Ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei), all belonging to Marian feasts. The distribution of polyphony among various parts of the Proper and Ordinary is not only reminiscent of the earlier Winchester Troper but is also typical of such later English sources as the Worcester Fragments from the 13th and 14th centuries, which contain polyphonic settings of the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, as well as of introit, gradual, alleluia and offertory (see Worcester polyphony). A similar distribution of polyphony among Mass chants is found in Spanish sources of the same period (E-TO C.135; BUhu, without signum; Mn 20324; Boc 1), especially in the famous ‘Codex Las Huelgas’ with its numerous organa for mostly troped Kyries (five), Gloria (one), Sanctus (eight) and Agnus Dei (nine). An even greater variety of organa for the Mass occurs in a large number of sources from Germanic countries and northern Italy, originating mostly in the 14th and 15th centuries but preserving the musical characteristics of an earlier period (i.e. voice-crossing as practised in the 12th century with simultaneous motion in the voice-parts based on the consonances of 5th, octave and unison). The Mass chants treated in this way include all parts of the Ordinary except the Gloria; the Proper is represented by tropes to the introit, verses of the gradual and alleluia, sequences, and tropes to the offertory. A unique feature in this group of sources is the inclusion of scripture readings (Epistle and Gospel) among the polyphonic items of the Mass.

3. The rise of the polyphonic Mass Ordinary in the 14th century.

In 1309 the French pope Clement V moved the papacy from Rome to Avignon, which became the home of his successors until 1376. After a move back to Rome under Gregory XI, the papacy of the Neapolitan Urban VI (1378–89) led to the schism, as a result of which there were popes in Avignon until the Council of Konstanz in 1417 secured the succession of Martin V alone, who finally returned the papacy to Rome.

Most mass polyphony in the 14th century is generally related to the papal residence in Avignon, which turned the city into one of the main musical centres of the time. The earliest known settings coincide with the move. These were officially denounced by Pope John XXII in the decree ‘Docta sanctorum patrum’of 1324–5, which censured those who composed polyphonic chants for divine services using minime, hockets, texts in the vernacular, upper voices (triplis et motetis) and other features. Such music was forbidden; in its place the decree recommended polyphony that doubled the plainchant with simple consonances.

The decree’s immediate effect, if any, is not known. But by the middle of the century there existed a remarkable repertory of polyphony in Ars Nova notation for the Ordinary; and the repertory grew in succeeding years. Although it never matched the rhythmic and harmonic complexity of the secular Ars Subtilior works, it did include short note values and hockets (especially in the Amen sections of Gloria and Credo movements) in music mainly in three or four voices. Stäblein-Harder (1962) has classified the surviving movements in various groups: some reflect motet style, with two upper texted voices that have the mass text unless they are troped; others are in the discant style of secular song, with only the upper voice texted; and some reflect the earlier conductus in having homophonic polyphony with all voices texted. These groups are not exclusive: some pieces have other defining features; and some survive in different versions that would put them into different categories – as in the case of the ‘Sortes’ Credo, which appears both in three-voice discant style and in four-voice homophonic style.

There are three main sources for the French repertory (ed. in PMFC, xxiii). The Apt choirbook (F-APT 16bis) of around 1400 contains ten Kyries, nine Glorias, ten Credos, four Sanctus and one Agnus, of which 21 have text only in the upper voices. The slightly earlier manuscript I-IVc 115 has four Kyries, nine Glorias, ten Credos, two Sanctus and two motets on Ite missa est; 15 of these are in motet style. The manuscript E-Bc 853c-d, containing five Kyries, one Gloria, three Credos and one Sanctus, is one of 12 Ars Nova manuscript fragments known from the old Kingdom of Aragon, which bordered on Avignon: between them they contain some 40 Mass Ordinary movements, of which 23 are in discant style. Small though the French Mass repertory may be, it is very widely disseminated, with several works appearing in ten or more sources, often in substantially different versions. Composers can be named for less than a third of the repertory, but at least five of them can be associated with the Avignon curia: Perrinet, Tailhandier, Tapissier, Sortes and Peliso.

Of the mass music by Italian composers (mainly Glorias, Credos and Sanctus settings, ed. in PMFC, xii) only about a quarter shows pure Italian style: the rest is heavily influenced by the French tradition. The main named composers are Philippus de Caserta, who worked in Avignon, and Antonio Zacara da Teramo and Matteo da Perugia, both connected with the papal curia in Bologna. In the entirely anonymous English repertory from the early 14th century (ed. in PMFC, xvi) Credo settings are particularly rare. Most of the music is in simple homophonic style and perhaps derives from the growing custom of singing Marian votive masses. Special to the English repertory is the survival of Mass Proper settings.

4. 14th-century mass cycles.

While the manuscripts normally grouped settings of a particular text together, there are some examples of apparent cyclic grouping, though never more than one such group in any single manuscript. The Tournai Mass (B-Tc 476, ed. in PMFC, i; also ed. J. Dumoulin and others, Tournai 1988), considered the earliest, has six Ordinary movements, of which the last is a motet in Ars Nova style, Se grasse/Ite, missa est/Cum venerint (known also from I-IV 115 and from the index of F-Pn n.a.fr.23190; the Credo has three further sources, two of them in earlier notation and of Spanish origin, and the Gloria has a further source in F-CA 1328 (n), no.2). Only the Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus are unique, all in Franconian notation. There is no apparent musical connection between the six movements apart from their being all in three voices and all in simultaneous style apart from the concluding motet (which shares its tenor with a motet by Marchetto da Padova).

The four-voice Messe de Nostre Dame of Guillaume de Machaut, composed perhaps in the early 1360s for Reims Cathedral, is more unified and is important as the earliest such cycle conceived as a unit by a single composer. Machaut may have known some of the Tournai cycle, since his Gloria and Credo have similar textless musical interludes and share other features; they are in simultaneous style and end with a long melismatic Amen. The other four movements of Machaut’s mass are in the manner of motets, but all voices carry the same mass text. The tenor of the Kyrie is based on Vatican Kyrie IV; the Sanctus and Agnus correspond to Vatican Mass XVII; and the Ite is on Sanctus VIII. The Gloria and Credo have no apparent chant basis, though they are stylistically related to one another.

The masses of Barcelona and Toulouse (E-Bc 971 and F-TLm 94; ed. in PMFC, i) share the same Credo, ascribed in Apt and Barcelona to Sortes. The Toulouse Mass, copied on the blank pages of a monophonic missal, is in three voices and lacks a Gloria; Kyrie and Sanctus are in motet style and seem motivically related. The Credo likewise seems related to the Ite, which opens with a phrase similar to one in the Credo. These two and the Agnus are in discant style. The Barcelona Mass has no Ite and is in three voices, except for a four-voice Agnus. Only the (unique) Kyrie and the Agnus are in any way related musically. The remaining movements are strongly contrasted and seem arbitrarily selected.

Other four-movement cycles are just as disparate in style. That in the second fascicle of F-APT 16 bis (ed. in PMFC, xxiii, nos.7–10) unites a Kyrie by De Fronciaco, a Gloria by Depansis (ascribed to Sortes in Solsona, Archivio diocesano, MS 109), a Sanctus by Fleurie and an anonymous Agnus, all quite unrelated. A group in E-Boc 2 comprises a Kyrie by Johannes Graneti, the Gloria that also appears in the Barcelona Mass, a Credo ascribed elsewhere to Tailhandier, and a unique anonymous Agnus; these are unified only by a broad stylistic uniformity between Kyrie, Gloria and Credo. The only known Italian cycle (in the Florentine manuscript F-Pn it.568; ed. in PMFC, xii, nos.3, 12, 15, 20 and 27) has a Gloria and Agnus by Gherardello (loosely related in style and conceivably intended as part of a cycle), a Credo by Bartholus, a Sanctus by Lorenzo and a Benedicamus by Don Paolo. Apart from the three-voice Benedicamus, it is entirely in two voices but give no further hint of cyclic unification.

Only the Mass of Besançon (or of the Sorbonne: F-Pim; reconstructed in PMFC, xxiii, nos.1–6), with an inscription to Johannes Lambuleti, has unifying elements. Its one surviving bifolium lacks the intervening leaves: there is a single-section Kyrie followed by the opening of the Gloria, then fragments of the Sanctus, Agnus and Benedicamus. Kyrie and Agnus are musically related; the missing Credo may well be that in I-IVc 115, no.48, which shares its opening with the Besançon Gloria. In that context it may be relevant to note that certain other scattered movements among the surviving sources have musical relationships that could suggest their origin in matched pairs or even fuller cycles.

5. The first half of the 15th century.

Johannes Ciconia may be an important link between these dispersed movements of the 14th century and the mass cycle of the Renaissance. While no full cycle by him is known, there are several apparently unified Gloria-Credo pairs in a style that sometimes reflects the Avignon music (ed. in PMFC, xxiv); pairs also appear in the music of Antonio Zacara da Teramo (ed. in CMM, xi/6). Ciconia’s works include movements in a responsorial style that alternates the full choir with a duo of two equal high voices, a technique adopted by other composers and perhaps reflecting the divisions of some choirs, including the chapel of Pope Martin V. (Another example is the Gloria Iubilacio of Hymbert de Salinis, celebrating the election of Pope Alexander V in 1409).

Seven Gloria-Credo pairs appear in the early 15th-century manuscript I-Tn 9, from the Lusignan court in Cyprus (ed. in CMM, xxi); they are paired not on the basis of shared material but only in their scoring. Whereas this repertory is entirely anonymous, composers are named for some two-thirds of the music in the contemporary English Old Hall Manuscript, probably written for the chapel of Henry V’s brother, the Duke of Clarence (ed. in CMM, xlvii). 121 of its 147 pieces are Mass Ordinary movements, grouped by type: 40 Glorias, 35 Credos, 27 Sanctus and 19 Agnus settings. (An opening section containing Kyries may have been lost.) Among its wide variety of musical types, some written in pseudo-score, some in separate parts, both Gloria-Credo and Sanctus-Agnus pairs have been identified on the basis of layout, structure and musical material. The influence of continental music can be identified in many of these works; but, apart from Pycard and Antonio Zacara da Teramo, the composers all appear to be English, including Roy Henry (perhaps Henry V) and the major composer in the collection, Leonel Power.

Power and Dunstaple are the first known composers to have unified a mass by using a single cantus firmus tenor in all movements. This can be seen in Power’s Mass Alma Redemptoris mater, in Dunstaple’s Mass Da gaudiorum premia and Gloria-Credo pair Jesu Christe Fili Dei, and in other works of conflicting authorship: the masses Rex seculorum and Sine nomine (the latter probably in fact by John Benet). None of these cantus firmus melodies comes from the Mass Ordinary; and in that respect these works may point to the widespread use of non-liturgical melodies in the cantus firmus masses of the Renaissance. But the technique of unification by a single cantus firmus does not appear in non-English music before the late 1440s.

In the continental sources, particularly the Trent Codices, there are several examples of apparently paired mass movements – by Dunstaple, Binchois and others – that would hardly be considered pairs if they had not appeared together in a manuscript; many such pairs continue to be disputed, with the relatively large mass output of Binchois posing some of the severest problems.

At about the same time as the earliest English cantus firmus cycles, there seem to have been two other kinds of solution to the same problem. One kind survives only in the mass cycle (without Agnus) that is a later addition to the previously mentioned manuscript from Cyprus (I-Tn 9): it has consistent style but with each movement based on a different tenor, presented in the manner of a cantus firmus. The other kind is known mainly from works in northern Italian sources of the years 1420–35, including cycles by Arnold de Lantins, Johannes Reson, Guillaume Du Fay (two), Estienne Grossin, Johannes de Lymburgia and Reginaldus Libert. While all are loosely organized, they show enough unity to confirm that they were planned as cycles. But the idea seems not to have taken hold: among the 190 works in the Aosta Codex (1430s), no fewer than 129 are Mass Ordinary movements, though without showing any sense of cyclic organization. And it looks as though the composers of Du Fay’s circle devoted their efforts in the early 1440s to cycles of the Mass Proper, with the chants paraphrased in the top line – perhaps those in I-TRmp 88 (ed. in Monumenta Polyphoniae Liturgicae Sanctae Ecclesiae Romanae, 2nd ser., i, Rome, 1947). Quite suddenly, however, various English masses became available in northern Italy, prime among them the anonymous Mass Caput; their impact was perhaps decisive in launching the fully unified mass cycle of the next 150 years.

6. The cyclic mass in the later 15th century.

By 1450 the polyphonic Mass Ordinary had become the largest and most serious of contemporary musical forms. Owing to the length and central liturgical function of its texts it was suited to musical setting on the broadest scale, while the fixed yet contrasting content of these texts rendered it equally open to the most flexible methods of composition. Tinctoris, the great representative theorist of the later 15th century, distinguished the mass as cantus magnus from the smaller forms of motet and chanson, and from the period of the maturity of Du Fay to the maturity of Josquin (roughly from 1450 to 1500) settings of the Mass covered a wide range of compositional techniques while nevertheless maintaining a similar approach to structure and dimensions.

The earliest masses involving repetition of musical material from section to section have been divided by historians into two broad classes: the so-called ‘motto’ mass, in which the movements have closely similar or identical opening motifs but no further recurring features apart from their common mode and number of voices; and the ‘cantus firmus’ or ‘tenor’ mass, in which all movements are based on the same borrowed melody (taken from outside the mass itself), which is used as the structural basis for the entire work (see also Borrowing, §5). Of these the second category far outdistanced the first in importance and degree of cultivation. It became the basic mass type of the late 15th century, drawing on an increasingly broad range of sources for its antecedent melodies and subjecting these melodies to diverse types of elaboration. Within the repertory of the tenor mass of the late 15th century, two broad types can be distinguished whose origins can be traced back to the inception of the genre. In the first of these, descended from such early cycles as Power's Mass Alma Redemptoris mater (c1440 or earlier), the borrowed melody, normally in the tenor in a three- or four-voice texture, is stated in every movement of the mass in the same rhythmic and intervallic form or in schematically altered forms. In the second type, whose lineage extends back to such works as the Mass Rex seculorum attributed variously to Dunstaple and Power, the complete melody is elaborated in a different form in each major movement. But while pre-1450 models are almost invariably drawn from plainchant, the years after mid-century saw the rise and wide proliferation of cycles based on polyphonic antecedents, usually secular songs. While these masses are based on the tenors of their models, deployed, as in masses based on plainchant, in the tenors of the new works, many also make some reference to one or both of the other voices of their antecedents. Frequently cursory and seldom systematic at first, such borrowing would in time have a transformative effect on mass construction.

The development of the mass after 1450 took place primarily on the Continent in the work of Du Fay and his major successors, but it may have been given its first impetus by English musicians. Among English masses, surely the most influential was the widely distributed ‘Caput’ Mass formerly thought to be by Du Fay. Besides its direct emulations in ‘Caput’ masses by Ockeghem and Obrecht, its style, structure and texture – in four voices with low contratenor – is mirrored in a large number of continental masses of the 1450s and 60s, for example Domarto's Mass Spiritus almus and the anonymous German Mass Gross Sehnen (Wegman, 1991).

Of the seven complete extant masses by Du Fay, two (the Missa ‘Resvelliés vous’, formerly known as the Missa sine nomine, and Missa Sancti Jacobi, the latter a so-called ‘plenary’ mass including settings of mass Propers alongside the usual Ordinary settings) are certainly early works, written not later than 1430. Du Fay's other extant plenary cycle, his stylistically diverse mass for St Anthony of Padua, was probably composed some 20 years later. The Missa ‘Se la face ay pale’, which may date from the early 1450s, is among the earliest surviving masses based on a secular model (in this case a ballade by Du Fay himself probably dating from the 1430s). His Missa ‘L’homme armé’ is surely among the first of more than two dozen masses based on this famous melody and written over more than 150 years. Du Fay’s later works include two tenor masses based on Marian antiphons – the Missa ‘Ave regina celorum’ and the Missa ‘Ecce ancilla Domini’, which is actually based on two antiphons. Even the few masses securely attributed to Du Fay show a wide variety of cantus firmus techniques, and in this respect are representative of the range of styles deployed in mass composition in the late 15th century. The cantus firmus is almost always in the next-to-lowest voice, whatever the clef and range of this voice; it is often divided according to a systematic proportional scheme and is frequently differentiated from the prevailing rhythmic motion of the other voices, typically through the use of longer note values. At times this systematic differentiation is achieved through complex mensural schemes that change in the course of the setting. The tenor may be written out once complete, and a verbal canon, at times obscure, may be used to indicate its successive temporal and intervallic modifications (for a description of the treatment of the tenor in Du Fay’s Missa ‘Se la face ay pale’ see ReeseMR, 70–71, or Brown, 1976, pp.45ff). Important in Du Fay’s masses, as in those of other composers of his and the next generation, is the use of contrasting mensurations for the subdivisions of the five primary movements of the Ordinary; each movement normally begins in perfect time and shifts to imperfect at a natural textual division; thus a familiar Kyrie plan is: Kyrie I , Christe CC, Kyrie II . Contrast through use of reduced number of voices and change in vocal register is normally achieved in subordinate divisions of the major movements, which often omit segments of the tenor; typical for these interludes are the Christe, Benedictus, Pleni and Agnus Dei II. This use of contrasting interludes lasted until the late 16th century.

In the main period of Ockeghem and his contemporaries (roughly 1460–90) the chanson came to the fore as a source of melodies for the tenor of the mass. Of 14 masses attributed to Ockeghem five are based on voices derived from contemporary three-part chansons, and at times the superius rather than the tenor of the model is used as tenor in the mass; sometimes parts of both voices are used, but not simultaneously. Ockeghem’s sources include a number of his own chansons (e.g. the Missa ‘Fors seulement’) and one by Binchois (Missa ‘De plus en plus’). A broadening of style in his masses goes together with his remarkable control of flowing, largely non-imitative counterpoint in many works. Particularly noteworthy is the Missa prolationum, perhaps the first of all masses based completely on the principle of progressive canon through all movements (later used by Palestrina in his Missa ad fugam and in the canonic movements of Bach’s Goldberg Variations). Another famous experiment that lacked imitators was Ockeghem’s Missa cuiusvis toni, which can apparently be sung in any one of the four authentic-plagal pairs of modes in use at that time.

Of great significance for the development of the mass in this period was the rise of competitive settings of the same melody. Of these the most famous group is the series of masses based on the tune L’homme armé. Whatever the veracity of a later claim that the melody was actually written by Antoine Busnoys there can be no doubt of the importance of Busnoys’ Missa ‘L’homme armé’, which, in addition to its clear influence on a number of other masses, has been shown to be the particular model for the L'homme armé Mass by Obrecht and of an anonymous Missa de Sancto Johanne Baptista (for the latter see Wegman, 1989). Other composers of Ockeghem’s generation who wrote masses on L’homme armé include (besides Du Fay, Ockeghem himself and Busnoys) Firminus Caron, Guillaume Faugues, Johannes Regis, Philippe Basiron, Tinctoris, Bertrandus Vaqueras and thec anonymous composer (although both Busnoys and Caron have been put forward as candidates) of six consecutive mass settings on the tune in a Naples manuscript of this time (I-Nn VI.E.40). Slightly later is the group of L’homme armé settings by Josquin (two), Compère, Brumel, Pierre de La Rue, Matthaeus Pipelare, Marbrianus de Orto, Mouton and Vitalis Venedier. In the 16th century the tradition was maintained by Mouton, Senfl, Festa, Robert Carvor, De Silva, Morales (two) and Palestrina (two). A lesser parallel to the great L’homme armé tradition is the large group of elaborations of Ockeghem’s rondeau Fors seulement, which was used in numerous chanson settings but also for masses by Ockeghem, Obrecht, La Rue and others. In the 16th century similar groups of settings of familiar models are found, among them the series of masses on Richafort’s motet Quem dicunt homines (c1515), on which masses were composed by Mouton, Antonius Divitis, Lupus Hellinck, de Raedt, Charles d’Argentilly, Morales, Ruffo and Palestrina.

The greatest flowering of the late 15th-century mass is in the works of Obrecht and Josquin. Obrecht's surviving mass oeuvre (see R. Wegman: Born for the Muses: The Life and Masses of Jacob Obrecht, Oxford, 1994) encompasses 27 securely attributed works, while at least four more have been reasonably ascribed to him on the basis of style. Covering a period of some 30 years beginning in the late 1470s, they span the gulf between the 15th-century mass styles of Busnoys and Ockeghem and that of the mature Josquin. The earliest masses, apparently dating from the decade beginning in the mid-1470s, are each based on a plainchant cantus firmus, presented in elaborated forms. Missa ‘Petrus apostolus’, which may be Obrecht's earliest mass, is stylistically related to the masses of Busnoys, while ‘Sicut spina rosam’ betrays the influence of Ockeghem, even quoting the head-motif of his Missa -Mi mi’. This was not Obrecht's only musical tribute to Ockeghem: his Missa de Sancto Donatiano, which shares with ‘Sicut spina rosam’ something of the unpredictable contrapuntal diversity of the older composer, also quotes from his Missa ‘Ecce ancilla Domini’.

The considerable demand for new masses at St Donatian, Bruges, where Obrecht worked as succentor from late 1488 and early 1491, seems to have engendered a spate of remarkable productivity. Wegman (1994) has plausibly suggested that this period was his most prolific as a mass composer, accounting for 15 or more of his surviving cycles. Copying records and paper dating for specific pieces also led him to surmise that these years, and those immediately adjacent to them, also constitute the period of Obrecht's greatest stylistic development. Techniques characteristic of the Busnoys generation – for example the strict cantus firmus procedures of the Missa de Sancto Martino of 1486–7 – seem to have given way in a very short space of time to the types of idioms which now appear quintessentially Obrechtian. In masses such as ‘Fortuna desperata’ and ‘Rose playsante’, rigid, formulaic cantus firmus layouts become the frames for endlessly inventive and aurally compelling musical canvases which entirely belie their rigidity of background structure. Tenor layouts include the use of such procedures as retrograde motion (for example ‘Fortuna desperata’) and the composer's well-known ‘segmentation’ technique. In the latter the cantus firmus is divided into a number of segments, each of which, repeated according to various mensural and proportional formulae, is used as the basis for one mass section before the complete melody is laid out in the Agnus Dei (for example ‘Rose playsante’). While such segments, sometimes spun out in the tenor by means of very long notes, from time to time lend the music an ostensibly archaic appearance, they give rise to an infinite and highly distinctive range of textures in sound.

While many of Obrecht's masses embody structural complexity, only one, the Missa ‘Sub tuum presidium’, seems to have given that complexity the status of raison d'être. The main cantus firmus, stated in the superius, takes the same form in each section. In the last three movements it is accompanied by other Marian chants, increasing in number by one chant each movement and culminating in the simultaneous quotation in the Agnus Dei of four chants. The number of voices similarly increases movement by movement, from three in the Kyrie to seven in the Agnus Dei. The mass also embodies a complex numerical scheme, and it has been claimed that the Missa ‘Sub tuum presidium’ is a large-scale example of numerical symbolism traceable to late medieval speculative thinking.

In Josquin’s masses traditional melodic sources are found side by side with new and highly original ones. Although the chronology of his masses is still largely in doubt, his first two volumes of published masses, issued at Venice by Petrucci in 1502 and 1505, are not only the first by any single composer but probably represent a generally earlier phase of his work, written between about 1470 and about 1500. His third book (1514) may well intermingle older works with one or two that could have been written after the second (e.g. the Missa de Beata Virgine, which Glarean especially praised). Josquin’s masses represent a summa of contemporary approaches to mass composition. Of his two L’homme armé settings the one entitled super voces musicales is a strict tenor mass which successively presents the melody on ascending steps of the hexachord while maintaining the modal integrity of the whole texture; the Missa ‘L’homme armé’ sexti toni, in utter contrast, is a free elaboration of the given melody, presenting it in every voice of the complex, at times in embellished form. Several of his masses brilliantly exploit cantus firmi from polyphonic chansons, and it may be biographically significant that two of these are taken from chansons used also by Obrecht (Fortuna desperata and Malheur me bat); in method these works continue the tradition established by Ockeghem, to whom Josquin seems to have been indebted. Others break new ground in choice of material. For example, the Missa ‘La sol fa re mi’ is based on a short and freely invented subject, identified only by its solmization syllables, on which Josquin erected a brilliant series of contrapuntal elaborations.

Even more original is the subject of the Missa Hercules dux Ferrariae, the first known mass based on what Zarlino later called a soggetto cavato delle parole (a ‘subject carved out of the words’); the tenor of the mass is drawn from the name ‘Hercules dux Ferrariae’ (referring to Duke Ercole I d’Este of Ferrara) by substituting the proper solmization syllable for each vowel of his official name and title (re ut re ut re fa mi re). Unlike the Missa ‘La sol fa re mi’ the Missa Hercules dux Ferrariae has a rigid tenor construction in which the subject is normally presented in a threefold form, rising through the final and confinal of the mode onD (1st mode) and always in equal note values. The tradition of the canonic mass was cultivated by Josquin in his Missa ad fugam and Missa sine nomine of the third book, while the masses on Ave maris stella and Pange lingua (the latter probably a very late work) exemplify the imitative paraphrase mass developed from a single well-known plainchant; this was an important mass type about 1500 and a new departure from the older tenor mass on a plainchant. Similar to these is Josquin’s widely copied Missa de Beata Virgine, which elaborates the complete plainchant Ordinary for festivals of the Virgin and begins a great tradition of works of this type.

Although older structural principles are still plainly visible in Josquin’s masses they are perfectly blended with a freer, more expressive, declamatory approach to text that is conveyed in beautifully articulated polyphonic structures. A major development in the mass literature of Josquin’s later years, visible in incipient form in such works as Obrecht’s Missa ‘Rose playsante’ and Josquin’s Missa ‘Mater Patris’ (whose authorship has been questioned by a number of scholars at the end of the 20th century), was the tendency to base a mass on the entire polyphonic substance of its antecedent.

This procedure was not in itself new: as noted above, it was as old as the practice of basing masses on polyphonic models. Even some of the earliest such masses include lengthy simultaneous paraphrases of two, sometimes even all three, voices of their models. These include Bedyngham's Mass Dueil angoisseux, Le Rouge's Mass Soys emprentid and Barbingant's Missa ‘Terriblement’, all composed by the early 1450s (Kirkman, 1996). Block quotation of polyphonic models can be found in cycles dating back at least to the early 1460s (e.g. the anonymous Missa ‘Quand ce viendra’ in I-TRmp 89). Four (apparently related) anonymous, probably Austrian, cycles composed most likely in the late 1460s even include lengthy contrafacta of their antecedent German Tenorlieder (Peck Leverett, 1995). However, it was not until the early 16th century that such borrowing became systematic, developing in time into the standard practice for setting the mass in western Europe.

This wholesale borrowing from a pre-existing polyphonic piece has gained the widely used but misleading terms ‘parody technique’ and ‘parody mass’ in modern musicological terminology, owing in part to a misunderstanding of 16th-century usage. The term ‘missa parodia’ was used in one mass of 1587, by the little-known German composer Jakob Paix, published at Lauingen on the Danube. The actual title of the work is Missa: parodia mottetae Domine da nobis auxilium Th. Crequilonis, that is, a mass based on the motet Domine da nobis auxilium by Crecquillon. The word ‘missa’ is buried in the upper decorative border of the title-page and the word ‘parodia’ is clearly an elegant Greek substitute for the Latin ad imitationem. So the one known instance of the term is actually an obscure variant of a different terminological tradition. Historically the more correct term for the practice of large-scale borrowing is therefore ‘imitation’ and ‘imitation mass’, reflecting the 16th-century use of the term ‘missa ad imitationem’ in numerous titles of mass publications, especially in France. Whatever terminology is applied to it, this approach became the primary means of mass composition in the 16th century, and the gradual shift from the typical 15th-century practice of using a single pre-existing voice as cantus firmus to the typical 16th-century derivation of material from all voices of the complex is one of the decisive developments of the period.

Essential to this development was not only a change in the nature of the mass but a change in its models. In the works that best exemplify the change a shift can be seen from three-voice chanson models to four-voice motet models, with emphasis on motets by Josquin or his immediate successors. In these models the pervasive use of contrapuntal imitation, the uniform motivic content of all voices, and the consequent open texture make it virtually impossible to detach a single voice as cantus firmus of a new work, for in these models no single voice is any longer a self-contained linear unit. It follows that the use of contrapuntal imitation makes the rise of total borrowing in the mass not only possible but inevitable. The first realization of this principle in major works is seen in masses by French court composers of the period 1500–25, especially Mouton, Antoince de Févin, Divitis, Richafort, Claudin de Sermisy and the young Willaert. Pioneering works in this genre are Josquin’s Missa ‘Mater Patris’ (based on a three-voice song motet by Brumel), Mouton’s masses on Sancta Trinitas and Quem dicunt homines, and Févin’s on Mente tota and Ave Maria, both of which are based on four-voice motets by Josquin. It may have been these that Glarean had in mind when he referred to Févin as ‘felix Jodoci aemulator’ (‘the felicitous imitator of Josquin’).

7. The mass in the earlier 16th century.

By Josquin’s death in 1521 certain primary trends had been established that dominated the genre to the period of Palestrina and Lassus. During the era from 1520 to about 1560 the two basic mass types built on single melodies (both the older tenor mass and the newer polyphonic paraphrase) receded into the background while the contrapuntal imitation mass (the type frequently called the ‘parody mass’, as noted above) came strongly to the fore. The imitation mass indeed became the fundamental prototype for the rest of the century, reaching down to Monteverdi’s Missa da cappella of 1610 (based on Gombert's motet In illo tempore). The vitality of the tradition depended on that of the polyphonic style of the 16th century, and with the rise of monody and polychoral writing in the early 17th century it lost its basis for further development and became an outmoded genre.

Alongside the imitation mass, in which the source composition was the essential basis for inner continuity and structure, certain secondary types continued to be cultivated and attained a definable role in 16th-century mass literature. One is the mass set in canon throughout; inherited from the late 15th century, and exemplified in Josquin’s works of this type (see above) along with those of La Rue, the canonic mass is repreented in the earlier 16th century by the Missa ‘L’homme armé’ by Mouton or Forestier, and later by Palestrina’s Missa ad fugam. A subclass of the canonic mass is formed by those works that are based on canonic motets or chansons and thus combine canon with polyphonic imitation: for example La Rue’s Missa ‘Ave sanctissima Maria’ and Palestrina’s Missa ‘Repleatur os meum’. Another distinctive type is the mass based not on a pre-existing subject but on a freely invented one. At times this is designated Missa sine nomine, a term that existed long before the Council of Trent and thus, contrary to myths long perpetuated, had nothing to do with the alleged disguising of secular models during the Counter-Reformation. An example is Vincenzo Ruffo’s Missa sine nomine of 1557, mentioned by the theorist Pietro Pontio (in 1588; see below) as an example of a mass based on a freely invented subject. The Palestrina Missa Papae Marcelli is by far the most famous example of this type (see Jeppesen, 1945).

Another type of mass that survived in this period was the missa brevis. In the 16th century this did not mean (as it came to mean in the 18th), a setting of only the Kyrie and Gloria; rather it denoted the shortest possible setting of the full Ordinary consistent with conveying the entire text. It was normally set for four voices even after this had become a less common practice, and usually entailed considerable overlapping of textual phrases in Gloria and Credo, with very short Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus sections. A defining feature of the genre would also appear to be absence of borrowed material, though a number of masses on borrowed melodies, significantly Josquin's Missa ‘D'ung aultre amer’ and Martini's Missa ‘In Feuers Hitz’, reveal similar dimensions and construction. The term itself dates back in surviving usage to around 1490, and the compilation, under the aegis of Franchinus Gaffurius, of four large volumes of polyphony for Milan Cathedral. One of these volumes (I-Mcap 2268) contains four very short masses, all probably by Gaffurius himself, which are so designated in the contemporary list of contents. These masses involve little or no mensural contrast and, in the Gloria and Credo, considerable omission of text and syllabic setting with many repeated notes. The genre, however, can be traced back at least another 15 years: the same characteristics appear in portions of an apparently composite mass in I-TRmp 91 (Peck Leverett, 1994), perhaps itself composed for Milan in imitation of a style already current in that city or a survival of similar practices elsewhere. The period from about 1560 to 1600 saw much cultivation of a similar idiom: exponents included Vincenzo Ruffo and Andrea Gabrieli in northern Italy, while Palestrina's Missa brevis is a masterpiece of the genre as practised further south. The latter was published in his third book (1570) and characteristically has no traceable pre-existing material. Interest in the missa brevis in the late 16th century arose amid a general tendency to shorten mass settings of all kinds and to lessen their contrapuntal complexity as a result.

For the major composers of the period between Josquin and Palestrina the mass was a basic form and the imitation mass the paramount category. Of some 17 masses reasonably attributed to Jean Mouton, 13 of them securely, only two are imitation masses while the majority are based on cantus firmi (see P. Kast: Studien zu den Messen von Jean Mouton, Frankfurt, 1955). But of Willaert’s eight or nine masses only one is not an imitation mass and four of his masses are based on motets by Mouton, his teacher. Of the ten masses by Nicolas Gombert none is based on a cantus firmus in the true sense, and only two are paraphrase compositions (the masses on Da pacem and Tempore paschali) while eight are imitation masses. With Clemens non Papa all 14 masses are based on polyphonic models – four on motets or chansons of his own composition and ten on works by others. Perhaps the most prolific mass composer of this period was Cristóbal de Morales, of whose 20 masses at least eight are imitation masses based on models by Josquin, Mouton, Richafort, Verdelot, Gombert and possibly Févin. From about 1520 to the end of the century the choice of models for imitation masses is often a revealing clue to the background and stylistic leanings of the mass composer, at times forming part of the cult of competitive composition that flourished in the mass as well as in other genres, in part showing individual predilections for models of a certain type, length and complexity of elaboration.

The rise of the principle of polyphonic derivation conferred on the mass a high degree of stability in the means of integrating the five movements of the Ordinary through borrowed material. ‘Rules’ for the broad distribution of the material were later drawn up by Pietro Pontio (1588) and by Pietro Cerone (1613); those of Cerone are in part dependent on Pontio. These include the observation that the principal mass movements should begin with varied treatments of the opening subject of the model and close with its final cadence; if there is a second section in the model this should be used for subordinate mass sections (e.g. ‘Qui tollis’, ‘Et in spiritum’ etc.). These points accurately describe the main outlines of the imitation mass from about 1520 to the end of the century, but they leave unaddressed the intricate and complex problem of the internal distribution of the borrowed material. Although a great deal of research is still to be done, it is clear that in many masses based on motets, chansons or madrigals the choice of distribution of motifs is in part cyclic and follows the order of motifs in the model; at the same time the contrapuntal fabric in the model is drastically altered, but still to some degree recognizable. Whether or not the sequence of motifs roughly follows the order of the model, the location of certain motifs is often changed in order to use elements of the model that best fit the declamation and meaning of particular phrases of the Mass text. In works of certain composers, notably Palestrina, one finds some tendency to choose motifs that have special meaning in the model, such as those mentioning the name of Jesus; frequently the text of the motif in the model may have a bearing, symbolic or structural, on its use in the mass. Thus, in Palestrina’s Missa ‘Aspice Domine’ (published 1567) based on the motet Aspice Domine quia facta est by Jacquet of Mantua (published 1532), Jacquet’s original motif on the text ‘sedet in tristitia’ is used by Palestrina for the phrase ‘sedet ad dexteram Patris’ in the Credo. The careful alteration and refashioning of borrowed polyphonic material in the mass became one of the most refined of 16th-century composition procedures, and it must have been motivated both by a sense of competitive skill among composers and by a desire to challenge the musical imaginations of auditors and fellow musicians. A sense of what this art could mean to a contemporary listener is given in a letter written from Vienna in 1559 to the Bavarian Archduke Albrecht V in Munich; the letter was written by the Bavarian vice-chancellor, Dr Seld, who reported having heard a mass sung that pleased him very much and added: ‘the subject on which it was based rang in my ears but I could not immediately identify it. Afterwards, as I was singing it over, I found that the master of the imperial chapel [Jacobus Vaet] had based it on the motet Tityre tu patulae composed by Orlando [Lassus]’.

In the first half of the 16th century several fairly consistent regional schools of mass composition can be distinguished that adhere in some measure to stylistic tendencies associated with national traditions, particularly English, German and French. The most important source for English masses from the later 15th century is the Burgundian court manuscript B-Br 5557, and the best-represented composer is Walter Frye. The Brussels manuscript contains three masses by Frye and another that may be his (Kirkman, 1992), while the fragmentary Lucca Codex (I-La 238) contains the upper voice of a Kyrie by Frye apparently from another cycle which, as Brian Trowell has shown, reworks his own song So ys emprentid. All three of the complete ascribed cycles are based on plainchant cantus firmi, either strictly repeated or rhythmically varied on each statement. The Mass Nobilis et pulcra, which belongs to a sound world similar to that of the two cycles by Bedyngham, probably dates from the early 1450s, and suggests the work of a composer not yet entirely at ease with composing a large-scale work. On the other hand, the elegance, consistency and carefully judged pacing of the masses Flos regalis and Summe Trinitati, which reveal the hand of a master in full control of his craft, support dating in the mid- to late 1460s. The mass by John Plummer in the Brussels manuscript displays something of that peculiarly insular floridity which was to reach its apogee at the end of the 15th century in the repertory of the Eton Choirbook.

Something of the grandeur of Eton is perceptible in the sumptuous and contrapuntally dense festal masses in five and six parts composed in the early 16th century by Ludford and Fayrfax. By this stage insular developments were progressing on lines distinct from those on the Continent. The masses Gloria tibi Trinitas and Western Wynde by their near contemporary John Taverner are among the most memorable of the period, the latter for its extraordinary variation treatment of a popular melody, the former for its musical splendour and by reason of historical accident. In the Benedictus of the Mass Gloria tibi Trinitas Taverner set the words ‘in nomine Domini’ to the plainchant on which the whole mass is based, and when this section of the Benedictus was later used independently as an instrumental piece its plainchant basis became the antecedent for the whole tradition of English instrumental compositions called ‘In Nomine’ which persisted into the 17th century. On the whole the English mass tradition of the earlier 16th century, which was of course exposed to changing liturgical conditions with the establishment of the Church of England, maintained an emphasis on the cantus firmus and on florid counterpoint in a five- and six-voice texture that strongly reflects its detachment from contemporary trends on the Continent in the age of Josquin and his followers.

The German traditions of the mass are naturally divided, even more sharply than the English, between orthodox settings and the liturgical forms that arose from the upheavals of the Reformation. German and Austrian mass style of the later 15th century has been notoriously difficult to define, largely because most of its examples are apparently hidden anonymously in the large codices (chiefly in Trent) on which much knowledge of the repertory of this period is based. In such circumstances German repertory has to be identified on the basis of derivation from German antecedents and considerations of style. The latter presents major problems, chiefly on account of the widespread stylistic overlap between German works and more familiar cycles from the Low Countries and England. This is apparent in the cases of a number of masses based on German models, and thus clearly of German origin, for example the masses Gross Sehnen and Christus surrexit, both closely related to the English mass style represented by the anonymous ‘Caput’ Mass. Others, such as the four brief cycles embodying song contrafacta mentioned above, testify to the existence also of distinct local trends, probably fostered to at least some degree by local composers.

Perhaps the most influential figure for the German mass is the great international master Henricus Isaac, who was born in the Low Countries, lived for years in Italy, and in later life was court composer to the Emperor Maximilian. Isaac’s Missa carminum illustrates a quodlibet-like procedure long cultivated by German composers, and is based on popular German songs. His numerous other masses include a set published in 1506 that contains four masses based on chansons; but the greater number of his masses have liturgical melodies as their sources. By far his most important single contribution to the whole field of the mass was not to the Ordinary but to the Proper; his Choralis constantinus, a gigantic series of polyphonic settings of Proper texts for the liturgical year, was the first such collection of its kind by a single composer, and in the entire period is rivalled only by Byrd’s Gradualia. Other German mass composers of this time reveal a preference for simple cantus firmus settings, along with an emphasis on alternatim settings using plainchant and polyphony in alternate segments throughout the mass, perhaps implying the use of the organ for many sections (see Organ mass). On the Lutheran side the official liturgical transformation came in 1526 with the issuing of Luther’s Deutsche Messe. The complex musical and liturgical developments of the mass in Lutheran centres require a separate discussion (see Luther, Martin) but they did not preclude the continued printing and use of masses by such Catholic composers as Josquin and Isaac, as is clear from the publication of their masses in the great collections produced in 1539 by Petreius and in 1541 by Georg Rhau, the official publisher of Lutheran music at Wittenberg.

In brief perspective, the French traditions of the period can be said to entail a reduction in complexity from the style of the French court circle that had surrounded Mouton and Févin in the first 20 years of the century. The later phase is best exemplified in the masses of Sermisy, Certon and, to a lesser extent, Janequin. In these works the predilection of the chanson composers for lightness of texture, brevity and homophonic writing leavened by simple polyphony is taken over as nearly as possible into the four-voice mass. This is seen most directly when the masses are based on chansons that can readily be adapted to the Mass text (e.g. Certon’s Missa ‘Sus le pont d’Avignon’) but often too when a motet or other basis is used.

8. The Counter-Reformation; Palestrina.

Although Italy had been the seat of the origins of music printing and of the first published mass collections, the printed repertory was wholly dominated by non-Italians from its beginnings in 1502 (Josquin’s first book) to 1542, when a mass by Vincenzo Ruffo broke the northern monopoly. In1549 the first published book of masses appeared by an individual Italian composer, Gasparo Alberti of Bergamo; in 1554 Palestrina’s first book of masses opened a new era, and after 1560 a vast outpouring of mass settings by Italians turned the tide towards Italian leadership. During the first half of the century the dominating figures for the mass in northern Italy had been the leading musicians at the major princely and cathedral chapels, chiefly Willaert at Venice and Jacquet at Mantua. In Rome the major figures in the papal choir after the international period of Leo X (1513–21) were the main contributors to the mass, especially Costanzo Festa and Morales. The latter, although Spanish by birth, is really the most important Roman composer of masses before Palestrina (he spent the decade 1535–45 in Rome) and probably exerted a substantial influence on Palestrina’s development.

The two decisive factors for the mass in the Palestrina period, especially after 1560, were the gradual absorption by Italian musicians of the complex polyphonic art of the northern composers (in itself a major historical development from about 1470 to about 1560) and the Counter-Reformation. The rise of powerful Catholic militance in the papal dominated areas of Europe was in direct proportion to the huge losses of political and spiritual control suffered by the Church in Germany, England and elsewhere in Europe. In sacred music this militance was particularly evident in the mass; in 1562 the Council of Trent issued a canon prohibiting all ‘seductive and impure’ melodies from church use, and the primary goal of the reformers was to see that the Mass text was made as intelligible as possible to congregations. With this in view the most powerful papal leader of the 1560s, Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, called for the writing of ‘la musica intelligibile’, and actually tested certain commissioned masses at Rome to see if they were satisfactory. Such high-minded sentiments notwithstanding, however, the extent of their effect in practice, and particularly beyond Rome, is highly debatable. Yet such remarks as the following in a letter accompanying a mass by Palestrina sent by the composer to the Duke of Mantua would seem to reveal something of this spirit: in this letter, dated 1568, the composer requested that the duke let him know, should the mass prove unsatisfactory, if and in what ways he would like it reworked, ‘whether short, or long, or composed so that the words may be understood’.

Certain works reveal the influence of the Counter-Reformation directly. These include the later masses by Ruffo (published from 1570 to 1592), some by Giovanni Animuccia (1567), Costanzo Porta (1578) and certain works by Palestrina, particularly his famous Missa Papae Marcelli, published in his second book of 1567. But the ‘intelligible style’ is only one facet of Palestrina’s immense breadth of style and knowledge as a mass composer. His 104 masses make him the most prolific as well as the most consistently resourceful mass composer of the century. Fewer than half his masses were published within his lifetime (he died in 1594), and a large number were published after his death by his sons. This circumstance, with other evidence of the early composition but delayed publication of many masses, makes their true chronology an unsolved problem.

The scope of his achievement as a mass composer is clear from the stylistic variety of the works alone. Six are based on freely invented subjects (including the Missa Papae Marcelli); five are canonic throughout; seven are old-fashioned tenor masses, while 35 are paraphrase masses of different kinds. The largest group (53 masses) comprises polyphonic imitation masses, of which 31 are based on works by others, 22 on works by Palestrina himself. Those on models by his predecessors are strongly indicative of Palestrina’s stylistic orientation and of other influences in his career. In his imitation masses, Palestrina's main leaning was towards the French, Flemish and Spanish composers who had been assimilated into Roman and especially papal musical circles during the first half of the century, among them De Silva, Lhéritier, Penet and Morales. He avoided models by Willaert or any members of the Venetian circle except Rore (whose connections with the Este of Ferrara may be the source of Palestrina’s interest in him) as well as models by Gombert, Clemens or others associated with the imperial chapel of Charles V. A distinctive group of his masses is based on motets published in the Motteti del fiore collections issued by Jacques Moderne. Perhaps somewhat later than the masses on works by others is the large series based on his own models, especially motets. Palestrina’s imitation masses constitute the largest group of such works by any composer of the period, combining remarkable formal and technical perfection with the stylistic discipline for which Palestrina’s works are justly famous. His subtle art of transformation of models by others has yet to be fully explored, although a beginning has been made by such authors as Klassen and Quereau.

Among other important compositional methods within Palestrina's mass output is the paraphrasing of a short plainchant melody (as especially in the masses based on hymns; see Marshall, 1963). This genre was revived in the Counter-Reformation as part of a reawakened interest in the polyphonic adaptation of plainchant and a tendency to transform plainchant traditions into polyphonic repertories wherever possible. This tendency is also reflected in the setting of Proper texts by Palestrina (Offertoria totius anni, 1593) and numerous other composers. Another important group comprises the special masses written for the ducal chapel at Mantua; these have alternatim Gloria and Credo settings and use plainchants supplied by Palestrina's distant patron Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga; after being lost for many years these masses were rediscovered by Jeppesen. Important too is the group of four polychoral masses published posthumously in 1600 but probably composed in the 1570s or1580s. Among these, the Missa ‘Confitebor tibi’, copied into a Cappella Sistina manuscript in about 1577, is the first polychoral work copied for use by the papal chapel. These masses were widely imitated, inspiring similar works by Marenzio, the Anerios and others, and, not least, the Missa ‘Cantantibus organis Cecilia’ for double and triple choir composed collaboratively by members of the Compagnia dei Musici di Roma.

9. The late 16th century.

While Palestrina’s settings established an ideal fusion of structure and expression for the late 16th-century mass, they were only a part of its historical development and essentially a conservative part. A glimpse at the masses of three great rival composers of the late 16th century – Victoria, Lassus, and Byrd – may provide a wider view. Victoria was both the greatest Spanish composer of the period and, like Morales, one whose career unfolded essentially at Rome. Affinities with Palestrina are therefore to be expected in his masses, of which there are 20. 11 are based on his own motets while others have plainchant models or are derived from other composers’ motets, significantly including the Spanish masters Morales and Guerrero and also Palestrina. The style is one of richly developed polyphony of great seriousness, lacking almost every trace of secular influence. The only exception is his double-chorus Missa pro victoria, based on Janequin’s programme chanson La guerre – but it is likely to be a celebration piece for a special occasion. The Victoria masses show on the whole that Palestrina’s highly disciplined polyphonic style was an individual idiom within the range of contrapuntal styles encompassed by Roman composers of the late 16th century, and it was these composers, notably Francesco Soriano, Ruggiero Giovanelli and others, who kept the mass a living form in Rome after its traditions elsewhere had succumbed to the drastic stylistic changes of the time.

A much broader outlook is of course to be expected in Lassus’s 60 or so masses, which use a wide array of antecedent models ranging from German lieder to motets by Lassus himself and others, to madrigals by Arcadelt, Palestrina, Rore and others, and to chansons by French and Netherlandish masters such as Sandrin, Gombert and Clemens. His masses reflect Lassus’s wide-ranging acquaintance with current styles and genres but above all reveal an extraordinary fecundity and variety of approach to the reworking of antecedent works of the greatest diversity. While stylistically removed from the masses of Palestrina, a number of his shorter masses display a frequent combination of clear text declamation with terse and uncomplicated counterpoint, perhaps in some – albeit rather different – way reflecting Counter-Reformation concerns. A further significant difference between the mass outputs of the two composers may be seen in their choice of models: Lassus's masses show a much greater emphasis on secular models, sometimes of a highly risqué nature: see for example his masses based on chansons such as La, la, maistre Pierre and Je ne mange poinct de porcq.

Byrd’s three masses, probably dating from the 1590s, rank with the greatest of the period. There is no evidence in them of contact with the continental technique of the imitation mass or even the paraphrase mass; there are similarities between the openings of some movements but little more by way of musical consistency within individual cycles. The three works are written for three, four and five voices respectively, and thus seem to form almost didactic examples of mass settings for various combinations of voices, increasing in complexity with greater fullness of sonority. Clear influences are difficult to substantiate, and it seems that the style of the masses was to a very large extent of Byrd's own devising; however, if antecedents were to be sought, reasonable candidates would probably include such brief settings as were popular in England in the second quarter of the century. Masses in question include Taverner's Mean mass, the clear inspiration for Byrd's four-voice mass, and whose Sanctus formed the direct model for the same movement of Byrd's cycle. Structural modelling notwithstanding, the musical language of the two masses, separated by half a century or more, is radically different. Such grandiose festal works as Tallis's seven-voice Mass Puer natus est nobis, possibly written for the combined English and Spanish royal chapels during the reign of Mary I (1553–8), belong to a quite distinct tradition.

Returning to a more central terrain for the development of the mass, it can be said that in northern Italy a division is fairly clear between Venice and the territories dominated by Milan and the northern courts. In the latter the influence of the Counter-Reformation is perhaps at its clearest, and it coincides with a musical trend towards relative brevity, clarity of text-declamation in varying degrees, and a continued emphasis on the imitation mass, in which composers of good but not first-rank quality contributed to the literature as part of a sense of musical tradition and no doubt as part of their obligations as local maestri di cappella. At Venice the mass was less important than the motet and symphonia sacra as a vehicle for the increasing emphasis on dramatic contrast and antiphonal choirs. Less suited to dramatization than works on freely chosen texts, the mass at the turn of the century took only a small part in the trend towards the concertato style. With the drastic change in style that attended the rise of the basso continuo and the recession of interest in balanced contrapuntal writing as a form of expression, the polyphonic mass receded into the background. While some composers developed it towards larger choral forces and the stark contrasts of polychoral writing, the basic reliance of the 16th-century mass traditions on derivation from polyphonic antecedents was now at a virtual end, and with it the traditional basis for mass composition had ended too.

2. 17th century outside Italy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

to 1450

HarrisonMMB

P. Wagner: Geschichte der Messe (Leipzig, 1913/R)

R. von Ficker: ‘Die frühen Messenkompositionen der Trienter Codices’, SMw, xii (1924), 3–58

F. Ludwig: ‘Die mehrstimmige Messe des 14. Jahrhunderts’, AMw, vii (1925), 417–35

H. Besseler: Die Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Potsdam, 1931/R)

J. Handschin: ‘A Monument of English Mediaeval Polyphony: the Manuscript Wolfenbüttel 677 (Helmst. 628)’, MT, lxxiii (1932), 510–13; lxxiv (1933), 697–704

O. Gombosi: ‘Machaut’s Messe Notre Dame’, MQ, xxxvi (1950), 204–24

A. Geering: Die Organa und mehrstimmigen Conductus in den Handschriften des deutschen Sprachgebietes vom 13. bis 16. Jahrhundert (Berne, 1952)

H. Harder: ‘Die Messe von Toulouse’, MD, vii (1953), 105–28

J. Chailley: ‘La Messe de Besançon et un compositeur inconnu du XIVe siècle, Jean Lambelet’, AnnM, ii (1954), 93–103

T. Georgiades: Musik und Sprache: das Werden der abendländischen Musik dargestellt an der Vertonung der Messe (Berlin, 1954, 2/1974/R; Eng. trans., 1982)

L. Schrade: ‘The Mass of Toulouse’, RBM, viii (1954), 84–96

L. Schrade: ‘A Fourteenth Century Parody Mass’, AcM, xxvii (1955), 13–39

L. Schrade: ‘News on the Chant Cycle of the Ordinarium missae’, JAMS, viii (1955), 66–9

R. Jackson: ‘Musical Interrelations between Fourteenth Century Mass Movements’, AcM, xxix (1957), 54–64

F. Zaminer: Der vatikanische Organum-Traktat (Ottob. lat. 3025) (Tutzing, 1959)

T. Göllner: Formen früher Mehrstimmigkeit in deutschen Handschriften des späten Mittelalters (Tutzing, 1961)

H. Stäblein-Harder: Fourteenth-Century Mass Music in France, MSD, vii (1962)

K. von Fischer: ‘Neue Quellen zum einstimmigen Ordinariumszyklus des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts’, Liber amicorum Charles van den Borren (Antwerp, 1964), 60–68

R.H. Hoppin: ‘Reflections on the Origin of the Cyclic Mass’, ibid., 85–92

Andrew Hughes: ‘Mass Pairs in the Old Hall and other English Manuscripts’, RBM, xix (1965), 15–27

P. Gossett: ‘Techniques of Unification in Early Cyclic Masses and Mass Pairs’, JAMS, xix (1966), 205–31

Andrew Hughes and M.Bent: ‘The Old Hall Manuscript: a Re-Appraisal and an Inventory’, MD, xxi (1967), 97–147

T. Göllner: Die mehrstimmigen liturgischen Lesungen (Tutzing, 1969)

M. Lütolf: Die mehrstimmigen Ordinarium Missae-Sätze vom ausgehenden 11. bis zur Wende des 13. zum 14. Jahrhundert (Berne, 1970)

G. Chew: ‘The Early Cyclic Mass as an Expression of Royal and Papal Supremacy’, ML, liii (1972), 254–69

K. von Fischer: ‘The Sacred Polyphony of the Italian Trecento’, PRMA, c (1973–4), 143–57

K. von Fischer: ‘The Mass Cycle of the Trecento Manuscript F-Pn 568 (Pit)’, Essays on Music for Charles Warren Fox, ed. J.C. Graue (Rochester, NY, 1979), 1–13

E.A. Keitel: ‘The So-Called Cyclic Mass of Guillaume de Machaut: New Evidence for an Old Debate’, MQ, lxviii (1982), 307–23

A. Tomasello: Music and Ritual at Papal Avignon 1309–1403 (Ann Arbor, 1983)

G. Reaney: ‘The Social Implications of Polyphonic Mass Music in Fourteenth-Century England’, MD, xxxviii (1984), 159–72

M.C. Gómez: ‘Quelques remarques sur le répertoire sacré de l'Ars Nova provenant de l'ancien royaume d'Aragon’, AcM, lvii (1985), 166–79

C. Wright: Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris 500–1500 (Cambridge, 1989)

F. Facchin: ‘Some Remarks about the Polyphonic Mass Movements in the Manuscript Torino J.II.9’, The Cypriot-French Repertory of the Manuscript Torino J.II.9, MSD, xlv (1995), 327–46

1450–1600

ReeseMR

StrohmR

P. Wagner: Geschichte der Messe (Leipzig, 1913/R)

H. Besseler: Die Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Potsdam, 1931/R)

O. Ursprung: Die katholische Kirchenmusik (Potsdam, 1931/R)

W.H. Rubsamen: ‘Some First Elaborations of Masses from Motets’, BAMS, iv (1940), 6–9

K. Jeppesen: ‘Marcellus-Probleme’, AcM, xvi–xvii (1945), 11–38

J. Daniskas: ‘Een bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der parodie-techniek’, TVNM, xvii/1 (1948), 21–43

J.A. Jungmann: Missarum sollemnia (Vienna, 1948, 5/1962; Eng. trans., 1951–5, abridged 2/1961) [liturgical study]

M. Bukofzer: Studies in Medieval & Renaissance Music (New York, 1950)

R.B. Lenaerts: ‘The 16th-Century Parody Mass in the Netherlands’, MQ, xxxvi (1950), 410–21

W. Lipphardt: Die Geschichte der mehrstimmigen Proprium Missae (Heidelberg, 1950)

M. Antonowycz: Die Motette Benedicta es und die Messen super Benedicta von Willaert, Palestrina, de la Hêle und de Monte (Utrecht, 1951)

J. Klassen: ‘Untersuchungen zur Parodiemesse Palestrinas’, KJb, xxxvii (1953), 53–63

J. Klassen: ‘Das Parodieverfahren in der Messe Palestrinas’, KJb, xxxviii (1954), 24–54

J. Klassen: ‘Zur Modellbehandlung in Palestrinas Parodiemessen’, KJb, xxxix (1955), 41–55

H.C. Wolff: Die Musik der alten Niederländer (Leipzig, 1956)

R.L. Marshall: ‘The Paraphrase Technique of Palestrina in his Masses Based on Hymns’, JAMS, xvi (1963), 347–72

E. Sparks: Cantus Firmus in Mass and Motet, 1420–1520 (Berkeley, 1963/R)

S.W. Kenney: Walter Frye and the ‘Contenance Angloise’ (New Haven, CT, 1964/R)

L. Lockwood: ‘A View of the Early 16th-Century Parody Mass’, Queens College 25th Anniversary Festschrift, ed. A. Mell (Flushing, NY, 1964), 53–78

L. Lockwood: ‘On “Parody” as Term and Concept in 16th-Century Music’, Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: a Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. J. LaRue and others (New York, 1966/R), 560–75

W. Nitschke: Studien zu den Cantus-firmus-Messen Guillaume Dufays (Berlin, 1968)

L. Lockwood: The Counter-Reformation and the Masses of Vincenzo Ruffo (Venice, 1970)

A.E. Planchart: ‘Guillaume Dufay’s Masses: Notes and Revisions’, MQ, lviii (1972), 1–23

L. Lockwood: ‘Aspects of the “L’homme armé” Tradition’, PRMA, c (1973–4), 97–122

A.E. Planchart: ‘Guillaume Dufay’s Masses: a View of the Manuscript Traditions’, Du Fay Conference: Brooklyn, NY, 1974, 26–60

H.M. Brown: Music in the Renaissance (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1976)

G.R.K. Curtis: ‘Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale MS. 5557, and the Texting of Du Fay’s “Ecce ancilla Domini” and “Ave regina celorum” Masses’, AcM, li (1979), 73–86

D. Giller: ‘The Naples L'homme armé Masses and Caron: a Study in Musical Relationships’, CMc, no.32 (1981), 7–28

Q.W. Quereau: ‘Aspects of Palestrina's Parody Procedure’, JM, i (1982), 198–216

G.R.K. Curtis: ‘Stylistic Layers in the English Mass Repertory’, PRMA, cix (1982–3), 23–38

J.P. Burkholder: ‘Johannes Martini and the Imitation Mass of the Late Fifteenth Century’, JAMS, xxxviii (1985), 470–523

P. Ohrlich: Die Parodiemessen von Orlando di Lasso (Munich, 1985)

G. Dixon: ‘Tradition and Progress in Roman Mass Settings after Palestrina’, Studi palestriniani II: Palestrina 1986, 309–24

R. Taruskin: ‘Antoine Busnoys and the L'homme armé Tradition’, JAMS, xxxix (1986), 255–93

R. Strohm: ‘Messzyklen über deutsche Lieder in den Trienter Codices’, Liedstudien: Wolfgang Osthoff zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. M. Just and R. Wiesend (Tutzing,1989), 77–106

R.C. Wegman: ‘Another “Imitation” of Busnoys's Missa L'homme armé – and some Observations on Imitatio in Renaissance Music’, JRMA, cxiv (1989), 189–202

T. Brothers: ‘Vestiges of the Isorhythmic Tradition in Mass and Motet, ca. 1450–1475’, JAMS, xliii (1990), 1–56

R.C. Wegman: ‘Petrus de Domarto's Missa Spiritus almus and the Early History of the Four-Voice Mass in the Fifteenth Century’, EMH, x (1991), 235–303

A. Kirkman: ‘The Style of Walter Frye and an Anonymous Mass in Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Manuscript 5557’, EMH, xi (1992), 191–221

R. Tomiczek-Gernez: Pierre de Manchicourt und die Missa ad imitationem modulorum (Brussels, 1993)

A. Kirkman: ‘The Transmission of English Mass Cycles in the Mid to Late Fifteenth Century: a Case Study in Context’, ML, lxxv (1994), 180–99

A. Peck Leverett: ‘An Early Missa brevis in Trent Codex 91’, Music in the German Renaissance: Sources, Styles and Contexts, ed. J. Kmetz (Cambridge, 1994), 152–73

A. Peck Leverett: ‘Song Masses in the Trent Codices: the Austrian Connection’, EMH, xiv (1995), 205–56

A. Kirkman: ‘Innovation, Stylistic Patterns and the Writing of History: the Case of Bedyngham's Mass Dueil angoisseux’, I codici musicali trentini II: Trent 1996, 149–75

Mass

III. 1600–2000

The form and texts of the Latin Mass were largely stable between the publication of the revised Missal (1570) and the revisions initiated by the Second Vatican Council in the documents of 1693–4. However, there were minor regional variations: even in early 17th-century Rome Frescobaldi omitted the Benedictus from his two masses. The primary concerns until the 1960s are compositional rather than liturgical, but there is a persistent duality of approach. On the one hand composers have adopted contemporary musical styles and formal principles in setting the disparate texts of the Mass and in addressing problems of large-scale musical structure; on the other hand they have sustained the polyphonic idiom of the 16th century, especially in the four-part missa brevis in stile antico. The tension between liturgical propriety and musical imagination, evident since the 16th century, has been superseded worldwide since the 1960s by the requirements of a pastorally orientated liturgy, perhaps marking the end, for the time being, of significant mass composition.

1. Italy 1600–c1680.

1. Italy 1600–c1680.

The duality of style is made explicit in the distinction of prima pratica and seconda pratica in early 17th-century Italy, but the contrast is less extreme in mass composition than in secular vocal music, motets or psalm settings. In part this is due to the restrained and familiar nature of the unchanging Mass texts, and in part because fewer works were written for fewer than four voices. In some instances the use of prima pratica principles was a selfconscious imitation of an older style, the stile antico. This is the case in Monteverdi's six-voice Missa da cappella (1610), based on Gombert's motet In illo tempore, and reported to have been an undertaking of ‘great study and fatigue’. Deliberate archaism is also evident in Carissimi's L'homme armé Mass, both in the choice of a melody popular in the 15th and 16th centuries, and in the use of cantus firmus.

The prima pratica or stile antico masses were particularly prevalent in Rome, where the influence of Palestrina was strongest on his colleagues and pupils, and include works by the Anerios, G.M. Nanino and Soriano. These works continue Palestrina's restrained and careful treatment of melodic contours, rhythm and dissonance which is confined to suspensions, and they often use the longer note values typical of the 16th century. The texture is polyphonic and generally imitative, and some masses include deliberate learnedness in their use of devices such as canon. Nevertheless the harmonic language is increasingly tonal, shaped by regular harmonic rhythm and cadence. Although they are frequently designated ‘da cappella’ this does not imply unaccompanied performance: the organ frequently supported the voices, further emphasizing the harmonic elements of the composition. One surprising trait is the consistent use of all the voices and the avoidance of contrasting textures. Continuous, even relentless use of all six voices is a feature of Monteverdi's In illo tempore Mass. More commonly it is found in the use of the four-part SATB texture, which removes much potential for the contrast of varied groups. It is symptomatic that Palestrina's originally six-voice Missa Papae Marcelli was arranged for four voices by G.F. Anerio in 1619.

The advantages to the composer of the stile antico mass lay in its natural unity, preserved by such 16th-century techniques as parody or the use of head-motifs for different sections. The advantages to the performer were its natural simplicity, which made it suitable for small churches or for ferial days in larger ones. Its disadvantages lay in its inexpressiveness and divorce from contemporary idioms, and it is noticeable that these were alleviated in some works by the use of madrigalian turns of phrase, as in Monteverdi's four-part mass (published in 1650), a usage which was to lead to two distinct styles within the stile antico.

The survival of the polyphonic style in this simple form probably accounts partly for the paucity of few-voice concertante masses. Viadana was the first to essay the style in his Missa dominicalis (1607) for solo voice, a functional work that added a continuo accompaniment to the plainchant. This concept was not followed up, both chant and the single voice being too restrictive for an extended form, but masses for three to five voices proved more suitable. Those for three voices, such as that by Alessandro Grandi (i) (1630), naturally used a trio texture (two equal upper voices and bass), with little polyphonic development of themes. Later examples, notably Carissimi's Missa a tre (1665–6), often have more melodious solo phrases. Those for more voices use a quasi-contrapuntal manner, in which themes are passed from voice to voice, but as there is no necessity to continue with individual lines because of the harmonic function of the continuo, the effect is often diffuse with little working towards a climax as in true polyphony. The melody of few-voice concertante masses is governed by the highly syllabic setting of the words, although the influence of the triple-time aria of the 1630s and 40s is felt in works of the mid-Baroque period. The methods of organization are usually projections of those of the 16th century: Grandi used head-motifs; others, such as Banchieri in his mass (1628) on Monteverdi's continuo madrigal T'amo mia vita, used parody. The ostinato bass technique, during its vogue around 1630, was also applied to the mass, the severest example being Merula's mass on the Ruggiero (1639) in which the bass figure is used throughout the mass.

The practice of writing masses for two or more choirs, begun in the later 16th century, continued and developed in two ways: the use of several choirs with identical scoring separated spatially, and the combination of voices and instruments. The first of these methods was highly favoured in Rome, where polychoral music continued to follow the procedure and style established in the time of Palestrina and Victoria, with two or more choirs of similar scoring, most often C(antus)ATB. The choirs were often separated spatially in galleries or on specially built platforms, each with their own organ. Although the majority of these polychoral masses are set for two CATB choirs, there was a predilection in 17th-century Rome for the ‘colossal’ in the use of four or more choirs. According to the diarist Gigli, G.F. Anerio's first mass in the Gesù in 1616 was sung by eight choirs located in eight of the 14 galleries, and from the list of payments to organists it appears that in S Pietro the patronal feast was celebrated with 12 choirs in 1629. None of the surviving mass music is for more than four choirs. (Hintermaier established that Benevoli did not write the legendary 53-part Missa salisburgensis in 1628.) There are extant Roman masses for three choirs by Ugolini (1622), and parts of a mass for four choirs by Abbatini (1627). G.F. Anerio wrote the Missa Costantini for three choirs while serving the Polish court in Warsaw in the later 1620s. In Ugolini's Missa ‘Quae est ista’ most of the writing is for all 12 voices, but some sections are scored for three cantus and three altos or three tenors and three basses; the ‘Osanna’ of the Sanctus is a canon for 12 voices. The use of head-motifs and the stylistic idiom belong to the 16th century, but their deployment in the spatial context of three choirs places such a prima pratica work firmly within a 17th-century aesthetic. From mid-century and later come the better-known Roman polychoral masses for up to four choirs by Orazio Benevoli, Francesco Beretta and Carissimi. These massive works are far more extended (the concluding ‘Amen’ of the Credo may be as long as the complete Sanctus). They remain stylistically conservative with their reliance on the idioms of stile antico.

Archival evidence establishes that instruments were used with voices on occasion in Roman churches from at least the early 17th century, but their independent role in masses for two or more choirs was exploited more systematically and idiomatically in northern Italy. The mass in the second volume of Giovanni Gabrieli's Symphoniae sacrae (1615) requires trombones and solo voices in addition to a ripieno chorus. Although the motets of this collection make more imaginative use of such disparate forces, the mass is significant as one of the first to show idiomatic writing for instruments, virtuoso soloists and a less skilled choir. The tendency in all 17th-century music to reduce instrumental colours to comparatively few, based on string tone, is found almost at the outset in G.F. Capello’s Missa ad votum (1615), parodying an instrumental canzona by Antonio Mortaro, which adds a quintet of strings to three voices and continuo. Although the nature of the thematic material is similar for both voices and instruments, the function of the instruments to provide interludes between vocal sections is clearly defined. Ercole Porta’s Mass in G (1620) for two violins, three trombones, continuo and five-voice choir (or solo group), goes further in giving the voices expressively ornamented lines while the instruments double them at climactic, less flamboyant moments (the first violin often plays the second soprano part at the octave, a practice that became tradition in choral works of the later Baroque period). Porta's mass also shows the tendency towards division of movements into shorter sections, which is even more marked in Grandi's mass (1630) for soloists with ripieno chorus and orchestra, where the ‘Crucifixus’ is written as a miniature aria for solo tenor. In Monteverdi's mass written for the cessation of the Venetian plague of 1630, the Gloria is similarly divided into a series of duets, grouped together with strophic variation techniques, and massive contrapuntal choruses.

In the Venetian tradition it became common to omit one or more sections of the Ordinary as the scale of individual movements increased (missing sections might be replaced by instrumental music; see Organ mass and Sonata, §I). That there were problems of form in the grander settings of the mid-Baroque period is clear from the surviving examples. Cavalli's Messa concertata (1656) is typical of works by Orazio Tarditi (1648), Cazzati (1668) and others in that the extended triple-time arioso of the period often seems overlong when developed in concertante open work as in earlier few-voice concertante settings. Equally, the muted sonorities of the reduced cori spezzati forces allow insufficient variety, and the lack of tonal direction and coherence is restrictive. Cavalli's choral passages often employ counterpoint, just as the Bologna composers of the 1660s to 80s used the stile antico, a sign of the integration of the two styles of church music within the mass.

2. 17th century outside Italy.

Developments in Italy were generally followed elsewhere with varying degrees of promptness. In France during the first half of the century a generally conservative attitude prevailed. There was little novelty in church music during the wars between Catholics and Protestants which ended in 1628: Lassus rather than Palestrina was the principal influence, and the main composers of masses were provincial choirmasters, who wrote in the stile antico. The most interesting of these was Guillaume Bouzignac, whose works include one mass in traditional polyphony, another larger-scale piece for seven voices and a remarkable concertante work for two sopranos and organ.

Towards the middle of the century, Parisian composers turned more to setting the Mass but remained old-fashioned, although works attributed to Boësset (probably Jean-Baptiste) in a manuscript copied in the 1650s show more progressive attitudes. The advent of Louis XIV, which had a great effect on the motet, resulted in little progress in the royal chapel, since he preferred to hear Low Mass, as did his successors. The only French composer to make a considerable contribution was Charpentier, who remained outside the royal establishment and whose studies with Carissimi had a marked effect. One of his probably early works is a mass for four choirs after the manner of the Roman school, while a mass for four voices with instruments is written in a kind of modernized stile antico, with richly dissonant, and at times chromatic, harmony derived from the late madrigal rather than from Palestrina. His best-known work, the Messe de minuit pour Noël, breaks away from Italian models and is purely French in its adaptation of popular noëls, with square rhythms and alternations of orchestral, choral and solo sonorities after the manner of operatic and ballet music.

North of the Alps, Italian methods spread faster, owing both to German musicians studying in Venice and to the employment of Italian musicians in such important posts as that of Kapellmeister at Salzburg Cathedral. These links continued and strengthened through the century as students attended the Collegio Germanico in Rome, where a healthy musical tradition was fostered by such masters as Cifra, Agazzari and Carissimi. Thus the stile antico was much practised in both southern Germany and Austria, and to an extent in the Protestant states where the Lutheran liturgy retained the Kyrie and Gloria. Although some composers followed Italian fashion in making the style selfconsciously learned, most, including Buxtehude and Rosenmüller, used chromaticism and dissonance expressively, and were not afraid to use contrasts of texture, thus being more faithful to Palestrina. As in Italy, tonality as expressed by the tendency of figures to outline chords, and regularity of accent and harmonic rhythm, helped to modernize the style. The few-voice concertante style, though known in Germany as early as Johann Stadlmayr's mass collection (1610), was found more useful for motets and resulted in no considerable mass repertory.

However, the most distinctive contribution to the mass was in the development of cori spezzati ideas; unlike the Roman school, German composers found the mixture of instruments and voices of the late Venetians capable of further exploitation. Retaining many of the families of instruments (particularly wind and brass) of the late Renaissance orchestra, they eschewed the Italian tendency towards the monochrome, and thus preserved and at times increased the resources of the Venetians, especially in their use of clarino trumpets and the obsolescent cornetts. They were also conscious of the division between the ‘coro favorito’ (solo voices) and ripieno. The resulting music often has very simple harmonies, to accommodate the clarinos, and melodies that are less attractively fluent than those of contemporary Italians. Nonetheless, its brilliant sonorities and exploitation of choral dialogue made it the most exciting festive music of the 17th century. The works of Schmelzer, Kerll and Biber bring the style to its highpoint in the later part of the century and it is most probably to a composer of their epoch that the famous Missa salisburgensis in 53 parts belongs (not to Benevoli, as in DTÖ).

Elsewhere in Europe Italian domination was almost complete. The Polish court had Italian maestri di cappella until 1648, and such native composers as Marcin Mielczewski wrote in the stile antico. Succeeding generations were more enterprising: Bartłomiej Pękiel also wrote in the old style, but his Missa ‘La Lombardesca’ is a large-scale mass in a style similar to that of the mid-century Italians. Where Polish influences are to be found, as in his Missa paschalis (1662), which uses a Polish Easter hymn, the working out is in the motet manner developed by Germans such as Michael Praetorius for hymn settings. Bohemia shows a similar situation. At the beginning of the century Kryštof Harant z Polžic a Bezdružic significantly used Marenzio's madrigal Dolorosi martir for a parody mass (1602); and Adam Václav Michnaz Otradovic used the concertato style, writing a mass (in Sacra et litaniae, 1654) on an ostinato bass. The strict Roman Catholicism of Spain, Portugal and their uncultivated colonies may account in part for the musical conservatism of the church music, where the stile antico persisted well into the 18th century. Composers such as Bernardo Clavijo del Castillo, Mateo Romero, Joan Pau Pujol and Sebastián López de Velasco wrote masses in the stile antico, using cori spezzati in larger-scale works in a manner employed by their predecessors, Victoria and Alonso Lobo, close to that of Rome, but demonstrating an aesthetic and contrapuntal fluency far closer to the late 16th century than to their Italian contemporaries.

3. 18th century.

(i) Neapolitan.

The main influence on church music throughout much of the 18th century was the so-called Neapolitan school of composition. Its exponents were largely trained in the conservatories (originally foundling homes), where they learnt the art of church music first, only later turning to the more profitable opera; and they then often travelled abroad, spreading their style throughout Europe. Although the source of the style was thus homogenous, the resulting music is extremely varied, the more so since Neapolitan-trained composers flourished throughout the century and followed the period's main developments. There is, therefore, no ‘Neapolitan’ mass or even ‘cantata mass’ style, but rather a general attitude that infected the whole century. Virtually all composers studied the stile antico, though not all wrote complete masses in it. Alessandro Scarlatti, eight of whose ten masses are in the stile antico, took a strict approach that allowed little expressiveness; others, notably Francesco Durante, used chromaticism and irregular harmonies even in works marked ‘in Palestrina’ (e.g. the four-voice mass in I-Nc 470).

But the stile antico also pervades many masses in the more common ‘stilus mixtus’. The mixture is drawn from three main elements: choruses in stile antico with orchestral doubling of the voices; choruses where the orchestra plays a prominent part in the formal organization; and music for solo voices. To accommodate these, the text of the Mass was sectionalized, as in certain 17th-century settings, except that for the Neapolitans the individual items were more or less independent of each other and much important mass music consists of settings of only the Kyrie and Gloria. Some items served a structural purpose, such as the fugues that became customary for the ‘Amen’ settings that end the Gloria and Credo, while others used the expressive manner for solemn moments such as the ‘Crucifixus’ (e.g. Leo's mass for ten voices, I-Nc 1039). The choruses with independent accompaniment reflect the rise of orchestral forms. In these the chorus is mostly homophonic, with a syllabic declamation of the words, often in stereotyped regular rhythms, fulfilling the functions of recitative and of strengthening the continuo harmonies; the orchestra is given the main thematic material. In the early part of the century, themes were generally worked out as though in a concerto, as in Alessandro Scarlatti's ‘St Cecilia’ Mass (where, however, the treatment of the voices is more thematic than usual). There are sometimes echoes of the French overture (e.g. Durante's Mass in B, I-Nc 469; Sabatino's mass, I-Nc 3044). Later, incipient symphonic forms appeared, as in Jommelli's fine Missa nsolemnis (1766), whose Credo opens in the manner of an operatic overture and develops material in a manner similar to a concerto, even though it involves bringing back the word ‘Credo’ in an unliturgical way. Sections for solo voice do not always occur, and they are usually most extended in works by opera composers. Porpora's Mass in D (I-Nc 1630) has a Gloria with a florid aria for ‘Laudamus te’, and a scarcely less elaborate duet for ‘Domine Deus’ dominates the whole movement.

The Neapolitan formula is found with different regional and personal emphases in virtually all Europe. A few examples, such as the rather eccentric masses of the antiquarian Padre Martini in Bologna, resulted in large-scale contrapuntal essays using canon and other learned devices. In Venice, the most important church music also came out of the conservatories, and in general style followed that of Naples; the divergences were caused by the nearly exclusive use of girls in the choirs, which caused difficulties in writing in the stile antico. There was therefore an even stronger preference for the orchestrally orientated mass, and for the use of the solo voice. Vivaldi's well-known Gloria in D is a typical example, for even though men's voices are brought in for the choruses, the opening section is virtually a concerto allegro with ‘vocal continuo’ and the solo sections are for women. Remarkable and by no means typical is his Kyrie in which there is a florid concertante part for soprano, setting words outside the Mass text almost in the manner of a trope. Galuppi's church music similarly recalls his symphonic works, while Jommelli's Mass in F for the Incurabili (I-Nc 977) offsets the limitations of using SSAA chorus and strings by including elaborate parts for no fewer than five soloists.

Outside Italy the Neapolitan style was especially influential in Germany and Austria, having little effect in France, where there was still little demand for sung Ordinaries. Surprisingly, the greatest work in the style was by a northern Protestant, J.S. Bach, whose Mass in B minor shows the mixture of styles at its most diverse. As with many Italian as well as Lutheran works, it was designed as a setting of the Kyrie and Gloria alone, the other sections being conceived as separate entities and in some cases drawn from existing works. This helps to explain the disparities of style and resources. Local traditions determined that the choruses played a larger role than in many Neapolitan works. In these choruses the stile antico is used extensively but in an idiom adapted to an 18th-century style, using freer harmonies and a more natural command of device. The choruses with orchestral continuity improved equally on the Neapolitan principles, especially those in ritornello form, which are much tighter than most of their Italian equivalents. The solo music is less operatic than that of the Italians, its elaborate ornamentations unlike the relative musical simplicity of their traditional treatment of da capos; the use of obbligato instruments shows that Bach preferred trio texture to pure aria. The orchestration is equally German, in both the wide range of wind instruments and their groupings, as for example in the ‘Quoniam’, scored for horn, bassoons, continuo and solo voice. His other masses are all of the Lutheran Kyrie–Gloria form.

The Roman Catholic composers of southern Germany and Austria were more thoroughly indoctrinated in the Italian style, especially since the principal composers at the leading court of Dresden, Lotti and Hasse, were distinguished in opera. Lotti wrote a great deal in the stile antico, both in a severe style and in the richer vein displayed by the well-known ‘Crucifixus’ from his Credo for eight voices (F-Pc), which shows how much dissonance and chromaticism can be encompassed within the rules of suspension and resolution. Fux, at Vienna, preferred the strict manner, although his music is completely tonal and rhythmically quite rigid compared with the 16th-century models he undoubtedly knew. In addition to strict a cappella masses, he wrote settings in a grander vein that are both backward-looking and Baroque. His instrumental resources include trumpets, trombones and occasionally a cornett, together with strings. The trumpets sometimes play fanfare-like material (as in the symphonies in the Missa corporis Christi), the trombones usually doubling the voices in the traditional manner. There is solo music for the voices, although the development of a section for single voice is rarely on a large scale. The chorus sings either in homophony, often in an expressive harmonic idiom far from that of the Neapolitans, or in the stile antico, although this is not so severely old-fashioned as in the a cappella masses. Hasse's 14 masses tend much more towards a galant interpretation of Neapolitan principles; the most attractive element occurs in the solo music, where an ability to write operatic arias for soprano clearly stood him in good stead. Here the straightforwardness of ornament (although the writing is still exceedingly florid) and the use of vocal colour more nearly approach operatic style than do his Italian models. His choral writing uses both the stile antico and the orchestral style, the latter less purposeful in its development of material, giving rise to pleasant rather than taut music. This is the feeling of much church music of the mid-18th century, as for example that of Haydn's teacher in Vienna, the younger Georg Reutter, whose solo writing cannot compare with Hasse's and whose choral movements often consist of purely routine homophony for the choir, accompanied by constant movement with little thematic significance in the violins (‘rauschende Violinen’). It was nevertheless the Viennese who pointed the way from the strictly sectional nature of the Neapolitan mass to something more integrated, by making the separate sections of Gloria and Credo join more satisfactorily, and by taking more trouble to make the vocal parts tuneful.

(ii) Viennese.

Even in Austria the stile antico persisted in the mid- and late 18th century, with examples by Reutter (3), Werner (5), Wagenseil, Albrechtsberger (4), Michael Haydn, Leopold Hofmann and Salieri, and the Missa ‘Sunt bona mixta malis’ by Joseph Haydn. Neverthless, the mainstream of the Viennese tradition derives largely from the work at the Viennese court, early in the century, of the highly influential Kapellmeister J.J. Fux and his Venetian colleague Antonio Caldara. Of the three important composers of masses in the Austrian tradition in the later 18th century, both Joseph and Michael Haydn were pupils of Reutter, also a Viennese court Kapellmeister, whose work their early essays in the genre resemble. Michael's Missa in honorem sanctissimae Trinitatis has the same busy violin figuration for solos and rather dull choral parts, while Joseph's Missa ‘Rorate coeli desuper’ and Missa brevis in F show the same technique, though occasionally investing such words as ‘incarnatus’ with deeper feeling. His Missa in honorem BVM (hXXII:4, by 1774) has a concertante part for organ, and uses the solo quartet as a concertino to be set against orchestra and tutti, which, together with some modern (as opposed to stile antico) counterpoint, puts more emphasis on the voice without being operatic. Mozart, whose complete masses all date from the period 1768–80, showed his operatic leanings in his earliest works (k139/47a and k66) by following the Neapolitan model closely, in the former even using the brass to give a theatrical atmosphere in the ‘Crucifixus’. A similar influence may be seen in his treatment of the ‘Et incarnatus’, usually with a hushed tone, chromaticism and often a move to the minor mode. Mozart's main preoccupation in the early 1770s, however, was with the missa brevis, forced on him by the reforming taste of the Salzburg archbishop, sometimes resulting in polytextual word setting and in less fugal writing (most of his longer mass settings, in the Salzburg tradition of Eberlin and Michael Haydn, have extended fugues on ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’ to end the Gloria and ‘Et vitam venturi’ to end the Credo). From this period come his ‘Credo’ masses (k192/186f and 257), in which he used the Austrian tradition of having a figure set to the word ‘Credo’ recur throughout an entire section. He also introduced symphonic devices, especially in the ‘Coronation’ Mass (k317), which has virtually a complete thematic recapitulation in the Gloria and music from the Kyrie returning in faster tempo at ‘Dona nobis pacem’; however, the solo Agnus Dei, with its strong suggestion of ‘Dove sono’ (Le nozze di Figaro), serves to recall that his ecclesiastical and operatic idioms were close. Both Haydn and Mozart produced fine masses in the year before the abolition of elaborate church music by the Emperor Joseph II in 1783. Haydn's Missa Cellensis (‘Mariazeller’, hXXII:8) is notable for its imaginative treatment of sonata principles in the context of choral music and for its concertante interplay of solo quartet and chorus. Mozart's unfinished C minor Mass k427/417a is a ‘Neapolitan’ mass, but with the stile antico element now interpreted as the Handelian manner of choral writing, with Baroque dotted rhythms, ground bass techniques and the use of double choir.

Haydn resumed writing masses in 1796 as a direct result of new duties for the Esterházy household on the assumption of Prince Nicolaus II, and the six works he wrote, finishing in 1802, are among the greatest settings ever made. All are ‘solemn masses’ scored for medium or large orchestra and show an expansion of scale over previous masses in the Viennese tradition. Although there are operatic-style sections, notably at times in the ‘Benedictus’, the predominant manner is that of the symphony. Three of the Kyries have slow introductions which lead into Allegro movements, that of the ‘Theresienmesse’ being specially close to those of Haydn's London symphonies; and it is usual for the Sanctus to be similarly constructed, the Allegro arriving at the words ‘Pleni sunt coeli’ or ‘Osanna’. The Kyrie is also often in a variant of sonata form, as in the Missa in tempore belli, where, after the slow introduction, the Allegro exploits the customary key structure. In both the Missa Sancti Bernardi von Offida and the ‘Theresienmesse’ a similar pattern is combined with fugal textures; and in the ‘Nelsonmesse’ (hXXII:11) the form is close to the concerto, with a ritornello section preceding the ‘exposition’. In this work the concertante nature is emphasized by a florid part for solo soprano; but normally the soloists are used in the early Baroque manner as a quartet contrasting with the ripieno, rather than with individual roles. Other reminiscences of Baroque practice occur in the fugues that end both Gloria and Credo, although the counterpoint derives not from Palestrina as much as from the Fuxian fugal style of the op.20 string quartets. The orchestra is used in the longer movements to provide continuity, and there are still relics both of trio textures and of the rapid violin figurations of Reutter. There are also dramatic moments, in the ‘Nelsonmesse’ as in the Missa in tempore belli, where trumpets and drums play fanfares at the climax of the Benedictus and Agnus Dei, a tradition dating to at least the Fux era in Austria.

In southern Germany and Austria the symphonic manner was more influential, perhaps because (with the main exception of Weber) the composers were less often involved in the theatre. Two types of setting are discernible, both using choir, orchestra and soloists, and symphonic procedures. The first is modest in scale (though not so short as to be a true missa brevis), derived from the early style of Haydn and Mozart. It is characterized by comparatively simple melodic lines for the soloists, who are treated as a concertante group rather than as individuals, and homophonic treatment of the choir (except in traditionally fugal sections, which are usually brief). The orchestra provides unifying material, though rarely in the intense way of Haydn. The masses of Hummel are typical: his Gloria openings are often recapitulated at the ‘Osanna’ of the Sanctus; similarly, the opening of the Credo often recurs at ‘Et resurrexit’, without any close thematic development during the remainder of the movement. The choral writing in such masses also differs from Haydn's in being more obviously melodious, as in Schubert's G major Mass (d167), which has a distinct pastoral flavour, its tunes close to folksong or the simple songs of Singspiele; folksong influence is even stronger in Weber's G major Mass. The ‘pastoral’ mass as a recognizable type continued to be developed, as in Diabelli's mass of 1830 and in the work of such minor composers as Ludwig Rotter, Schiedermayr, Lidl, F.M. Kníže and Kempter. The work that pushes this short mass technique and style to its limits is Beethoven's C major setting, with the melodious opening of the Kyrie recapitulated at the final ‘Dona nobis pacem’. The quasi-sonata form of the Kyrie is, significantly, worked out in the vocal parts rather than in the orchestra, in contradistinction to the usual 18th-century practice as exemplified by the Neapolitans; the contrapuntal textures of the Gloria approach Cherubini's style, especially the extensive concluding fugue.

4. 19th century.

Haydn’ ‘Nelsonmesse’ and the Missa in tempere belli may have been written with knowledge of French church music of the Revolutionary period. This was mainly the work of Italians living in Paris, and was an offshoot of Neapolitan traditions, though with some distinctive stylistic features, notably in the use of wind instruments encouraged by the nature of the new Conservatoire. Of Paisiello's masses, one (I-Nc 1268–9) for double choir uses a large orchestra divided so that the strings support the first choir and a full wind band the second choir. The Gloria is especially expansive, with horn and trumpet fanfares at solemn moments. Another for similar forces (I-Nc rari senza numero) puts more emphasis on the solo voices, especially the soprano who has several highly decorated arias, one with a pause for a cadenza, a feature that approaches the later style of Rossini. A Messa in pastorale per il Natale per la cappella del Primo Consolo (1802) uses the wind instruments for concertante solos; its siciliana rhythms reflect a tradition, deriving from Charpentier’s Messe de minuit, of pastoral Christmas masses (see Pastoral, §5), of which there were several other 18th-century examples, notably by Durante, G.O. Pitoni, Zelenka, Abbé Vogler, Vanhal and the Czech J.J. Ryba (to a vernacular paraphrase). Cherubini's eight surviving masses also show an individually French approach. His earliest settings (now lost) were probably student works, and a Credo for eight voices in double choir, completed in 1806, shows his intensive practice in the stile antico. His first complete mass of importance, in F, dates from 1808–9; although in general it approaches the forms used by Haydn, whose works he admired, it is more consistently contrapuntal, with a fugal passage in the ‘Christe eleison’ and extended fugues in the usual places. The solo writing is much less florid than that of 18th-century composers. These features reappear in his first really mature setting, in D minor (1811); the soloists are used entirely in ensemble with the writing a little more decorated than that for the chorus. The chorus itself is the protagonist: sometimes it is used in a quasi-dramatic manner, as in the ‘Et resurrexit’, accompanied by trumpet fanfares, following a ‘Crucifixus’ in which funeral march rhythms are prominent in the orchestra; at other times the choruses are in a heightened stile antico, with specially extensive treatment of the second Kyrie and the ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’. In scale the mass as a whole is comparable to Beethoven's Missa solemnis, while Cherubini's later setting, in C major (1816), may well have been influenced by Beethoven's mass in the same key. In his last mass (1825), written for the coronation of Charles X in Reims, Cherubini's attitude is distinctly more theatrical, including a ‘Marcia religiosa’ for the communion. It is significant that Spohr, visiting Paris in 1820, found church music more completely operatic there than anywhere else.

Larger settings also develop the forms through the vocal rather than the orchestral material. Schubert's last two masses, in A and E, both recapitulate material in the symphonic manner in the Kyrie and Gloria sections, but the structure is contained in the choral writing, even though there are relics of 18th-century procedures, as in the Gloria of the A Mass, which has the rushing violinistic accompaniment of the kind used by Reutter. The most notable features of these works are the sophisticated chromatic harmonies which infect even the stile antico fugues, and Schubert's penchant for interesting orchestral effects, now distinctly non-thematic and Romantic. The writing for solo voices owes little to opera: the quartet is used as an entity rather than as individuals, with songlike melody for soprano predominating. The largest setting of this period is Beethoven's conventionally named Missa solemnis, intended for the enthronement of Archduke Rudolph of Austria as Archbishop of Olmütz in 1820, though completed only in 1823. Though the scale is considerably greater than even the largest mass of Cherubini, and the manner of writing, especially for the voice, goes beyond the potential of normal church circumstances, in many respects it is a continuation of the symphonic settings of the Viennese school. The formal patterns are extensions of Haydn's procedures, as in the Kyrie which, in the light of Beethoven's late style, may be interpreted as being in sonata form. The vocal writing contains both choral recitative and fugues, the soloists again used mostly as a group, although the way the ‘Benedictus’ grows out of a bass solo adding voices until the quartet are all involved is slightly more elaborate. The contrapuntal style is an individual interpretation of the stile antico, with dissonance largely confined to suspensions and passing notes, and the arrangement of note values for individual melodic lines is derived from the species of Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum. The orchestration is typical of Beethoven's later years; the ‘Preludium’ (so entitled by the composer) between the Sanctus and Benedictus, an interesting traditional feature, fulfils essentially the function of the Baroque sonata da chiesa. The occasional military calls for brass and drums derive from Haydn's late masses. Thus the Missa solemnis can in no sense be considered unliturgical by the light of its own time. Its difficulties lie in the treatment of the performers, especially the high tessitura of the vocal parts.

In the post-Beethoven era there came to be an essential divorce between sacred music conceived for the concert hall and that conceived for the church, a division accentuated by the growth of amateur choral societies in both Great Britain and Germany. The trend towards antiquarianism, particularly in the Cecilian movement (which although officially begun in the 1860s had much earlier roots), stressed the revival of older church music but did not provide incentives for composers to write new masses in a contemporary idiom. Furthermore, the decline of royal chapels after the French Revolution meant that few composers of significance had to compose church music as a major duty. Thus masses tend to be isolated, either student works or occasional music. In Italy the ‘cantata mass’ was dominated by the operatic idiom, the most distinguished example being Rossini's Petite messe solennelle (1864), written after his retirement from opera and scored for piano and harmonium accompaniment. The chorus sings either in a freely contrapuntal stile antico or as the background to operatic scenas, while the solo music is in an operatic style somewhat less florid than usual. This tradition is also found in the many mass movements by Donizetti and in Puccini's one mass. In France, the style of Cherubini and the study of counterpoint at the Paris Conservatoire helped to preserve church music from this domination. This is to be seen in the ‘orchestral’ masses of Gounod, who used orchestral effects freely in a quasi-dramatic manner but gave the greater part of the material to the chorus rather than to soloists, using traditional choral homophony in the Gloria and Credo and maintaining a remarkably pure harmonic style. It was in that ambience, under the tutelage of Le Sueur, that Berlioz composed his very early, rejected Messe solennelle in 1824 (presumed destroyed by the composer until its rediscovery in 1991), a setting in 14 movements for three soloists, choir and orchestra, from which he later quarried material for re-use in the Symphonie fantastique, Benvenuto Cellini, the Requiem and the Te Deum.

In Germany and Austria the most interesting large-scale settings are those by Liszt and Bruckner. Liszt's mass for the coronation of Emperor Franz Josef as King of Hungary in 1867 uses a large orchestra, to which much of the thematic material is given; the choral homophony, in which soloists and tutti are frequently contrasted, is used imaginatively to gain additional effects of colour, even though it is based, in the Credo, on the plainchant style. The two smaller works for chorus and organ revert to the manner of the missa brevis, where simple counterpoint and often richly harmonized homophony alternate. The obvious attempt to make this music suitable for liturgical use, both in the use of limited forces and in the retrospective style, does not preclude strong emotional effects, such as the breaking up of the melodic line in the Kyrie or the anguished harmonies of the ‘Crucifixus’ of the Missa choralis (1865). Bruckner's masses were also conceived as an attempt at combining traditional means of expression with novel ones. In the masses with full orchestra he used symphonic patterns, even though this could involve the repetition of words in an unliturgical manner (as in the Credo of the F minor Mass). The choral writing, both in homophonic and in fugal sections, has at times a chant-like quality, at others a resemblance to the ‘old’ polyphony, although the latter contains much dramatic and angular melody. The E minor Mass is even nearer Austrian tradition in its use of wind band mainly to support a choir of up to eight parts (although significant material is occasionally given to the instruments rather than the voices). In none of these works is there any resemblance to a purely secular style, and yet they are far from being classifiable as stile antico.

The solutions to the liturgical problem offered by Liszt and Bruckner did not lead to any substantial developments, and by the end of the 19th century settings were of two kinds: the ‘concert’ mass for soloists, full choir and orchestra, with virtually no attempt to provide suitable music for use in church, and the small-scale setting, often in a completely retrospective style and of little musical ambition. Examples of the first may be found among British composers' works such as the settings by Stanford (1893), which follow the style of Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem in their conception for amateur choral societies or Singvereine, and particularly Ethel Smyth's Mass in D (1891), in which the order of movements places the Gloria at the end (as in the Book of Common Prayer), making a more obviously effective concert conclusion. Masses of the second kind were widespread in origin, assisted by not only the Cecilian movement in Germany but also the work of the Ecole Niedermeyer and Schola Cantorum in Paris. The decline of this type was assisted by the new printed editions of the original models, mainly from the 16th century, which became universally known by the beginning of the 20th century.

The reluctance of major 20th-century Christian composers to set the Mass texts is best exemplified in Messiaen, whose only setting, a Mass for eight sopranos and four violins (1933), remains unpublished. The outstanding modernist setting is Stravinsky's Latin Mass for soloists, choir and ten wind and brass instruments (1944–8). The writing is uncompromising, and the aesthetic is closer to the Russian Orthodox than the Roman Catholic Church, but its scale is entirely appropriate to the liturgy even if it is more often performed in the concert hall. This work was composed in the USA, as was Hindemith's only Latin mass (1963), which harks back to the polyphony of Bach. By contrast, the unaccompanied Mass in G by Poulenc (1937) adapts the lyricism and harmonic colour of French mélodie to unaccompanied sacred music. Chromatic colour is also a feature of the Mass for double choir by Frank Martin (1922–6, first performed 1963).

5. 20th century.

Settings of the Mass text with orchestra continued in Janáček's large-scale Glagolitic Mass (1926) with Slavonic text, and Kodály's more modest Missa brevis (1948). In the aftermath of World War II, Alfredo Casella set the Mass Ordinary in his Missa solemnis ‘Pro pace’ for solists, chorus and orchestra (1944), but Britten chose to combine the Requiem text with poems by Wilfred Owen for the comparable War Requiem (1961–2). This collage technique was taken a step further by the American-Jewish composer Leonard Bernstein in his Mass, a theatre piece for singers, players and dancers (1971). Peter Maxwell Davies's L'homme armé (1968) represents a more radical transformation of a 15th-century mass with superimposed narrative of the Last Supper into an ironic secular music-theatre piece. Much earlier Delius took texts from Nietzsche for the work he entitled provocatively A Mass of Life (1904–8).

The revival of choral celebration of Holy Communion in the Anglican Church in the late 19th century marked the beginning of a steady stream of liturgical settings of Mass texts in English, mostly for choir and organ. Those of Stanford belong to complete cycles of service music, with linked themes and elements of sonata principle in their construction. Similar choral settings have been composed by English organist-composers, including Harold Darke, Francis Jackson, Herbert Sumsion and Arthur Wills, as well as by Herbert Howells, Kenneth Leighton and William Mathias, together with Roman Catholic Latin masses by Edmund Rubbra, Egon Wellesz and Lennox Berkeley. In the first quarter of the century Charles Wood's unaccompanied setting in the Phrygian mode (1919) attempted to match the modal language of the 16th century vernacular parish worship, while Martin Shaw's An Anglican Folk Mass (1918) for unison voices drew on native hymn melodies. These last two works reflect the worthy but self-conscious stance adopted by some composers in writing for the liturgy. Far more important and successful are the unaccompanied double-choir Mass in G minor by Vaughan Williams (1920–21), which draws heavily on 16th-century polyphonic and modal idioms, and the striking Missa brevis in D for boys' voices and organ by Britten (1959) written for Westminster Cathedral.

The move to reinvigorate Lutheran church music during the 1930s can be observed in the mass settings of Hindemith's contemporaries and pupils Hugo Distler, J.N. David and Ernst Pepping. European organist-composers have also made regular contributions to the repertory, among them Maurice Duruflé, Jean Langlais (notably the Mass ‘Salve regina’ for choir, congregation, organ and brass, 1954), Hendrik Andriessen, Flor Peeters and also Anton Heiller, whose masses break away from the modally derived, chromatically coloured idioms typical of these composers by employing 12-note methods in the Missa super modos duodecimales (1960) and the Kleine Messe über Zwölftonmodelle (1961). In Canada the organist-composer Healey Willan wrote 14 settings of the missa brevis (1928–63).

The movement for liturgical reform which had been gaining ground during the 20th century began to take effect especially from the 1960s, when most Christian churches with formal patterns of worship reviewed and revised their orders of service. This radical and continuing process has resulted in revised forms of the Mass, comprehensible modern texts (especially in the Roman Catholic Church, where the local vernacular has largely displaced Latin) and new pastoral theology which emphasizes the active participation of all present. This has stimulated a plethora of functional mass music using a variety of accessible styles, some popular and some genuinely ethnic, generally local in production and use, some with new procedures of refrain and response to encourage congregational involvement, often led by a solo cantor rather than a choir. Some of the most striking results come from Africa and South America. At the same time the availability of new editions of early music and the freer migration of sacred music across denominational boundaries have allowed professional and able amateur church choirs to sing the mass repertory of the 16th to early 19th centuries. Since the 1970s much significant music based on Christian spirituality has been written (in Europe, for instance, by Messiaen, Penderecki and Pärt, in Britain by John Tavener, Jonathan Harvey and James MacMillan) but not settings of the texts of the Mass. At the end of the 20th century the requirements of a pastoral liturgy offered little opportunity for musical creativity. The tension between the liturgical purpose and creative treatment of the texts of the Mass Ordinary, apparent since the 16th century, may have fractured permanently.