Roman Catholic church music.

I. Introduction

The liturgical diversification that had occurred in Europe during the first half of the 16th century was to have a profound effect both on the role of music in worship and on its style. Some Reformers rejected all music except unison congregational song, while others saw the value of continuing older practices and adapting contemporary musical styles to a new repertory in the vernacular. The Council, in response, reasserted the use of Latin and Latin plainchant in the Catholic liturgy, prohibited singing in the vernacular, approved the use of polyphony and rejected secular musical influences. From this point in the history of music, therefore, it is possible to begin to speak of a distinctly ‘Roman Catholic’ musical tradition.

The major themes of the ensuing discussion are the correspondence between music and piety and the relationship between liturgical music and the contemporary styles that arose in the secular sphere. These styles were either accepted (the more usual course of action) or rejected by composers writing for the Catholic liturgy. The text most frequently set to music was the Ordinary of the Mass, but the vesper psalms and Magnificat were sometimes given elaborate settings for solo voices, chorus and instruments. There also exists a large repertory of sacred music with Latin text, whose use within the framework of the liturgy cannot always be determined precisely.

Gregorian chant was regarded – at least ideally – as the principal musical heritage of the Catholic Church until the Second Vatican Council. Although many medieval elements were eliminated from the vernacular liturgy introduced in the 1960s, the use of chant was not proscribed. However, the virtual disappearance of the Latin Mass, the adoption of metrical hymnody in the vernacular, and the cultivation of idioms derived from popular music relegated plainchant to a subordinate position, its use in the liturgy now being mostly confined to monasteries and some cathedrals.

At the end of the 16th century the glory of Catholic church music was the polyphonic idiom that had achieved an extraordinary degree of perfection in the hands of late Renaissance masters such as Lassus, Palestrina and Victoria. With the dawn of the 17th century, monody – a new style based on completely different, indeed antithetical, textural, structural, formal and expressive principles – superseded it, although the art of 16th-century polyphony, henceforth known as the stile antico, was never completely neglected. Opera, the dominant vocal genre from the mid-17th century into the 19th, exercised a frequently irresistible influence on composers of Catholic church music, and by the latter half of the 18th century the rapidly maturing symphonic style began to influence orchestral masses and vesper psalms. The 19th century was less notable for its contribution to the repertory of Catholic church music than for the initiation of projects to ‘purify’ liturgical music of secular influence. Renaissance polyphony was revived and served as the model for (generally uninspired) imitations. The singing of Gregorian chant was encouraged, and efforts to restore the authentic medieval melodies gained ground.

In the early 20th century, Catholic church music continued largely on the course laid out in the last third of the previous century, but a number of notable original compositions in contemporary styles were added to the Church's musical patrimony. In the wake of the liturgical revisions authorized by the Second Vatican Council, however, the proliferation of musical styles rooted in popular idioms has given rise to an ironic situation. Secular musical style, denounced for centuries by Church Fathers, councils, synods, popes and bishops, has become in a very real sense the basis of many of the songs sung at the liturgy in Catholic parishes today.

II. The 16th century in Europe

1. The Reformation and the Council of Trent.

The Reformers of the 16th century demanded that Christian worship be modified more or less radically to permit the laity's meaningful participation. Their opposition to the Mass was thus not confined to theological issues but extended to its celebration in a language (Latin) understood only by the clergy and educated laity. In addition to the linguistic barrier, some churches had a large choir-screen of wood, wrought iron or stone that virtually hid the officiating priest and his assistants from view; in a few Italian churches a transverse wall (tramezzo) across the nave blocked the entire altar space from the view of those standing in the nave.

The spectrum of opinion among the Reformers about new patterns of worship was wide indeed. Luther proceeded cautiously, maintaining that he had no intention of abolishing the Mass but of reforming it. He recognized the value of congregational song, and his various orders of worship provided for frequent singing in the vernacular by pastor, congregation and choir. The Swiss Reformers Ulrich Zwingli and Jean Calvin created new orders of service for, respectively, the German- and French-speaking parts of Switzerland. Zwingli, though well-versed in music and its performance, made no provision for music in the Reformed service he designed for Zürich. Calvin permitted only unison congregational singing in the vernacular.

The Roman Catholic Church could not ignore the profound changes that had taken place in the way people worshipped and in the music used for worship in the Reformed Churches, but this subject did not receive formal consideration until the Council of Trent, which met intermittently between 1545 and 1563, had nearly completed its work. Apart from resolutions affirming the use of Latin as opposed to the vernacular, the primacy of Gregorian chant and the use of polyphonic music (see §I above), the Council made few detailed decisions about the future course of Catholic church music. Provincial councils and local synods retained their authority to determine specific guidelines ‘according to the custom of the country’. Anything redolent of secular music was strictly forbidden, as was music intended merely to give pleasure (‘inanem aurium oblectationem’) to the listeners.

Intelligibility of the words in polyphony (‘ut verba ab omnibus percipi possunt’) was paramount, but this expectation had been the norm for decades in secular genres such as the frottola and the madrigal. While ecclesiastics would have memorized the texts to which many motets were set (not to mention the text of the Ordinary of the Mass), comprehensibility could be thwarted if all the voices sang different words simultaneously. (See §II, 2, ex.1, bars 12–16; by this point in the piece, however, the three text fragments would have already been clearly declaimed.)

One of the primary goals of the Tridentine liturgical regulations was uniformity in the celebration of the Mass and the Divine Office throughout the Roman Catholic Church: ‘typical’ editions of the reformed breviary (1568) and missal (1570) were printed and made obligatory. Spain enjoyed a special dispensation from the imposition of the Roman books, as did liturgical uses that could claim an antiquity of 200 years or more. (Under these provisions the Dominican Order was able to preserve its special Mass ritual until the 1960s.) Pope Sixtus V charged the Congregation of Rites, which he established in 1588, with the task of ensuring that the liturgy prescribed in these books was observed and of adjudicating whatever questions might arise.

2. The polyphonic mass and motet.

The masses and motets composed during the latter half of the 16th century generally avoided the complex contrapuntal artifices (e.g. canons, abstract cantus firmi and complicated proportional schemes) of the earlier part of the century in favour of polyphonic transparency and formal clarity. The music flows naturally from points of imitation into homophonic passages designed to produce a clear rhythmic and melodic declamation of the text. The two techniques were made to blend almost imperceptibly, creating a seamless web of sound, as in the motet Exaltata est (see ex.1) by Giammateo Asola (c1532–1609). The music of Palestrina (1525/6–94), which represented for succeeding generations the epitome of the sacred in music, reconciled the demands of linear elegance, harmonic clarity, contrapuntal mastery, control of dissonance and clarity of textual declamation in a music of rich sonority.

Although Palestrina dominated the Roman school of polyphony, his was not the only style cultivated in the latter half of the 16th century. A leading figure in Spain, Francisco Guerrero (c1528–99), a student of Cristóbal de Morales (c1500–53), was for 50 years associated with Seville Cathedral. His works are much more strongly flavoured by dissonance and the use of voice spacings generally avoided by Palestrina and his followers. Guerrero influenced the leading composer of Spanish sacred music in the 16th century, Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548–1611). Often compared with Palestrina, Victoria cultivated a sober style, expressive harmonic language, careful text declamation and a subtle use of ‘madrigalisms’ to illustrate the text. His music and that of other Spanish composers was transmitted to the Americas in the 16th century.

The prolific Orlande de Lassus (1532–94), Kapellmeister of the Bavarian ducal court at Munich, produced large quantities of Latin sacred music of all types: masses, motets (as many as 1200), offertories, psalms, hymns, passions and litanies in settings ranging from duets to large-scale polychoral works in the Venetian style. Lassus mixed polyphonic and homophonic textures freely, resulting often in a strongly individual interpretation of the text. The same features are found in the music of his student Gregor Aichinger (1564/5–1628), who later studied with Giovanni Gabrieli in Venice. Aichinger, inspired by Lodovico Viadana (c1560–1627), also cultivated the sacred concerto for one or more voices with basso continuo, a genre that came into vogue in the early years of the 17th century. His contemporary, Hans Leo Hassler (c1564–1612), a pupil of Giovanni's uncle Andrea, had little interest in the modern italianate innovations that fascinated his German colleague; even his many polychoral works eschew the colourful Venetian instrumental practice that he knew so well. In Augsburg, where both composers worked – one a Catholic priest (Aichinger), the other (Hassler) a Protestant writing for the Catholic Church – a confessional détente had been reached.

Religious tolerance in England was notably less relaxed than on the Continent. Repressive measures were taken against Catholics (‘recusants’), some of whom were members of aristocratic families which had remained faithful to Rome. Attendance at a clandestine Mass could bring serious reprisals, and there could be no question of cultivating liturgical music in a way that might attract undesired attention. England's leading composer, William Byrd (1543–1623), was a Catholic, but since he enjoyed the singular favour of Queen Elizabeth I, he was permitted to publish music patently intended for Catholic worship. Neither Byrd's Propers for the major feasts of the liturgical year contained in the two Gradualia volumes (1605 and 1607) nor his three settings of the Mass Ordinary make reference to chant themes. Byrd's choice of texts implies a departure from the traditional English Sarum rite in favour of Roman use.

3. The revision of chant.

In the ‘typical’ editions of liturgical books that appeared after the Council of Trent, the chant texts were only slightly emended and would therefore have required minimal changes to the melodies. The work of adaptation was entrusted by Pope Gregory XIII (pontificate 1572–85) to Palestrina and Annibale Zoilo (c1537–92), a member of the papal chapel. They embarked on a comprehensive revision of the traditional melodies according to humanistic principles, which conflicted with the aesthetic of medieval chant. The general concepts that guided Palestrina and Zoilo had already been promoted in the 16th century and were embodied most notably in Giovanni Guidetti's influential Directorium chori (1582), in which rhythmic values were assigned to each note of a chant melody according to the long (i.e. accented) and short (unaccented) syllables of the text. In practice this process led to the truncation or elimination of melismas on weak or final syllables, the abbreviation of some melismas falling on accented syllables, and the rearrangement of the text under the neumes. When it became known how radically the two revisers intended to transform the melodies, work on the project was halted.

After Palestrina's death, his son Iginio tried to publish his father's revision of the chants of the Temporale (and not incidentally to profit therefrom), but in attempting to pass off as Palestrina's work a forged revision of the Sanctorale he became involved in legal proceedings. Two other Roman musicians, Felice Anerio (c1560–1614) and Francesco Soriano (1548/9–1621), finally undertook to revise the melodies on the basis of guidelines (allegedly promulgated by Pope Paul V) stipulating that only ‘faults that might possibly damage the melodies’ were to be corrected. Anerio and Soriano went further than this, however, and incorporated some of the methods applied by Palestrina and Zoilo; their Gradual, essentially a private, publisher's edition of the chants, was printed by the Medici Press at Rome in 1614–15. Although identified on the title page as ‘reformed by order of Pope Paul V’, the pope refused to endorse the imposition of the Medicean Gradual as the ‘typical’ edition of the Church's plainchant repertory. (This Gradual was revived in the 19th century and for a while did become the official version of the chants; see §V, 6 below.) During the 17th and 18th centuries many dioceses and religious congregations printed their own chant books. Consequently, chant in the Catholic world never attained the same degree of uniformity imposed on the spoken texts and ceremonies by the printed books, all of which had to receive Rome's official approbation.

New melodies were composed that could be presented as ‘chant’ merely because they used the traditional note shapes and were unharmonized. Editions of chant, including some newly composed pieces, were published in mensural notation (cantus fractus), many of them provided with a (sometimes optional) basso continuo accompaniment.

Interest in plainchant as a living tradition was strong in France throughout the 17th and 18th centuries: it even displaced the king's favourite grand motet on Sundays in the chapel at Versailles. The long chant melismas and ‘defective’ accentuation did not suit the humanistic literary tastes of the time in France any more than they did in Italy. Accordingly, the melodies were revised, adapted to the principles of tonal music with the introduction of leading notes etc., and set to modern rhythms (plain-chant mesuré). This step having been taken, it was perhaps only logical that an entirely new repertory of essentially syllabic chants would be composed. Henry Du Mont's Cinq messes en plein-chant (1669) immediately achieved great success and continued in use for centuries.

4. Polychoral music at Venice and Rome.

The polychoral psalms, masses and motets of the late 16th and early 17th centuries aimed for sheer splendour of musical sonority. The first works for two choirs (cori spezzati) have been traced to north Italian composers working in Padua, Treviso and Bergamo, but the ultimate flowering of the polychoral idiom on a grand scale occurred at Venice and Rome.

The dazzling Byzantine opulence of the Basilica di S Marco in Venice served as a fitting backdrop for the realization of the ingenious works of the Gabrielis. Galleries above the main floor of the church allowed for the spatial dispersion of vocal, instrumental and mixed choirs of voices and instruments that often contrasted in range. (It has been argued, however, that double-choir psalms were performed with both ensembles standing together in the ‘pulpitum magnum cantorum’ outside the chancel.) Venetian polychoralism made effective use of short rhythmic motifs either repeated by a single choir or echoed by a second or third choir in dialogue, a stylistic device that was to have powerful influence on succeeding generations of composers.

Venetian church music was first raised to a level of international renown by the South Netherlandish composer Adrian Willaert. Engaged as maestro di cappella at S Marco in 1527, he introduced polychoral music in the 1540s, but it was not until two decades later that polychoralism began to flourish in Venice. One of Willaert's successors, Andrea Gabrieli (1532/3–85), created works for multiple choirs of voices and of instruments, the quintessential hallmark of Venetian music. Many were psalms and Magnificat settings designed to enhance Vespers on the great feast days celebrated as magnificent religious and civic occasions. Giovanni Gabrieli (1553–1612), Andrea's nephew, published representative examples of his polychoral music in two volumes of Symphoniae sacrae (1597 and 1615). Two other composers who added to the musical lustre of 16th-century Venice were Claudio Merulo (1533–1604) and Giovanni Croce (c1557–1609). The former, well known for his brilliant organ toccatas and intonations, was organist at S Marco between 1557 and 1584, while the latter was appointed maestro di cappella in 1603.

Composers in Rome carried the polychoral idiom far into the 17th century. Though harmonically and rhythmically more conservative than the Venetians, they disposed multiple choirs around the galleries of the large Roman churches, thus creating for listeners the overwhelming impressions that gave rise to the label ‘colossal Baroque’. The most celebrated representative of this phenomenon was Orazio Benevoli (1605–72), a Roman by birth. Although he wrote smaller works for general use, his reputation rests on the grand masses and psalms composed for uncommonly large ensembles. A polychoral mass for 48 voices divided into 12 choirs (now lost) was performed at the dedication of the new cathedral in Salzburg, a building modelled after the earliest Baroque churches of Rome. (The famous mass for 54 voices previously attributed to him has been provisionally dated 1682 and assigned to the Salzburg composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber.) The ‘colossal Baroque’ style was cultivated by other Roman composers, among them Giacomo Carissimi (1605–74) and G.O. Pitoni (1657–1743). Even Palestrina's esteemed Missa Papae Marcelli fell victim to the Roman fascination for full sonority: it was arranged for double choir by the composer's pupil Francesco Soriano.

In Germany both Catholic and Lutheran composers who enjoyed access to the necessary resources emulated the works that made Venice shine in the musical firmament. Music for multiple choirs was thus not emblematic of the Counter-Reformation, as has been sometimes maintained. It passed easily over confessional barriers and inspired some of the greatest music of Heinrich Schütz, for three years a student of Giovanni Gabrieli, and Michael Praetorius.

2. Monody and the small-scale sacred concerto.

III. The 17th century

1. The Baroque spirit.

3. ‘Stile antico’.

4. Concerted vesper psalms and the Ordinary of the Mass.

5. Organ music and the liturgy.

Roman Catholic church music, §III: The 17th century

1. The Baroque spirit.

The bishops who assembled at Trent could hardly have forseen that Renaissance polyphony, on which the conciliar decisions about music were predicated, stood on the threshold of a massive disruption engendered by the double impact of expressive secular monody and the new combinations of voices and instruments known as the ‘concertante style’. Prelates concerned mainly about the intelligibility of the prescribed text would have found their expectations realized, but in a way that none of them could have anticipated. The grandeur of Baroque music fulfilled to an eminent degree one of the purposes of sacred music – to give glory to God. That glory was rendered palpable by extravagant displays of voices and instruments assembled in the great churches and court chapels of Catholic Europe for important festivals. To an age that exalted the earthly dignity of secular rulers, it seemed only self-evident that similar honours were due the King of kings and Lord of lords, whose angel musicians created sounds of ravishing beauty in his presence.

The Baroque era unfettered the expression of emotions in literature, music and the visual arts. Church interiors bombarded the senses with their richly coloured marbles, opulent decoration, animated statues and paintings, the whole surmounted by a magnificent dome or a visionary ceiling painting. The heightened pathos associated with new musical idioms, the triumphant pomp of Counter-Reformation Catholic worship and the excitement associated with instrumentally accompanied church music drew the believer irresistibly into a sensuous realm of religious experience.

Vast quantities of sacred music, including vespers psalms, Magnificat settings, masses, motets and non-liturgical works for all combinations of voices and instruments, were published during the 17th century; still more exists (or once existed) in manuscript. Modern editions (such as those by Ann Schnoebelen, Jeffery Kurtzmann, Jerome and Elizabeth Roche) have revealed, usually for the first time, the extraordinary richness of these repertories. The settings range from short motets or monodies for one solo voice or several voices to works for multiple choirs with or without obbligato instruments, and the vocal demands run the gamut from virtuosity to simple homophony.

For a discussion of the oratorio, a genre with important ties to Catholic liturgical music, see Oratorio.

Roman Catholic church music, §III: The 17th century

2. Monody and the small-scale sacred concerto.

Monody originated towards the end of the 16th century in Florentine literary and musical circles, whose members rejected the ‘confusion’ of polyphony as an impediment to the effective communication of the meaning of the text, particularly as regards its affective, emotional nuances. Composers sympathetic to these new principles wrote monodies: solo ‘madrigals’ and strophic songs for single voice with a chordal accompaniment (basso continuo) provided by lute or harpsichord. This unobtrusive background, at first unrelated motivically to the melodic line, accompanied the declamation of texts whose affective content was more important than their musical garb. In 1601, the same year in which the first collection of monodies and strophic songs – Le nuove musiche by the singer and composer Giulio Caccini (1551–1618) – was published, there also appeared the first in a series of three volumes of Salmi passagiati by G.L. Conforti (c1560–c1607), a member of the Cappella Sistina. These were falsobordone settings for a single voice with virtuoso embellishments of the vesper psalms for Sundays and feasts. They have been called the earliest sacred ‘monodies’, but they possess none of the emotive quality of Caccini's music.

Severo Bonini (1582–1663) contributed to the nascent repertory of sacred monodies with a volume of Madrigali e canzonette spirituali in 1607; Il secondo libro de madrigali e mottetti a una voce sola followed in 1609, and a collection of Affetti spirituali in 1615. Most of the pieces in the Arie devote (1608) of Ottavio Durante (fl 1608–18) are Latin monodies with written-out vocal ornamentation in the spirit of Caccini. Monteverdi (1567–1643) inserted sacred Latin monodies in the famous 1610 publication of his liturgical music known as the ‘Vespers’. Sacred monodies and duets by Monteverdi were also included in anthologies published during his lifetime, and in 1641 he devoted a retrospective collection to his sacred music, the Selva morale e spirituale. Despite its late date, Dominus Deus meus, a sacred monody by Giacomo Carissimi published in 1663, exemplifies the affective interpretation of the text and the flights of vocal virtuosity characteristic of earlier monodies (see ex.2). Both secular and sacred monodies could appear in the same publication, as in Il primo libro delle musiche (1618) of Francesca Caccini (1587–1641). Since the musical treatment did not differ, it was also a simple matter to convert secular pieces to sacred use merely by replacing the original words.

In addition to affective monodies, another repertory of music for one or more voices and basso continuo flourished in the early decades of the 17th century. The ‘concerti’ for one to four solo voices with basso continuo published by the Franciscan friar Lodovico Viadana (c1560–1627) in his Cento concerti ecclesiastici (1602) have attracted the attention of music historians, although this collection was not the first of its kind: Gabriel Fattorini's I sacri concerti a due voci (some for larger ensembles) had appeared two years earlier. Neither publication owed much to the monodic style; their roots lay in the 16th-century practice of replacing missing voices in vocal polyphony with an organ accompaniment. The closing bars of Viadana's solo motet Veni Domine (see ex.3) reveal the closeness of the idiom to the prevailing style of polyphony. Text phrases are repeated in a kind of pseudo-imitation to simulate the effect of a multi-voiced motet. In these solo motets (45–60 bars in transcription) syllabic passages are mixed with florid passaggi borrowed from the repertory of improvised ornamentation applied by accomplished singers.

The vogue for liturgical ‘chamber music’ initiated by Viadana quickly spread beyond the borders of Italy. Gregor Aichinger published a collection of three-voice Cantiones ecclesiasticae in 1607. He had undoubtedly heard Viadana's works in Rome in about 1600 and gave credit to the Italian master in the preface to his own collection.

Division of the text into a number of sections contrasting in tempo, metre and melodic style became a central feature of both the small sacred concerto for a few voices with organ accompaniment and (on a more ample scale) the large concerto for soloists, chorus and obbligato instruments. As each section of the solo motet increased in length, there emerged two principal soloistic styles: recitative and arioso. These became more sharply differentiated as the century progressed, finally leading to the sacred cantata, a multi-movement composition for one or more voices, with alternating recitative and aria or arioso and, on occasion, independent instrumental sinfonias. A solo motet for Christmas, Gaudia, pastores, dicite by Bonifatio Gratiani (1604/5–64), consists of six short movements: (1) arioso with recitative, (2) arietta in 6/8, (3) recitative, (4) arioso, (5) arioso, and (6) aria on the exclamation ‘noe’. A vespers psalm by Maurizio Cazzati (1616–78), Confitebor tibi, Domine (1653) for alto and bass soloists with basso continuo (see ex.4), illustrates the mid-century technique of combining voices in the small-scale concerto.

The new Italian developments spread to courts and churches in other Catholic regions north of the Alps: to Vienna under Emperor Ferdinand II (1619–37) and to Salzburg. In France it was not until after the middle of the century and the arrival of the Netherlander Henry Du Mont that they gained acceptance. The solo motet continued to be cultivated in France into the next century with the works of composers such as André Campra (1669–1744) and Sébastien de Brossard (1655–1730). Some motets were intended as élévations for performance at Mass when the priest held up the host and chalice to be venerated by the faithful. In Germany the vogue for the solo or few-voiced motet was not restricted to Catholic centres; it flourished in the geistliches Konzert of Lutheran cantors such as Praetorius, Schein, Schütz and Buxtehude.

Roman Catholic church music, §III: The 17th century

3. ‘Stile antico’.

The ‘perfect art’ of Renaissance polyphony was not abandoned but continued to be cultivated as an archaic, churchly style known as the stile antico. Since this style suited liturgical contexts that demanded solemnity, it was preferred during penitential seasons, but it could also be introduced for contrast in larger works. The stile antico of the 17th century departed from strict adherence to the polyphonic techniques exemplified in the works of Palestrina and his Roman followers; expressive techniques derived from the madrigal and monody were exploited in conjunction with the melodic ductus and rhythmic intensification typical of the concertante style. An extraordinary degree of expressive chromaticism is found in the music of Antonio Lotti (1666–1740), as illustrated in the conclusion of his psalm motet Miserere mei, Deus (second version; see ex.5). Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725), one of the most successful opera composers of his generation, extracted from the stile antico music of singular intensity. North of the Alps the style was cultivated by Catholic and Lutheran composers alike. One of the most masterly 17th-century collections of stile antico polyphony is the Geistliche Chor-Musik (1648) of Heinrich Schütz.

Roman Catholic church music, §III: The 17th century

4. Concerted vesper psalms and the Ordinary of the Mass.

Both the innovations of the monodists and the multi-section motet for one or more voices with basso continuo were transferred to large-scale liturgical works involving soloists, one or more choirs, and obbligato instruments with organ continuo. This offered many options for combining voices and instruments and exploiting tutti–solo contrasts, thus ushering in one of the most brilliant (though still insufficiently appreciated) periods in the history of Catholic church music. The collections that appeared in great number during the first three decades of the 17th century are dominated by vesper psalms and Magnificat settings, but there are also pieces suitable for Compline, as well as motets, antiphons, hymns and settings (in whole or in part) of the Ordinary of the Mass.

To entice churches with smaller forces to purchase their music, composers took care to indicate on title pages or in the introductions to printed editions that performing requirements were flexible. Some voices were essential to the continuity of the piece, while others could be omitted if necessary. That fewer editions of this repertory were published after the 1650s by no means indicates a decline in its popularity. The relatively few churches capable of mounting musical performances requiring large vocal and instrumental resources and the presence of virtuoso soloists relied on local production and manuscript transmission.

Both the Ordinary of the Mass and psalm texts were divided into sections and treated either as a series of concertante, homophonic or stile antico choruses, solos or duets set according to the prevailing operatic norms, or as concerto-like combinations of soloists and chorus. The orchestra (mainly strings in Italy but more varied in German-speaking lands) or continuo maintained a constant rhythmic flow animated by motivic repetition. Words were repeated many times over to fill out the demands of the musical form. By the end of the century instrumental ritornellos and independent sinfonias had become integral components of the large-scale sacred concerto. It would not be exceptional for a single psalm such as Dixit Dominus (Psalm cix), the first psalm of Vespers and the most frequently set psalm text, to require 20 minutes or more in performance. Handel's spectacular setting of this psalm (1707) represents the genre well (as it does the composer's swift assimilation of italianate taste).

In addition to voices in dialogue with each other – a staple resource of the vocal concertato – voices could be answered by instruments, as in the psalm setting Laetatus sum (1698) by Isabella Leonarda (see ex.6; the alternative text turns the psalm into a motet for general use). As an indication of the quantity of Catholic church music published in 17th-century Italy, Leonarda (1620–c1700), a nun who lived in Novara, saw 20 collections of her own music through the press from the 1660s to the end of the century.

One of the most important centres for concerted church music in northern Italy was Bologna, not only because of the presence of the prestigious Accademia Filarmonica but also because of the splendid music performed at the church of S Petronio. Psalms for multiple choirs and instruments were crowned by the high trumpets for which S Petronio was famous during the time of Giuseppe Torelli (1658–1709) and Domenico Gabrielli (1659–90). The presence of so many instrumental virtuosos in the cathedral's musical establishment made instrumental music (sonatas, sinfonias and concertos) a significant part of liturgical observances.

The concerted motet à grand choeur (grand motet) enjoyed great esteem in France, not least of all because of court favour during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV. At a Low Mass the king preferred to listen to concerted motets in Latin rather than follow the spoken prayers of the priest. The grand motet for soloists, chorus and orchestra, a genre apparently created by Henri Du Mont (c1610–84), Pierre Robert (c1618–99) and J.-B. Lully (1632–87), often had a psalm text. The verses assigned to solo voices used the declamatory-lyric style derived from the operas of Lully and Rameau; verses for the chorus were generally homophonic. Stateliness was preferred to Italian exuberance, and the role of the chorus was far greater than in contemporary Italian church music. The heyday of the grand motet came at the end of the century in the works of M.-A. Charpentier (1643–1704) and, especially, M.-R. de Lalande (1657–1726), and in the first decades of the 18th century with Henri Desmarets (1661–1741) and André Campra (1660–1744).

Roman Catholic church music, §III: The 17th century

5. Organ music and the liturgy.

The liturgical role of the organ was recognized by the Council of Trent, and its practical use in the liturgy was further defined in the Caeremoniale episcoporum (Rome, 1600) and by local custom. Organ music, often improvised, solemnized the entrance of the bishop or high ecclesiastical dignitaries and generally created a festive atmosphere at the beginning and end of Mass. (Full organ seems to have been expected.) At a pontifical Mass the organ was permitted to play ‘graviori et dulciori sono’ during the Elevation (Caeremoniale episcoporum, 1.28). Use of the organ was forbidden during Lent and at the Mass and Office of the Dead. Although the Caeremoniale prohibited the use of other instruments with the organ, that ruling was almost universally disregarded, nowhere more flagrantly than in Rome itself, and it was subsequently modified.

Small choir organs placed near the altar might accompany the chant, play in alternation with plainchant or polyphony (e.g. hymn or psalm verses), or substitute for missing voices in a polyphonic composition. Large organs occupied their own galleries, perhaps to the side of the altar, somewhere in the nave, or at the west end of the church facing the altar. Organ design (the number and tonal quality of stops, number of manuals, importance of the pedal etc.) depended largely on regional traditions and influenced the repertory composed for the instrument.

A corpus of solo organ music, whose precise liturgical function is not always immediately apparent, began to take shape in the 17th century. The specifically liturgical part of the repertory consisted primarily of versets to be played in alternation with chanted verses of the psalms or canticles (e.g. Magnificat), hymns, or sections of the Mass Ordinary; this is known as alternatim practice. While the organ verset was played, the choir or the priest recited quietly the prescribed text. The appropriate chant melody might appear as a cantus firmus in long note-values or rhythmically altered; versets were also freely composed. Among the earliest printed collections of organ music are the Intabulatura d'organo cioe misse, himni, Magnificat (?1543) and Intavolatura cioe ricercari, canzoni, hymni, Magnificat (1543) of Girolamo Cavazzoni (fl 1542–77), consisting of three organ masses (apostolorum, dominicalis, de Beata Virgine), eight hymns and four sets of versets for the Magnificat. The Fiori musicali di diverse compositioni (1635) of Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643) includes three organ masses (for Sundays, double feasts and feasts of the Virgin), organ pieces intended to replace the gradual (Canzon dopo l'epistola) and the offertory (Recercar dopo il Credo), and meditative toccatas to be played at the Elevation.

Comparable collections of organ music were published in Germany and France. The Modulatio organica super Magnificat octo ecclesiasticis tonis respondens (1686) of J.C. Kerll (1627–93) provides the organist with brief versets (about a dozen bars) for the odd-numbered verses of the Magnificat in each of the eight church modes. The short pieces (marked ‘fuga’) in the 72 Versetl samt 12 Toccaten (1726) by Gottlieb Muffat (1690–1770) are divided into 12 groups of six, each preceded by a toccata.

Jehan Titleouze (1562/3–1633) published two collections of organ versets: Hymnes de l'église pour toucher sur l'orgue (1623) and Le Magnificat ou cantique de la Vierge pour toucher sur l'orgue (1626), in which the plainchant melodies or psalm tones are treated in the manner mentioned above. Guillaume Nivers (c1632–1714) continued the tradition in his three books of pieces in the church modes (1665, 1667, 1675); these were intended to substitute for sung parts of the Mass, although the exact destination of the pieces is not specified. Each movement in the Livre d'orgue contenant cinq messes (1688) of André Raison (fl 1665–1719) is, however, precisely labelled for alternatim performance; like the pieces in Nivers' collections, they are cast in the traditional forms of French organ music (récit, dialogue, trio, tierce en taille, grand jeu etc.) and profusely ornamented. Two particularly fine examples of organ masses are those by François Couperin (i) (1668–1733), one ‘à l'usage ordinaire des paroisses’, the other ‘propre pour les couvents de religieux et des religieuses’ (1690).

Spanish liturgical organ music of the 17th century remained conservative, inspired by vocal models and enlivened by ornamentation. A genre entitled ‘falsas’, featuring chromatic linear movement, unusual harmonies and suspensions, resembles the Italian toccatas ‘di durezze e ligature’. The liturgical organ music of Antonio de Cabezón (c1510–66) includes versos on psalm tones and hymns in this style together with many ornamented fabordónes.

1. The role of music in the liturgy.

IV. The 18th century

2. ‘Missa solemnis’ and ‘missa brevis’.

3. Vienna.

4. Salzburg and the church music of Mozart.

5. The masses of Joseph Haydn.

6. The ‘Landmesse’.

7. German hymnody.

1. The role of music in the liturgy.

The encyclical letter Annus qui of Pope Benedict XIV (pontificate 1740–58), written on the eve of the Holy Year 1750, is one of the comparatively few papal pronouncements that take up the role of music in the liturgy of the Catholic Church. The pope feared that visitors from north of the Alps might be scandalized by the condition of the churches in Italy and by the kinds of music performed at divine services. (In fact, the published memoirs of travellers reveal that they often were.) While asserting that music in church must first serve the glory of God, the pope also stressed the value of music for the edification and spiritual enrichment of the faithful – an important, hitherto unemphasized distinction that was to have a profound effect on the history of Catholic church music in the second half of the 18th century and beyond. Benedict limited the use of instruments ‘exclusively to uphold the singing of the words, so that their meaning be well impressed on the minds of the listeners and the souls of the faithful moved to the contemplation of spiritual things’.

The compositional and stylistic models of church music established in the 17th century persisted, intensifying the tension between the churchly stile antico and the fascinating ‘light airs and turbulent accompaniments’ (Charles Burney) imported from Italian opera complemented later in the century by new formal techniques derived from symphonic music. The 18th century was the last great age of Catholic church music, culminating in the remarkable masses that Joseph Haydn composed between 1796 and 1802. The orchestral masses and the vespers settings of this age still make a profound effect when performed liturgically, as happens, for example, in the Catholic regions of southern Germany and Austria.

2. ‘Missa solemnis’ and ‘missa brevis’.

By the early 18th century the Ordinary of the Mass was customarily divided into a series of separate, self-contained musical units, some of them considerably extended, that displayed a wide variety of musical styles ranging from bravura and sentimental arias to concertante choruses and stile antico polyphony. (The term ‘cantata mass’, frequently applied to multi-sectional orchestral masses of the 17th and 18th centuries, is both confusing and inaccurate.) Although opera was a determining influence on Mass composition, simple transference from the operatic stage to the sanctuary was unfeasible. Recitative suited none of the texts of the Mass particularly well, and choral singing – one of the most venerable aspects of church music – had virtually no place in contemporary Italian opera. The music of a late 17th- and early 18th-century missa solemnis demanded a large orchestra with trumpets and drums. Certain broadly defined conventions guided the setting of each subdivision of the text. The following is but one possible sequence:

Kyrie I: an imposing concertante movement for chorus and
	soloists (a slow introduction was optional).
Christe: a lyrical contrast (solo or duet), or a chorus in a style
	different from the preceding
Kyrie II: a contrapuntal section (often a fully developed fugue) or
	a repeat of Kyrie I
Gloria: possibly as many as 11 sections ‘Gloria’, ‘Laudamus te’,
	‘Gratias’, ‘Domine Deus’, ‘Domine fili’, ‘Qui tollis’, ‘Qui sedes’,
	‘Quoniam’, (‘Jesu Christe’), ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’, ‘Amen’. ‘Gloria’
	was a festive choral setting of the priest’s intonation; ‘Laudamus te’
	was reserved for one or more soloists; the choral ‘Gratias’ adopted
	a slower tempo, etc.; an extended fugue on ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’ or
	‘Amen’ concluded the Gloria
Credo: often three large sections because of the length of the text
	and the lack of ‘affect’ in its doctrinal language. ‘Et incarnatus’
	– ‘Crucifixus’ served as a central slow movement for soloists or
	chorus; the word ‘credo’ could be interjected several times during
	the course of the movement (a particularly popular device in the
	Austrian mass tradition); the closing fugue (on ‘et vitam venturi
	saeculi’) might be less extended than the one at the end of the
	Gloria
Sanctus and Benedictus: the Sanctus might be composed as a
	grand acclamation or in a mood of hushed reverence, the latter
	nearly always the case with the Benedictus; both closed with the
	same choral ‘Hasanna in excelsis’; sometimes a motet or a piece of
	instrumental music occupied the time required for the priest to
	recite the Canon silently
Agnus Dei: the three invocations could be structured as an
	extended solo followed by a fugue on the words ‘done nobis
	pacem’; alternatively the composer might repeat earlier music to
	these words. Sometimes the Agnus Dei was so lengthy that it
	served as music for communion

The greatest missa solemnis of the 18th century was not written by a Catholic composer but by J.S. Bach (1685–1750). The so-called Mass in B minor (bwv232) was completed in the early 1740s, when Bach added to a Kyrie and Gloria he had presented to the Saxon court in 1733 the remaining sections of the Mass (Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei). As was Bach's practice, some of the movements were derived from earlier works; others (e.g. Credo and Confiteor) reflect his renewed study of the stile antico.

Less expansive than the missa solemnis was the missa brevis. This, too, involved soloists, chorus and orchestra, but the instrumental complement was reduced in size, perhaps just a Kirchentrio of two violins, bass and organ. With the exception of the Benedictus and Agnus Dei, solo passages were kept to a minimum and the interventions of the solo quartet were integrated into the forward flow of the movement in the form of solo–tutti contrasts with the chorus. Constant orchestral figuration accompanied the choral declamation of the text, which was occasionally enlivened by incidental imitations. The conclusion of the Gloria and Credo might mirror on a smaller scale that of the missa solemnis, and tempo contrasts (fast–slow–fast) created a tripartite structure for these longer movements. A desire for further abbreviation led to the simultaneous singing of four different portions of the text by the four voices. (A mass once considered a youthful work of Joseph Haydn dispenses with the entire Gloria text in a mere nine bars.) A category intermediate between the lavish missa solemnis and its more modest relative was the missa brevis et solemnis, in which the larger orchestra of the missa solemnis was employed, but multiple text divisions and independent movements were eschewed in favour of the more integrated approach of the missa brevis. The vesper psalms could be treated like the longer movements of the missa brevis, as is the case, for example, in Mozart's two settings of Vespers (k321 and 339), in which only the short psalm Laudate Dominum is singled out for more expansive solo treatment.

3. Vienna.

The leading figure at the court in Vienna during the first half of the 18th century was J.J. Fux (1660–1741), Hofkapellmeister from 1715 until his death. The conservative musical tastes of the court during the reign of Charles VI matched Fux's commitment to abstract polyphony and Baroque pathos, although he was quite capable of exploiting the latest italianate musical fashions. While his pompous, ceremonial musical language (trumpets were not spared) fulfilled the requirements of courtly pageantry, Fux knew how to combine the grand manner with impeccably crafted movements in vocal chamber style. Antonio Caldara (c1670–1736), vice-Kapellmeister from 1716 until his death, shared some of Fux's values and composed music grand enough for the most solemn sacred occasions, yet he too incorporated in his church music both affective text setting and galant traits suggestive of the Italian chamber cantata. (Bach admired Caldara's Stabat mater and adapted it for his own use in German translation.) Until about the mid-18th century the multi-movement italianate missa solemnis dominated Viennese mass composition, but musical values in Vienna changed quite abruptly with the death of Charles VI (in 1740) and of his Kapellmeister Fux the following year. Instrumentally accompanied church music continued to flourish during the long reign of Maria Theresa: more than 540 orchestral masses were composed in Vienna between 1741 and the imposition of restrictions in 1783 by Emperor Joseph II (see MacIntyre, 1986).

Georg Reutter the younger (1708–72), Kapellmeister of both the imperial court and the Stephansdom, had been a pupil of Caldara, but he gradually adopted the elegant, galant style coming into fashion during the second third of the century. A prolific composer for the stage, he also wrote more than 500 sacred works, among which were 80 masses. Aesthetic judgment of his church music has been mixed; critics found his choral writing unimaginative and little helped by aimless, agitated violin figuration (the frequently excoriated, but nevertheless imitated, ‘rushing violins à la Reutter’).

Florian Leopold Gassmann (1729–74) favoured masses in which the longer sections (Gloria and Credo) interlocked over the fragmentation of the traditional missa solemnis – a progressive tendency that was to dominate Austrian mass composition in the last few decades of the 18th century. A reduction in the number of sections into which the Gloria and Credo were divided and the incorporation of solo passages within the choral texture contributed to a stronger sense of formal and tonal unity.

4. Salzburg and the church music of Mozart.

A series of distinguished musicians served the Salzburg court in the 18th century: in addition to Mozart and his father they included K.H. Biber (1681–1749), J.E. Eberlin (cathedral organist from 1726, court and cathedral Kapellmeister from 1749 until his death in 1762), A.C. Adlgasser (cathedral organist, 1750–77) and Michael Haydn (1737–1806), the younger brother of Joseph Haydn. From 1763 Michael Haydn held the post of court Konzertmeister and was named organist after Mozart took up residence in Vienna. Even the generally disapproving Peter Wagner (1919) praised Haydn's church music for its seriousness and judicious employment of the orchestra.

In Michael Haydn's church music (more than two-thirds of his 800 surviving works), the ingratiating, folklike melodiousness that made him the most admired church composer of his day is easily identifiable. He occasionally incorporated chant themes and intonations in his concertante church music, cleverly unifying the Gloria and Credo of the Missa Sancti Aloysii (1777) with intermittent citations of the priest's intonation. He also wrote simply harmonized settings of chant melodies to meet the practical needs of churches in small towns and villages. In his Missa in Dominica Palmarum, Haydn used astonishingly chromatic harmonizations (see ex.7), alternating with a loosely polyphonic treatment of the chant melodies. If his church music has a defect, it is that Haydn at times seems unable to free himself from the ‘rushing violins’ of Reutter, who had been Kapellmeister of the imperial choir when Michael was a boy chorister.

Mozart (1756–91) began to compose church music at an early age. While his boyhood efforts not infrequently lapse into unseemly frivolity, one of them, the Waisenhausmesse k139 (47a) is a miraculous achievement for a child of 12. None of the self-contained movements of this missa solemnis is excessively extended, but the fluency of invention, sureness of harmonic and formal control, and mastery of counterpoint must have excited considerable amazement when the work was first performed in Vienna in December 1768.

Mozart's masses written for Salzburg conformed to local requirements for a succinct treatment of the Mass text; the young composer would have found models in the missae breves of Adlgasser, Eberlin and Michael Haydn. Archbishop Hieronymous Colloredo, Mozart's sovereign and employer in the 1770s, insisted that services not be prolonged unduly by the music – no more than three-quarters of an hour from start to finish, according to a letter written to Padre Martini in 1776 (although the letter signed by Mozart containing these comments is in the hand of his father, Leopold).

In 1773 Mozart composed a mass for chorus without soloists but with trumpets and drums, the Missa in honorem SS Trinitatis k167. Both the Gloria and the Credo are unified by insistent string figuration that is not dissimilar from one movement to the next. Three masses, all in C major and all missae breves et solemnes with trumpets and drums, date from the end of 1776 (k257–9). They combine solemnity with urgent forward motion, interrupted infrequently by moments of lyrical tranquillity (‘Et incarnatus est’, ‘Crucifixus’) that restrain the festive excitement. k257 belongs to a genre known as the ‘Credo mass’, so called because of rondo-like repetition of that word (a similar technique unifies the Benedictus of k258). The Benedictus of k259 has an obbligato organ part, which accounts for the epithet ‘Orgelsolo-Messe’. A more charming beginning than the Kyrie of Mozart's next mass (k275 in B) can hardly be imagined, and Mozart eschews the customarily brilliant ‘Gloria’ acclamations in favour of a stillness unusual for these words. The last two masses for Salzburg (k317 and 337) date from the period after the fruitless trip to Paris and Mannheim in 1777–8. A greater sophistication and subtlety of orchestration is only one aspect of a stronger dependence on the structure of symphonic models.

Among Mozart's Salzburg church compositions are two litanies in honour of the Blessed Sacrament (k125 and 243) and two in honour of the Blessed Virgin (Litaniae Lauretanae k109/74e, and k195/186d). The second, Litaniae de venerabili altaris sacramento, is an especially fine work in the italianate manner that ranges from frankly operatic coloratura to solemn counterpoint. 17 single-movement works, mostly for two violins, bass and organ continuo, sometimes called ‘church sonatas’, were written by Mozart for performance between the chanting of the Epistle and the Gospel.

Mozart composed two settings of the five psalms and the Magnificat required for the celebration of solemn Vespers. Despite the different names applied to them – Vesperae de dominica k321 (1779) and Vesperae solennes de confessore k339 (1780) – the psalms are festal and either Vespers would be suitable for many feasts of the Lord, the Virgin or other saints. The quantity of text to be set far exceeds that of the Mass, and solo episodes are thus kept to a minimum, after the manner of the missa brevis. Here again, Michael Haydn could have provided the model. Neither Mozart's Vespers nor the multi-movement litanies display the unity of key that prevails in the masses.

Mozart settled in Vienna in 1781, shortly before the restrictive regulations of Emperor Joseph II virtually banning elaborate church music took effect. Joseph was determined that his wishes would not be thwarted, hence he confiscated the wealth of churches and abbeys that supported ambitious musical programmes. The only major piece of church music Mozart began in the 1780s was the C minor Mass k427/417a, planned as a spectacular work in the italianate missa solemnis vein but never completed.

Few other works in musical history have aroused as much curiosity as the Requiem Mass k626, left incomplete by Mozart at his death. The portion of the mass that exists in Mozart's own hand can be accurately determined, but the circumstances surrounding the production of a complete score within three months of Mozart's death will never be fully clarified. Three composers worked on the project finally brought to conclusion by F.X. Süssmayr, with whom Mozart may have discussed the work's completion.

Mozart wrote a few solo motets in Italy, the most famous of them Exsultate, jubilate k165/158a for the castrato Venanzio Rauzzini in 1773. The admired eucharistic motet Ave verum corpus k618 (1791), for chorus and strings, could not be more different. It has been suggested that this modest work indicates a new direction in sacred composition that Mozart might have followed had he succeeded, as he hoped to do, to the position of Kapellmeister at the Stephansdom.

5. The masses of Joseph Haydn.

The masses written by Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) late in his career (between 1796 and 1802) represent the summit of Catholic church music in the 18th century: they virtually created a new genre of mass composition beyond the conventional ‘solemnis’ and ‘brevis’ categories. Haydn's first large-scale mass was a grand missa solemnis, the Missa Cellensis in honorem BVM hXXII:5 (also known as the ‘Cäcilienmesse’). Composed in 1766, it was most likely a votive offering to the Virgin for the composer's good fortune in being named Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Nicholas Esterházy in that year. Both the Gloria and the Credo are crowned with fugues that bring the movements to spectacular conclusions. Another mass in honour of the Virgin, hXXII:4 (the ‘Missa Sancti Josephi’ or ‘Grosse Orgelmesse’, so called from the obbligato organ parts in the Kyrie and Benedictus) was written a few years later (?c1768–9).

The pastoral lyricism of the Kyrie of the Missa Sancti Nicolai hXXII:6 (1772) identifies it as a mass in the ‘Volkston’, a popular idiom in late 18th-century Austria and one that Joseph's brother Michael exploited with success. (The work has moments of high emotion for soloists at ‘Crucifixus’ and for chorus in the Agnus Dei, although Haydn renews the good spirits of the opening by repeating music from the Kyrie at ‘Dona nobis pacem’.) A relaxed vein marks the Missa brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo hXXII:7 (‘Kleine Orgelmesse’, ?c1773–7) in honour of the founder of the Brothers of Charity. It ends not with the conventional brisk ‘Dona nobis pacem’, but with a quiet perdendosi. The Missa Cellensis hXXII:8 (‘Mariazeller Messe’, 1782) was composed on the eve of the imperial regulations curtailing the performance of concerted church music in Austria. This would have made little difference at the Esterházy court had Prince Nikolaus shown an interest in orchestral church music, but his fancy revolved around the court opera house rather than the court chapel.

Haydn returned to the composition of masses between 1796 and 1802, when he wrote six works to celebrate the name day of Princess Maria Hermenegild, wife of Prince Nikolaus II Eszterházy. Although founded on the traditions of Austrian Mass composition, they draw on the range of symphonic and formal techniques brought to perfection in the 12 ‘London’ symphonies. The ceremonial pomp of the works excludes neither profound feeling nor joviality; their rich and varied orchestration is most strikingly evident in the last of the series, known as the ‘Harmoniemesse’ hXXII:14 (1802) because of the prominence given to the winds.

6. The ‘Landmesse’.

The technical demands of orchestral masses and settings of Vespers were quite beyond the reach of modest parish churches. In the first decades of the 18th century the Landmesse (‘country Mass’), a genre of Mass composition in Latin (thus permissible at a High Mass) and destined for performance by amateur choirs of a few singers (or even one), was created. (The concept was, of course, not new: Italian and German composers had published collections of masses for one or two solo voices and basso continuo in the 17th century.) The essence of the genre – very modest vocal demands and flexiblity in the use of voices and instruments – is clear from the title of an early publication of such works, Missale tum rurale tum civile a 1 vel 2 vocibus necessariis cum aliis vocibus ad libitum, & violinis partim obligatis, partim ad libitum (1733) by J.V. Rathgeber (1682–1750). This title also suggests that the appeal of the Landmesse was by no means restricted to the countryside. An organ accompaniment would suffice, but if instruments were available – usually two violins – the performance could be enhanced accordingly. On occasion, only a single voice might be called for, as in Bruckner's ‘Windhaager-Messe’ (c1842) for alto, organ and two horns. Publishers' catalogues indicate that the Landmesse continued to enjoy remarkable currency up until the first half of the 20th century.

The unpretentious Landmesse marked a decisive stage in the history of Catholic Church music. No longer was the performance necessarily reserved for professionals, whose principal interest (much to the consternation of those clergy and church musicians concerned with the ‘purity’ of sacred music) lay outside the Church. Now members of the congregation, often under the direction of the schoolmaster, could provide their own music, either from published masses and motets or from locally produced works circulating in manuscript.

7. German hymnody.

In the encyclical Annus qui Pope Benedict XIV defined the edification and moral improvement of the faithful as one of the purposes of Catholic church music, a view that would have been shared by clergy formed according to the principles of the Enlightenment. Recommendations that the Mass be celebrated in the language of the people were rejected. As an alternative both devotional and didactic, German Catholic hymnals were published in the late 18th century in the conviction that ‘after the Bible good hymns in the vernacular are one of the most eminent means of making public worship edifying and advantageous to the awakening of religious feelings’, as Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg maintained in a pastoral letter (1782). In the end, both orchestral masses and vernacular hymnody coexisted. The laity might well enjoy singing hymns at Mass, but they were ambivalent about sacrificing the more sophisticated forms of church music to which they had become accustomed.

Lay participation in the Mass was also fostered by the ‘deutsche Singmesse’ (Liedmesse), a sequence of German texts, generally naive in expression (and not necessarily sung by the congregation), referring to the parts of the Mass – Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Offertory, Sanctus, Benedictus, Communion – at which the hymns were intended to be sung. A favourite text sequence, set by Michael Haydn and many later composers, was ‘Hier liegt vor deiner Majestät’. Haydn's setting is described in the preface to the second edition (Haslinger, 1827) as being ‘im Volkstone’, a congenial Austrian folk idiom characterized by simple harmonies and short, regular phrases. Franz Schubert (1797–1828) composed an unpretentious mass of this type (d872, 1827), movements of which are included in some modern Catholic and Episcopal hymnals in the USA. Franz Gruber (1787–1863), composer of Stille Nacht, also contributed a number of attractive works to this repertory. Particularly popular were the so-called ‘pastoral’ masses, some quoting Christmas carols, in which the bucolic tone was even more pronounced; the tradition goes back to the French Christmas masses based on noëls, M-A. Charpentier's Messe de minuit (early 1690s) being the best-known example.

1. Catholic church music and the Romantic aesthetic.

V. The 19th century

2. Austria and Germany.

3. France.

4. Italy.

5. Reform.

1. Catholic church music and the Romantic aesthetic.

During the 19th century Catholic church music came under the spell of the Romantic aesthetic despite its separation from the mainstream of Romantic composition, which was more concerned with orchestral music, opera, ‘programme’ music, music for piano, and the solo song. The focus of musical development shifted decisively away from the altar to the stage and concert hall. Court musical establishments, which in earlier times would have supported chapel musicians, all but disappeared. After Schubert, Anton Bruckner was the only composer of significant rank in Austria or Germany who wrote music expressly for the Catholic liturgy. (Franz Liszt occupies a special position.) In France composers concentrated their attention not on the creation of liturgical music but on the sacred oratorio, which conspicuously incorporated elements from the Catholic liturgical tradition.

This isolation from the mainstream of musical Romanticism was in part deliberate. The conviction that a reform of Catholic church music was urgently needed to purify it from the corruption of secular influence and triviality resonated widely in 19th-century Europe. It continued well into the 20th century, spreading to British colonies with significant Catholic populations and to the USA. Influenced by 19th-century historicism, many Catholic church musicians looked to the past for principles to guide the reform. The essayist and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann argued that genuine church music should permit the spirit ‘to participate in the promised bliss even here below’ (‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’, AMZ, xvi, 1814). From this perspective he did not spare even Haydn and Mozart from accusations of frivolity (‘Leichtsinn’), making an exception only for Mozart's Requiem, which he proposed as the ideal model to be emulated by composers of sacred music. Reacting against what they regarded as the ostentation and theatricality of orchestral masses and Vespers, the 19th-century reformers idealized Gregorian chant and 16th-century polyphony as the twin paragons of true Catholic church music. Enthusiasm for the medieval and Renaissance musical past paralleled the enthusiasm of Romantic artists and architects for the construction of ‘romanesque’ churches and ‘gothic’ cathedrals.

2. Austria and Germany.

In 1807 Beethoven (1770–1827) composed a mass for the name day of the same Princess Esterházy for whom Haydn had composed his late masses. Though by then an established master, Beethoven did not attempt to compete directly with the aged Haydn. His Mass in C op.86 (1807) places stronger emphasis on the chorus and the ensemble of soloists – alternately lyrical and declamatory – than on the symphonic dimension so perfectly realized by Haydn in his late masses. Beethoven's only other setting of the mass, the Missa solemnis in D op.123 (1819–23), was intended to be sung at a Mass celebrating the elevation of his pupil and patron Archduke Rudolph to the cardinalate; it grew far beyond the reasonable bounds of such use and became essentially an independent concert work.

Between 1814 and 1816 Schubert composed four masses (d105, 167, 324, 452) in the Viennese orchestral tradition. Two later masses (in A d678, 1819–22, and E d950, 1828) manifest a more individual stamp with regard to the lyricism of their musical language, treatment of form and text interpretation. The prominent use of horns and woodwinds colours the orchestral accompaniment of the E Mass, in which Schubert abandoned some of the inherited conventions of the orchestral mass, imposing a symphonic conception featuring recurrent refrains on the longer movements. The tripartite Gloria is a da capo movement, the first section of which replicates the ABA form on a smaller level, while making singular use of ‘gratias agimus tibi’ as a refrain. The closing fugue takes up nearly half the movement. The Agnus Dei juxtaposes contrapuntal passages based on an angular subject in C minor with homophonic interludes in the relative major.

Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) studied the composition of sacred music with Michael Haydn. His two masses (1817–18, 1818–19) stand in the tradition of Joseph Haydn's late masses but are tinged with the lyricism and warm colours of nascent Romanticism. The presence of a popular, ‘folklike’ character distinguishes parts of Weber's masses, both of which contain echoes of the composer's successful opera Der Freischütz.

Franz Liszt (1811–86) proclaimed a strongly personal vision of church music in a youthful essay, Über die zukünftige Kirchenmusik (1834). He insisted that the qualities of holiness, simplicity, solemnity and gravity should be combined with drama, splendour, intensity and brilliance in a grand synthesis unifying theatre and church. He seems to have abandoned at least the last part of that idea by the time he began to write church music. His mass for male choir and organ composed in 1848 (second version 1869) makes use of the most modern harmonic resources. It is not without drama: the Sanctus concludes on an inverted dominant 7th chord, resolved only at the beginning of the Benedictus (marked ‘post elevationem’). The later Missa choralis (1865) for mixed choir is based on Gregorian themes and is more homophonic, a texture employed also in a Te Deum for choir, organ and (sparingly used) brass (c1859).

Liszt's largest liturgical works, the Missa solemnis for the consecration of the cathedral at Esztergom in 1855 and the Hungarian Coronation Mass (1866–7), are remarkable examples (albeit on a scale that makes them impractical for ordinary liturgical use) of Romantic rhetoric and religious fervour. The Credo of the Esztergom mass has been called a ‘symphonic poem for soli, chorus and orchestra’ for its use of Liszt's favourite device of thematic transformation within the framework of a sonata-form movement. In the Coronation Mass Liszt eschewed a large symphonic Credo for a Credo melody from one of the messes royales of Du Mont. He placed it in an austere setting – mostly unison chorus with an organ accompaniment that merely doubles the voices about one-third of the time. The long violin solo preceding the Benedictus, modelled in part after Beethoven's Missa solemnis and in part after Hungarian (i.e. gypsy) music, precedes a chorus that brings the movement to exalted heights. Liszt also produced many short liturgical works, most with organ accompaniment, including a series of harmonized responsories for Christmas, Holy Week and the Office of the Dead.

The masses and motets of Bruckner (1824–96) rank among the greatest works composed for the Catholic liturgy in the 19th century. Bruckner spent his early career as a church musician near his birthplace in Upper Austria, composing sacred and secular choral works of no particular distinction. The Requiem in D minor (1848–9), over which the shadow of Mozart hovers, and the Missa solemnis in B minor (1854), indebted to Joseph Haydn, indicate the greatness of what was to come. In the early 1860s Bruckner began to discover his path as a symphonist, and in the three orchestral masses of that decade (D minor, 1864; E minor, 1866; F minor, 1867–8) a new mastery manifested itself. The first and third are anchored in the traditions of Austrian mass composition, exploiting all the expressive resources of late Romanticism. The E minor Mass for eight-part choir and winds must be regarded as the century's most creative realization of sacred music inspired by the ideals of Renaissance polyphony. Bruckner also composed about a dozen motets ranging from the acclamatory Ecce sacerdos magnus (1885) for mixed chorus and brass to the exquisitely devout Vexilla regis (1892) and the austere phrygian Pange lingua (1868) for a cappella choir. Bruckner's liturgical music drew its strength from his own simple and fervent piety: more than any other composer of the century he placed his talents unreservedly at the service of the divine.

Joseph Rheinberger (1839–1901), a composer of distinction who served as Hofkapellmeister in Munich from 1877 to 1894, wrote 13 mostly homophonically orientated masses, the majority either for a cappella chorus or chorus with an independent organ accompaniment. Their lyricism and seriousness of tone were not inconsistent with the aims of the Cecilian reformers (see §V, 4 below), but Rheinberger remained aloof from their circle.

The best-known works composed to liturgical texts by Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) – the Stabat mater (1876–7), the Requiem (1890) and the Te Deum (1892) – were not intended primarily for liturgical use but for the concert stage. The Stabat mater, a personal statement of grief occasioned by the death of his children, interprets the liturgical sequence text as a chain of contrasting solo and choral movements. The composer’s ambitious Mass in D (first version, with organ accompaniment, 1887; orchestrated, 1892) manifests the hand of the symphonist in the motivically unified larger movements; the mystical-adorational atmosphere of the ‘Benedictus’ culminates with ecstatic ‘hosannas’. Dvořák's Te Deum, composed for the American celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World, is a lesser work whose musical language would not seem out of place at a festival in the composer's Bohemian homeland.

3. France.

The French Revolution, the ensuing Napoleonic era and the secularization of society caused profound disruptions in the cultivation of sacred music in France. Genres such as the grand motet, closely associated with the ancien régime, survived only in concert performances. The widespread confiscation of ecclesiastical property left the Church with few resources for ambitious musical programmes. It was partly due to such factors that Gregorian chant and plain-chant musical continued to be more widely cultivated in France than elsewhere.

Napoleon's taste inclined towards Italian music, and it was not surprising, therefore, that he should have named Giovanni Paisiello (1740–1816) his chapel composer (1802). Most of Paisiello's sacred compositions seem to have been written late in his career. In 1804 he wrote a five-voice mass ‘for the proclamation of his Imperial Majesty’. With the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1816, a more serious style of church music represented by Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842) came to the fore. Cherubini's first sacred composition under the new government was the Requiem in C minor (1816) for mixed voices to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI. This celebrated work won the admiration of many 19th-century composers, Beethoven and Berlioz among them. Three years later, Cherubini was commissioned to write a mass to celebrate the coronation of Louis XVIII. Since that event never came to pass, his monumental Mass in G for chorus (without soloists) remained unperformed and unpublished during his lifetime. Cherubini's masterpiece of liturgical music may well be the Requiem in D minor (1836) for male choir and orchestra. The former opera composer does not stint on drama where it is called for, as in the ‘Dies irae’, but the prevailing mood remains one of reverent and solemn gravity.

Louis Niedermeyer (1802–61) stimulated the study and practice of Catholic liturgical music with the establishment in Paris in 1853 of the Ecole de Musique Religieuse et Classique (later named after him the Ecole Niedermeyer), at which students were schooled in Gregorian chant, the music of Palestrina and organ music, especially that of Bach. The most notable graduate of the school was Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924), whose Requiem op.48 is universally admired for its profound prayerfulness and sensitivity. Another Parisian musical institution offering an alternative to the official Conservatoire was the Schola Cantorum founded in 1894 by Charles Bordes (1863–1909), Alexandre Guilmant (1837–1911) and Vincent d'Indy (1851–1931). The very name of the school revealed its conservative bent, and its courses of study corresponded generally with those of the Ecole Niedermeyer. Bordes, conductor of the Chanteurs de St Gervais gave a series of Parisian concerts that revealed the riches of Renaissance sacred music.

Rather little of Cherubini's reserve is found in the sacred works of Hector Berlioz (1803–69). An early Messe solennelle (1824, rediscovered only in 1992), gives evidence of his melodic gifts and distinctive orchestral flair. (Several passages from this Mass reappear in better known works: the jolly ‘Laudamus te’ figures in the carnival scene of Benvenuto Cellini.) The celebrated Grande messe des morts (1837) and the magnificent Te Deum (1849) for three choirs, tenor solo, organ and orchestra were intended for great occasions of state: the resources they require would in any case have limited them to such events. By contrast, Berlioz summons up a spirit of intimate reverence in the three tableaux comprising L'enfance du Christ op.25 (1850–55).

The eclectic church music and oratorios of Charles Gounod (1818–93) reveal not only the composer's esteem for Palestrina but also his awareness of theatrical effect. His Messe solennelle de Ste Cécile (1855) for soloists, chorus and orchestra once enjoyed enormous popularity; it owed its success to a broadly conceived lyricism, formal clarity, effective harmonic shifts and uncomplicated choral writing. His oratorios La rédemption, incorporating the Gregorian melodies ‘Vexilla regis’ and ‘Stabat mater’, and Mors et vita were written for the Birmingham festival in England (1882 and 1885 respectively).

César Franck (1822–90), though a church organist, composed few strictly liturgical works. The Messe à trois voix op.12 (1860), contains many warmly lyrical moments, but only the famous Panis angelicus, inserted in the 1872 revision of the mass as a motet for the elevation of the host and chalice, has remained in the repertory. Franck's organ music, some of it undoubtedly based on the improvisations that held listeners spellbound at the church of Ste Clotilde in Paris, has no explicit relationship to the liturgical service, but works such as the Prière, the Cantabile and the Trois chorals are striking for their profound spirituality. More ambitious than Franck's specifically liturgical works are the sacred oratorios Les béatitudes (1869), Rédemption (1871–2) and Rébecca (1880–81). Franck and his younger colleague Charles-Marie Widor (1844–1937), composer of a number of motets, a mass for double choir and ten remarkable organ symphonies, were influential as teachers of the next generation. The renowned French organ virtuoso Alexandre Guilmant (1837–1911) published many pieces based on chant themes that he treated within a 19th-century harmonic framework; L'organiste liturgiste op.65 is devoted exclusively to such pieces (it contains a syncretistic élévation on the Latin hymn Adoro te (‘dans le style de J.S. Bach’). Guilmant edited numerous volumes of 17th- and 18th-century French organ music.

Many French composers were strongly drawn to religious works intended for the concert hall – the oratorio, légende and mystère – in which elements evocative of Catholic liturgical music, such as chant, psalmody and stile antico polyphony, were incorporated. Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) composed two successful oratorios, the Oratorio de Noêl (1858) and Le déluge (1875), the latter written under the influence of the Lisztian symphonic poem. Théodore Dubois (1837–1924) in Les sept paroles du Christ (1867, in Latin) conflated meditations on the words spoken by Jesus on the cross with a dramatization of the Passion; its modest technical demands and sentimental lyricism ensured its popularity with church choirs well into the 20th century. Religious themes could, however, be exploited in ways that were anything but religious. In the next century Debussy's Le martyre de Saint Sébastien (1911), a mystère in five acts on a poem of Gabriele d'Annunzio, was so imbued with eroticism, oriental sensuality and neo-pagan motifs that the archbishop of Paris forbade Catholics to attend the performances.

4. Italy.

The leading Italian composers of the 19th century enjoyed their greatest successes on the operatic stage. Only intermittently were they engaged in writing for the Church, and when they did so they saw no reason to depart from the tested manner that gave pleasure to their public in the theatre. Some movements of the first version of Rossini's Stabat mater (1832) had to be ‘ghost written’ because of the composer's illness, but Rossini (1792–1868) revised and completed the work ten years later. Although it departs from Rossini's customary operatic language, the work is still a curious mixture of the nobly reverent, the sentimental and the trivial (some of the worst offences occur in the a cappella sections). Rossini treated most of the verses as solo arias, some of which (‘Cujus animam’ and ‘Inflammatus’, but without the dramatic choral interventions) became popular solos in their own right. Rossini's Petite messe solennelle for soloists, choir, two pianos and harmonium (1863; version with orchestral accompaniment, 1867) can be regarded as a logical extension of the musical language of the Stabat mater. Like the old missa solemnis, the Gloria is divided into six ‘numbers’, each with a long instrumental introduction. The last section, ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’, is marked ‘Allegro a cappella’ in deference to its antiquarian character.

Rossini's contribution to sacred music was overshadowed by the Requiem of Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901). The work originated in a project organized by Verdi to prepare a collective Requiem by leading Italian composers as a tribute to the deceased Rossini. Nothing came of the plan, but Verdi finally incorporated his ‘Libera me’ in a complete Messa da Requiem (1874) in memory of the author Giuseppe Manzoni. The Requiem received church performances, but Verdi considered it a concert work, which he conducted on tour. After the completion of Otello, Verdi turned his attention once again to sacred music and between 1889 and 1897 wrote four works of contrasting character and scope: Ave Maria, using a peculiar ‘scala enigmatica’ (which he had discovered in a musical journal) as a strict cantus firmus in a style resembling that of Palestrina, a composer for whom Verdi had the greatest admiration; Laudi alla Vergine Maria, an a cappella setting for female voices of a text from the final canto of Dante's Paradiso; Te Deum, a larger-scale piece (written after he had completed Falstaff), in which the varying moods of the ancient text are closely followed, the grandeur of its acclamations yielding to a suppliant conclusion as a lone soprano sings ‘in te, Domine, speravi’; and Stabat mater, a restrained and sensitive setting of a strongly emotional text. All four works were published together in 1898 as Quattro pezzi sacri.

5. Reform.

(i) The Cecilian movement.

The earliest stimulus leading eventually to what would be known as the ‘Cecilian movement’ came from Munich, where Caspar Ett (1788–1867), director of the court church music, promoted the music of Palestrina and Lassus. In his own modest compositions he strove to bridge the gap between these historical models and contemporary musical styles. Ett inspired his many pupils with the reform doctrines and encouraged Johann Michael Sailer, author of Von dem Bunde der Religion mit der Kunst (1808), to initiate reforms in the diocese of Regensburg after his installation as bishop.

Carl Proske (1794–1861), an indefatigable collector of Renaissance music (more than 1200 prints and manuscripts comprising 36,000 works), had turned from medicine to embrace a priestly vocation. He undertook extensive research trips to Italy and cultivated the friendship of the papal maestro di cappella Giuseppe Baini (1775–1844), who shared his enthusiasm for the old masters (Baini was the author of a two-volume biography of Palestrina). In 1853 Proske began to publish in the series Musica Divina selections from the repertory he had collected (4 vols., 1853–64; continued by Schrems and Haberl with a further 4 vols.). Proske's endeavour was paralleled by Franz Commer's Musica Sacra (1839–87) and R.J. van Maldeghem's Trésor Musicale (29 vols., 1865–93/R). These publishing activities made available to choirs of limited resources hundreds of practical editions of works mainly by Italian composers of the 16th and early 17th centuries.

German reform activities culminated in 1868 with the founding of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Cäcilienverein by Franz Xaver Witt (1834–88). The society received papal approval two years later, although the nebulous curial letter that confirmed its work does not suggest that the far-reaching aims of the German Cecilians were well understood by Rome. Armed with approbation from the highest levels of church authority, Witt disseminated the principles of the Cecilian movement in the journal Musica sacra. Cecilian associations throughout Catholic Germany, by their intensive organizational efforts, journalistic activities, music editions and congresses, promoted the revival of Gregorian chant and Renaissance a cappella polyphony, the creation of original compositions inspired by the Renaissance repertory, the cultivation of congregational hymnody and dignified organ music. The Cecilians never quite addressed the issue of quality; thus their programme of reform tended to stress the absence of objectionable features rather than the presence of aesthetically outstanding ones.

An important vehicle for the dissemination of reform principles was the Kirchenmusikschule founded by F.X. Haberl at Regensburg in 1874. Like the curricula of the Ecole Niedermeyer and the Schola Cantorum in Paris, its three principal subjects were Gregorian chant, classical polyphony and organ music. Regensburg served as a practical model for the founding of similar institutions in other countries. Ironically, Regensburg was also the home of the notoriously corrupt Ratisbon editions of Gregorian chant prepared by Haberl (see §V, 5(ii) below).

Awareness that the music in Catholic churches stood in need of reform was not restricted to Germany. Questions of quality and appropriateness were addressed in a memoir on the condition of church music in Rome prepared by Gaspare Spontini (1774–1851) at the behest of Pope Gregory XVI (pontificate 1831–46). Spontini denounced musicians who performed music from operas to which liturgical texts had been supplied, and the organists who regaled their congregations with potpourris of popular operatic tunes fared no better. He recommended that the punishments imposed by Alexander VII as long ago as 1665 be meted out to the offenders: fines, removal from office, and even corporal punishment. Spontini presented Gregory XVI with a series of far-reaching and enlightened recommendations to improve the state of church music in Rome. Theatrical music must be banned immediately and replaced not by the banal or trivial but by music that is ‘beautiful, consoling, noble, grandiose and full of religious feeling’. He recommended the music of Italian masters of the 16th and 17th centuries and the creation of a ‘select library of classic and able composers of our own days’. Music would be sold at modest prices to ensure that every church, over the course of a few years, could build up its own library of music from all periods and countries according to its needs. Unfortunately, nothing ever came of Spontini's prudent programme of reform.

An important moment in the reform of church music in Italy was the founding of an Associazione Italiana di Santa Cecilia and the initiation of the journal Musica sacra in 1877 by Ambrogio Amelli (1848–1933), who also edited the 18 volumes of the Repertori di Musica Sacra per Canto e Organo. As in Germany, strict adherence to ‘Cecilian’ principles produced works that were free of profane influence but could be unremittingly dull. Among the composers committed to the creation of a more churchly style for Italian liturgical music, though not necessarily Cecilians, were Luigi Bottazzo (1845–1924), Oreste Ravanello (1871–1938), Licinio Refice (1883–1945) and Lorenzo Perosi (1872–1956). The latter was an admired composer of oratorios and masses, a skilled contrapuntist, musical adviser to Pius X and for nearly six decades director of the choir of the Cappella Sistina. Rafaello Casimiri (1880–1943), choirmaster at the Lateran basilica in Rome, carried on an active career as scholar, editor (of the complete works of Palestrina), organizer and composer.

The Cecilian reform spread to Switzerland and to those parts of North America with important populations of German immigrants. In 1873 an American branch of the Cecilian Society was founded at Milwaukee (Wisconsin) by John Baptist Singenberger (1848–1924), who had studied at Regensburg. He promoted the Cecilian ideals tirelessly through the journal Caecilia, which he founded in 1874. His own compositions in the ‘reform’ style continued to be sung in the USA during the first half of the 20th century (see §VI, 2 below).

An anonymous English author, writing in 1823, remarked that Gregorian chant ‘has been gradually disappearing during the last forty or fifty years, and is now almost wholly discontinued in England’ (Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review, v, 1823, p.204). Nevertheless, plainchant had not been entirely forgotten. More than ten years earlier, in fact, Vincent Novello had issued in London A Collection of Sacred Music as Performed at the Royal Portuguese Chapel, consisting of chant melodies in four-part harmonizations – the first in a series of publications containing similar arrangements (for examples see Zon). Various continental sources provided the material for other 19th-century British collections of chant, harmonized or with organ accompaniment. Interest on the Anglican side was not insignificant. John Stainer, a musician and composer with scholarly attainments to his credit, published chant harmonizations that mixed modal sensitivity with frankly modern progressions. By the end of the century the restored version of the melodies from Solesmes began to make headway in England among both Catholics and ‘high-church’ Anglicans. An eminent British liturgical scholar, W.H. Frere (1863–1938), published facsimile editions of the gradual and antiphoner of the best-preserved English medieval tradition, the rite of Sarum.

Although original music emanating from the Cecilian reform scarcely rose above a workmanlike level, the effects of the movement itself on the history of Catholic church music were far reaching. Higher standards of training for church musicians were encouraged, editions of Renaissance polyphony were made available to parish choirs, and a sense of reverence for the sacred was instilled in those who performed liturgical music.

(ii) The restoration of Gregorian chant.

The steady stream of chant instruction manuals from the Renaissance onwards attests the vitality of the Church's oldest musical tradition. Alexandre Choron (1771–1834), an important figure in the recovery of Renaissance polyphony, stimulated French interest in genuine Gregorian chant (as distinct from the 17th-century plain-chant musical). The first abbot of St Pierre de Solesmes, Prosper Guéranger (1805–75), advocated discarding all the Gallican diocesan liturgies with their chant traditions and replacing them with the Roman rite and its chant. The publication of the Dictionnaire liturgique, historique et théorique de plain-chant et de musique d'église (Paris, 1853/R) by Joseph d'Ortigue (1802–66) marked the revival of interest in the Catholic musical tradition in France. A number of periodicals kept alive a discussion that was simultaneously antiquarian and practical but without serious concern for the authentic medieval tradition of the melodies.

A pioneering effort to awaken interest in the medieval chant manuscripts was carried out by Louis Lambilotte (1797–1855) with the publication of a diplomatic edition of the manuscript CH-SGs 359 as Antiphonaire de Saint Grégoire (1851). The 10th-century source did not deserve this title, but Lambilotte believed that he was looking at a gradual sent by Pope Hadrian I (pontificate 772–95) to Charlemagne. Despite this historical error, the publication foreshadowed the direction that the recovery of the medieval melodies would take.

Many particular uses inherited from the past remained vigorous in France. A commission established in 1846 to reform Parisian church music was reminded by Théodore Nisard (1812–88) in a public letter (Du plain-chant parisien, 1846) that only a revival of chant on a unified basis would have pastoral value: ‘a manner of singing [chant] cannot be popular unless it is the same everywhere’. Nevertheless, chant editions with different versions of the melodies (Digne, 1850; Dijon, 1858; Rennes, 1853; Reims-Cambrai, 1858) gained the allegiance of groups of French dioceses. The Reims-Cambrai gradual relied on the evidence of medieval manuscripts (mainly the 11th-century tonary-gradual F-MOf H159 preserved at Montpellier), although not all the neume shapes (liquescence, quilisma etc.) were adequately reproduced. A congress was held in 1860 to consider the restoration and performing practice of Gregorian chant in the context of general discussions about church music in France. Those promoting liturgical unity with Rome perceived that agreement on a single version of the ‘original’ melodies, supposedly the work of Pope Gregory I, would be a strong weapon in the ultramontane rapprochement with Rome.

Some German church musicians and church authorities campaigned for a definitive edition of the chants, possibly based on one of the French editions. Others saw in the 17th-century Medicean gradual, then regarded as a ‘Roman’ version of the chant, the basis for such an edition. Loreto Jacovacci, rector of the Roman College of the Propaganda, communicated in 1867 with the bishops of the world who had been summoned to Rome for the council called by Pius IX. Jacovacci encouraged them to endorse the publication of a ‘new and corrected edition of all the books of chant’ on the basis of the Medicean edition. Despite stiff opposition from those who had been studying the medieval form of the melodies and without waiting for a discussion at the First Vatican Council, the publisher Frederick Pustet of Regensburg (Ratisbon) succeeded in obtaining a papal privilege to print a new edition of the hitherto obscure Medicean gradual.

This edition was prepared by F.X. Haberl (1840–1910), and Pustet moved with great energy to secure a privilege that would give him exclusive rights to publish the book for 30 years. He schemed successfully to have the Sacred Congregation of Rites declare the Ratisbon edition the ‘authentic’ version of the Church's chant and to recommend its adoption to the bishops. Pius IX made Pustet a papal knight and strengthened his monopoly still further by allowing him to print a signed letter of appreciation from the pope in all editions of the gradual. Many chant scholars, including the Benedictine Anselm Schubiger (1815–88), denounced the deficiencies of the Ratisbon edition, but the Congregation of Rites continued obstinately to defend the 30-year privilege awarded to Pustet. The Congregation accepted the specious arguments of the publisher concerning its authority, and in the forlorn hope of quashing further discussion it used those arguments to condemn anyone opposed to the Ratisbon edition. Pustet also published an Antiphonale based on editions printed at Venice in 1585 and Antwerp in 1611.

Meanwhile, at the abbey of Solesmes, palaeographical studies of the chant manuscripts were proceeding. Dom Joseph Pothier (1835–1923) supervised the preparation of a new gradual (1868) and published a comprehensive study, Les mélodies grégoriennes d'après la tradition, in 1880 (2/1890/R). The facsimile edition of CH-SGs 339 inaugurated in 1889 the monumental series Paléographie Musicale (see Solesmes, §4), conceived by Dom André Mocquereau (1849–1930). The days of the (admittedly very profitable) Pustet monopoly were numbered. Solesmes had already prepared editions of various parts of the Gregorian repertory, including its own compilation of the most used chants of the liturgical year, the Liber usualis missae et officii (1896, and many subsequent editions until the Second Vatican Council). Even the choir of the Cappella Sistina adopted this monastic, ‘unofficial’ critical edition of the Gregorian melodies. Pope Leo XIII finally commended the work of Solesmes and withdrew the Pustet monopoly (1899). (See also Plainchant, §11.)

VI. Music outside the European orbit

1. Introduction.

When Catholic or Protestant missionaries endeavoured to convert indigenous peoples to Christianity, it was assumed that European-style church music was part of the evangelization process. European missionaries learnt the languages of the countries to which they were sent, but they rarely immersed themselves in the local musical culture – almost invariably oral – to the extent that they could adapt it to the Catholic liturgy. While texts could be translated with a reasonable degree of approximation, the imposition of diatonic, equal-tempered music on cultures with musical systems based on, for instance, pentatonicism, or the introduction of harmonized music in exclusively monophonic traditions presented challenges. Among Amerindian tribes, for example, missionaries encountered rather uncomplicated musical practices, yet African music could reach a bewildering rhythmic complexity while remaining relatively undeveloped melodically. In Africa dance and rhythmic movement were inseparable from music – a perspective distinctly foreign to the Roman liturgy.

2. Africa and Asia.

Music was an important evangelizing tool in the missionary activity of the Jesuits in China, Japan, south-east Asia and India. Francis Xavier, in the 16th century, taught simple catechetical songs to children and had equal success in teaching adults to memorize Catholic belief with the aid of music and rhyme. A solemn Mass with music accompanied by an organ and other instruments was celebrated in the Portuguese colony of Goa as early as 1567. Students who attended the Collegio Puerorum in the colony received training in music and were capable of performing polychoral compositions. Wind instruments were favoured, partly because these could be mastered more quickly than string instruments and partly because some of the instrumentalists came from the ranks of military musicians. Other members of these orchestras were either talented local residents or individuals with ties to the colonial administration.

The process of conversion in the Pacific area was accomplished most thoroughly in the Philippines, where even today more than 80% of the population belongs to the Catholic Church. A Franciscan music teacher and composer, Geronimo Aguilar, is named as early as 1586. In the 17th century the first orchestras were established in the Philippines to enhance the solemnity of divine worship. At about this time are recorded the names of the first important native musicians, graduates of the training institutes founded by Spanish authorities. The concept of the European choir school was transferred to the Philippines in the second half of the 18th century with the founding of the Colegio de Niños Tiples at the cathedral of Manila, and orchestral masses flourished in the leading churches of the capital. In the 19th century the Cecilian movement put down roots in the Philippines, leading to the foundation of a Sociedad Musical Filipino de Santa Cecilia in 1880. Reform tendencies had some impact after the liberation of the Philippines from Japanese occupation at the end of World War II, and native composers began to produce liturgical compositions using languages indigenous to the Philippines.

In Africa not just the traditional religions of the continent but all the rituals of human existence – birth, puberty, death, planting, harvest, war, daily domestic activity – are permeated with music that is inseparable from the ritual itself. In the absence of notation a wide range of flexibility is left to musicians – a problem within a Western liturgical context and its traditional desire for fixity. In addition, the suspicions of early missionaries that many African rituals were linked with pagan superstition engendered an attitude that what could not readily be understood should be kept at a distance. This insensitivity to indigenous culture did not seem problematical at the time: many Africans regarded the exposure to European ways as a welcome move towards a more cosmopolitan existence.

3. The Americas.

(i) Central and South America.

According to the reports of missionaries, music proved to be an extraordinarily effective tool in the conversion of the inhabitants of Central and South America. Children, who attended the schools that were an essential part of the evangelizing effort, quickly learnt chants and hymns. Both Spanish and native languages were used. In 1583 Bernardo de Sahagún published Psalmodia christiana, a collection of hymn texts in the Aztecan Nahuatl language intended to be sung to indigenous melodies no longer extant. In the New World, most of which fell to Spain by the Treaty of Tordesillas (1594), musical and liturgical practice followed the rite of Seville. Missionaries also encouraged the construction of musical instruments; a few, such as Fray Garcia de San Francisco, a missionary in what is now the state of Texas, were organ builders.

The works of the great European masters, especially the Spaniards (Victoria, Guerrero, Morales), were soon heard in the New World. As early as the mid-1520s, Peter of Ghent (Pedro de Gante, c1480–1572), a Franciscan missionary and relative of Emperor Charles V, founded a school at Texacuco in which the teaching of academic subjects was supplemented by instruction in music. He wrote back to Spain in glowing terms about the skill of the singers he had trained. Some native choirs were capable of rendering the complex music of Spanish and Franco-Flemish masters. Most of the manuscripts and printed editions from which they sang chant and polyphony have disappeared, but as recently as 1963 nine volumes of polyphony prepared for pueblos in Guatemala came to light. These volumes also contained sacred villancicos by local composers. It has been estimated that six or seven volumes would be needed for a complete edition of surviving neo-hispanic music composed before 1650. Vernacular hymns (alabados) modelled after the Spanish romanza were popular, as were autos sacramentales, religious plays with music that owed much to the Latin oratorio. Polyphony was not printed in the Spanish colonies, but liturgical books containing music were, the earliest at Mexico City in 1556.

The first important Spanish composer to take up a career in the New World was Hernando Franco (1532–85). A native of Segovia, he came to the western hemisphere in 1554 and worked in Guatemala before being appointed maestro de capilla at the cathedral in Mexico City, where he spent the last ten years of his life. A quantity of his works, all in the style of contemporary Iberian polyphony, survives in an elegantly prepared manuscript known as the Franco Codex. Two pieces set to texts in Hahuatl are attributed to him. Sacred music tended to be more conservative in the colonies than in the homeland. Composers such as Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (c1590–1664) and Francisco López Capillas (c1615–73) held tenaciously to the stile antico, so much so that the latter has been called ‘the Ockeghem of Mexico’. Another important musician of this generation was Gaspar Fernandes (c1570–1629), organist of Puebla Cathedral from 1606 until his death. The polyphonic hymns of Antonio de Salazar (c1650–1715), maestro de capilla at Mexico City, have been admired. Gutierre Fernández Hidalgo (c1547–c1623), like many of the peripatetic European composers of the Renaissance, worked as a cathedral musician in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.

Towards the end of the 16th century the number of organs in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies multiplied. More popular than these expensive and difficult to maintain instruments, however, were the church ‘orchestras’ to which contemporary documents often refer. So many Mexican converts to Christianity became church musicians (singers and instrumentalists) that church authorities sought to limit their number.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, Spanish taste continued to dominate Catholic church music in Latin America. This meant the importation and local composition of works in an overtly secular style, often with orchestral accompaniment, if such could be provided. Local composers emulated contemporary European styles, which were mainly of Italian origin. Manuel Zumaya (c1678–1755) was not only the first native-born maestro de capilla of the cathedral in Mexico City but also the composer of what has been called the first opera produced in the New World, La Partenope (1711).

(ii) North America.

The earliest Catholic missionaries to the North American continent were Spanish (active in the south-western states of the USA and in California) and French (active in parts of Canada and Louisiana). Doctrines were communicated through hymnody that made use of both native and European tunes, not infrequently with texts in one of the Amerindian dialects. The most ambitious musical programmes were developed in the California missions, where the Franciscans organized choirs and orchestras according to the resources available at the 21 missions they staffed. Some of the friars, including the founder of the California mission, Fra Junipero Serra (1713–84), had studied music in Spain and were capable of training native musicians and directing ensembles as well as arranging and composing music for their use. The Franciscans and their native choirs performed Gregorian chant and rudimentary polyphonic music. Participation of instruments in both of these repertories seems to have been taken for granted. Some of the instruments were shipped from Spain, but others must have been fashioned by the performers themselves. The native Californians learned music quickly, and visitors were invariably impressed with the results. Nearly four dozen manuscript sources of music survived the secularization of the California missions by the Mexican government in 1833.

Native inhabitants of what is now Canada admired the music they heard performed by the first explorers, led by Jacques Cartier, in 1534–5. Amerindians proved susceptible to the attraction of European music, in the performance of which they became quickly proficient. About 1641, Jean de Brébeuf wrote a Christmas carol in the Huron dialect, Jesous Ahatonhia, to the tune of ‘Une jeune pucelle’; it remains widely known in North America. Extensive information about music in Quebec can be gleaned form the series of reports known as the Jesuit Relations. Both male and female members of religious communities taught music, and viols were used to accompany church music in the 17th century. The first organ in Montreal was not installed until about 1700. It is difficult to trace the history of Catholic church music in the unsettled times of the 18th century. The dichotomy between French-speaking, predominantly Catholic Quebec and the rest of Canada, predominantly Anglican, produced divergent musical practices that still persist.

The first collection of music to supply the needs of American Catholics in the former English colonies of North America was John Aitken's A Compilation of the Litanies and Vesper Hymns and Anthems as they are Sung in the Catholic Church (Philadelphia, 1787). The title gives a hint of the eclectic nature of the contents: a heterogeneous and apparently disorganized collection of music in Latin and English derived from Catholic and Anglican sources. Aitken, not a Catholic, included many English anthems, but the music for the Catholic liturgy is peculiarly incomplete. In the Holy Mass of the Blessed Trinity plainchant accompanied by a bass line is juxtaposed with stylistically incongruous organ interludes.

Another important collection of Catholic church music of the post-colonial period was due to the initiative of Benjamin Carr, a church musician who had emigrated to the new United States in 1793, settling in Philadelphia, where he established a publishing house and engaged in numerous musical activities. Although a Protestant, he served St Augustine's Catholic church as organist from 1801 until his death in 1831. From the repertory he assembled to discharge this office, he published in 1805 Masses, Vespers, Litanies, Hymns, Psalms, Anthems & Motets, a collection dedicated to John Carroll, first Catholic bishop of the United States. Carr apologized for the limited nature of the collection but advised purchasers that works of Samuel Webbe, published in London, could be acquired to supplement the repertory.

Some idea of the character of the music encountered in Catholic churches of the period may be gained from Carr's encouragement of the purchase of anthems from Britain and his recommendation of Handel's Messiah – ‘a library in itself, that would furnish appropriate pieces for almost every particular day throughout the year, for any Christian church of whatever denomination’. One of Carr's own compositions, a Mass in Three Parts, has been called ‘the first important Mass setting written in the United States’ (DeVenney).

1. The ‘motu proprio’ of Pope Pius X.

VII. The 20th century: up to the Second Vatican Council

2. Continued reform.

3. Liturgical and other sacred music.

4. Organ music and its composers.

Roman Catholic church music, §VII: The 20th century: up to the Second Vatican Council

1. The ‘motu proprio’ of Pope Pius X.

The efforts of 19th-century reform movements were confirmed by Pope Pius X (pontificate 1903–14). As a seminarian and priest, Giuseppe Sarto had busied himself with practical music-making and had familiarized himself with the work of the monks of Solesmes. As bishop of Mantua he saw to the musical education of his seminarians and the reform of church music in his diocese, an endeavour he continued as patriarch of Venice and finally as pope. Pius wasted little time in promulgating a motu proprio (i.e. a document issued on his own initiative) on the subject of sacred music. This document, Tra le sollecitudini (1903), was based in large measure on the principles he had developed over the previous two decades.

The pope emphasized the role of music as an ‘integral part’ of the liturgy intended to rouse the devotion of the faithful. He assigned highest place to Gregorian chant, then to Renaissance polyphony (‘especially that of the Roman school’), and finally to modern compositions, provided that ‘nothing profane be allowed, nothing that is reminiscent of secular pieces, nothing based as to its form on the style of secular composition’. (From an earlier version of this passage it is clear that the pope had in mind forms associated with opera: aria, cavatina, cabaletta and recitative.) Pius reiterated the prohibition against singing in any language other than Latin at a solemn Mass, banned the participation of women in church choirs and forbade the use of the piano and ‘all noisy and irreverent instruments’ (i.e. percussion). The motu proprio condemned masses ‘made up of separate pieces, each of which forms a complete musical composition’, and laid down specific guidelines for the singing of psalms (chant, falsobordone and more elaborate figured music were all acceptable) at Vespers. Finally, the pope encouraged seminary training in Gregorian chant for all clerics and the establishment of choir schools in larger churches.

Pius X settled once and for all the sometimes rancorous debate over the form in which the Gregorian melodies should be sung. He decided that the new editions should be based on scientific principles, although, according to Peter Wagner (1919, p.50), he did not favour a ‘radikal archäologische Restauration’. Solesmes was in the best position to present such a restoration, but the other members of the Vatican commission, which included Peter Wagner, made their own proposals. Solesmes withdrew from the project in 1905. Pius X appointed Dom Joseph Pothier, abbot of St Wandrille (formerly of Solesmes), to head the commission charged with developing the new chant books. The Mass chants were based on the second edition (1895) of Pothier's Liber gradualis, and Pothier himself composed chants for new feasts. A Kyriale (1905), Graduale (1908) and Antiphonarium pro diurnis horis (1912), all edited by Pothier, were eventually published in the Vatican edition. Solesmes produced its own parallel editions furnished with the editorial ‘rhythmic signs’ related to the (now essentially discredited) rhythmic theories of Dom André Mocquereau.

Pius X approved and took a personal interest in the Scuola Superiore di Musica Sacra, established on Cecilian principles in Rome in 1911 by the Associazione Italiana di Santa Cecilia. The status of this institution was later raised by Pius XI to that of a Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra, thus permitting the award of degrees up to the doctorate. A series of illustrious scholars served as presidents: the Benedictine abbots Paolo Ferretti (1921–38) and Gregory Suñol (1938–46), succeeded by the renowned scholar of Catalan and Spanish music Higini Anglès (1947–69).

Roman Catholic church music, §VII: The 20th century: up to the Second Vatican Council

2. Continued reform.

In the immediate aftermath of Pius X's initiative and with the support of his successors, massive efforts were made to make Gregorian chant, particularly the chants of the Ordinary, familiar to congregations throughout the Catholic world. To involve the laity more actively in the central act of the Church's worship, the Mass, was one of the main aims of the ‘liturgical movement’ that developed in the first half of the 20th century. Benedictine abbeys (Solesmes in France, Mont César and Maredsous in Belgium, Beuron and Maria Laach in Germany, and St John's, Collegeville, Minnesota, USA) stood in the forefront of both theory and practical implementation. Pius Parsch, an Augustinian canon, made Klosterneuburg (Austria) an international centre of liturgical renewal.

One of the wishes expressed by Pius X – that choir schools for boys be founded both in urban and rural areas – fell on receptive ears in Europe and North America. Following the European model, the North American schools were sometimes official diocesan institutions attached to cathedrals. Such was the case with St Michael's Choir School founded in 1926 by John E. Ronan in Toronto. Elsewhere, parishes undertook the responsibility for their foundation, drawing choristers from outside the parish boundaries. The Boston Archdiocesan Choir School, founded in 1963 by Theodore Marier at St Paul's Church in neighbouring Cambridge, Massachusetts, was such an institution. Both men were composers and advocates for music worthy of the liturgy, and both propagated the performance of Gregorian chant according to the Solesmes principles. Ronan had studied with André Mocquereau at Solesmes, while Marier promoted the Ward Method, a set of pedagogical principles that used Gregorian chant as the basis for music education.

Educated laity were encouraged to carry their bilingual missals with them to church every Sunday and on feast days, but the majority of Catholics were still quite detached from the Latin liturgy carried on at the altar by the priest-celebrant and his assistants. Congregations either retreated into private devotions, joined in the communal recitation of the rosary, or sang hymns that might have no connection with the liturgy whatsoever. German Catholics had the Singmesse and could draw on the rich traditions of Catholic and Evangelical hymnody, a portion of it pre-Reformation. England had its own traditions (see §VI, 3 below), but in the USA the favoured repertory consisted generally of sentimental ballads (‘Mother at your feet is kneeling’, ‘On this day, O beautiful mother’, ‘O Lord, I am not worthy’, ‘Little white guest’ – a reference to the Communion host), whose musical language was not dissimilar to the popular ballads so dear to the hearts of Irish immigrants, who brought few liturgical traditions of their own from their homeland.

The Cecilian movement exerted its influence also in America. John Singenberger drew up a 270-page Guide to Catholic Church Music (St Francis, WI, 1905, suppl., 1911), listing settings of the Ordinary and Proper of the Mass, motets and organ music that he considered to be in conformity with Cecilian principles. Another group, dedicated to the same ideals, the Society of St Gregory of America, was founded in 1914 under the leadership of Nicola A. Montani (1880–1948). It published both a ‘white list’ of approved music and a ‘black list’ of works deemed unacceptable. Montani edited The St Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book (Philadelphia, 1920, rev. and enlarged 2/1940), an estimable compilation that provided a comprehensive repertory of English hymns, Gregorian chant, and Latin liturgical music drawn from many sources. Montani arranged much of the material in the book and contributed many compositions of his own. The dominance of the St Gregory Hymnal was challenged only in 1953 with the appearance of The Pius X Hymnal, a publication of the Pius X School of Liturgical Music (Manhattanville, NY). In 1964 the Cecilians and the Society of St Gregory came together as the Church Music Association of America. The largest organization of Catholic church musicians in the USA since the late 20th century is the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, although many Catholic organists in North America also belong to the interdenominational American Guild of Organists or Royal Canadian College of Organists.

Roman Catholic church music, §VII: The 20th century: up to the Second Vatican Council

3. Liturgical and other sacred music.

Pius X encouraged the composition of new liturgical music that respected the Church's traditions and excluded everything redolent of the secular. The musical language of the 20th century was changing so rapidly and embarking on so many separate paths that adaptation to the requirements of the Catholic liturgy proved difficult. Moreover, the musical techniques of many composers would have presented exceptional technical challenges that few choirs could have surmounted. All but an infinitely small number of congregations would have rebelled against some of the ‘abstruse’ musical languages (e.g. dodecaphony) with which they would have been confronted.

In the early part of the 20th century ‘new’ works in the catalogues of Catholic publishers perpetuated a conservative harmonic idiom derived from Mendelssohn and Rheinberger. Recognizing the growing insistence on the participation of the laity in worship, composers began producing simple ‘people's masses’, either unison settings with organ accompaniment or settings that integrated the congregation's role with more ambitious music for choir, organ and other instruments. In the 1950s a number of Catholic composers who cultivated contemporary idioms rose to prominence in the USA, among them Alexander Peloquin, Sister Theophane Hytrek and Russell Woollen. Whenever organ accompaniment of Gregorian chant was deemed necessary, the heavy-handed methods of the past, whereby almost every pitch was separately harmonized in a manner that forced the melodies into a tonal framework, were abandoned in favour of the judicious placing of harmonic changes, the use of suspensions and appoggiaturas, and the avoidance of leading notes and dominant effects.

Amid the competing musical styles of the 1920s and 30s, the amalgam of techniques known as ‘neo-classicism’ proved to be one of the most flexible and desirable for the composition of sacred music. Catholic and Lutheran composers in Germany cultivated a pervadingly polyphonic, pan-diatonic harmonic language that incorporated considerable dissonance. Their music tended to be anti-lyrical and unsentimental, depending for its effect on the fluent contrapuntal combination of melodic lines in a rhythmically regular framework.

Several leading 20th-century composers wrote sacred works which, while often regarded as intended for concert performance, deserve mention in any survey of 20th-century Catholic church music. The Czech composer Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) in his Glagolitic Mass (1926) set the five items of the Ordinary translated into Old Church Slavonic. The Missa brevis of Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967) treats the text in a powerfully communicative way consistent with the spirit of the liturgy; originally an organ mass, it was later adapted by the composer for choir and organ (1944) and subsequently for chorus and orchestra. Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937) produced settings of several liturgical texts: Stabat mater op.53 (1925–6), Veni Creator op.57 (1930) and the Litany to the Virgin Mary op.59 (1930–33). Another Polish composer, Krzysztof Penderecki (b 1933), created what is perhaps the most significant corpus of Latin church music in the second half of the 20th century. Among his most important works using contemporary techniques with dramatic effect are the St Luke Passion (1963–5), Dies irae (1967), a Magnificat (1974) and a Te Deum (1979).

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) wrote only one work specifically for the Catholic liturgy, the Mass for voices, wind and brass instruments (1944–8), which has been admired as a model of liturgical propriety in a 20th-century idiom. His settings of the Pater noster and Ave Maria, originally composed for the Russian Orthodox liturgy (1926 and 1934 respectively), were subsequently (1949) supplied with Latin texts. Francis Poulenc (1899–1963), after his return in mid-life to the Roman Catholic faith, produced a number of important choral works, including the small-scale Litanies à la vierge noire (1936) for female voices and organ, a Mass for unaccompanied choir (1937), two cycles of unaccompanied motets (1938–9, 1951–2), and the larger-scale Stabat mater (1950), Gloria (1959) and Sept répons des ténèbres (1961).

One aspect of the revival of Catholic liturgical life in England in the 19th century focussed on the Latin church music of the 16th century. The choir of Westminster Cathedral, directed by R.R. Terry (1865–1938), attracted wide attention for its performance of this repertory. Terry was the editor of the Westminster Hymnal (London, 1912), the authorized Catholic hymnal widely used in Great Britain until the Second Vatican Council. English composers enriched the Anglican liturgy, but few wrote for the Catholic Church. Apart from a few Latin motets, Edward Elgar, a Catholic, composed nothing for the Roman liturgy, although his oratorio The Dream of Gerontius, 1900, with its text by J.H. Newman, inhabits a deeply Catholic spiritual world. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), editor of the (Anglican) English Hymnal (1906), composed a Latin Mass in G minor (1920–21). Edmund Rubbra (1901–86), a convert to Catholicism in 1948, was an important writer of masses and motets. Most of the sacred music of Benjamin Britten (1913–76) was conceived either for use in the Anglican service or for concert performance; he did, however, write a Latin Missa brevis in D op.63 (1959), for boys' voices and organ.

Roman Catholic church music, §VII: The 20th century: up to the Second Vatican Council

4. Organ music and its composers.

In writing for the organ, Lutheran composers such as Hugo Distler and Ernst Pepping (Grosses Orgelbuch, 1939) enriched the repertory of chorale settings, while Catholic composers such as Joseph Ahrens (Das heilige Jahr, 1948–50) and Georg Trexler (Gregorianisches Orgelwerk, 1958–61) naturally gravitated towards plainchant; both types of work depended on the transparent tonal qualities of organs built according to the principles of the Orgelbewegung. One of the most prominent composers of the period, J.N. David (1895–1977), wrote for both confessions. The music of Hermann Schroeder (1904–98), founded on a fluent technique reminiscent of Hindemith, combines unflagging rhythmic vigour, contrapuntal flair and an inclination to exploit organum-like effects; among his works based on Gregorian themes are Die Marianischen Antiphonen (1954), an Orgel-Ordinarium (1964) and a Te Deum for organ (1973) to commemorate the rededication of the cathedral at Trier. Anton Heiller (1923–79) composed a number of liturgical works amalgamating a broad range of influences from chant to 12-note techniques. The Belgian organist, composer and teacher Flor Peeters (1903–86) also left an impressive legacy of choral works, including several masses and numerous motets, and organ pieces influenced by Gregorian melodies, Flemish folktunes and Renaissance polyphony.

In France Charles Tournemire (1870–1939), Franck's successor as organist at Ste Clotilde in Paris, carried forward in a liturgical vein the art of his celebrated maître. Tournemire's masterpiece is the vast series of impressionistic ‘suites’ for organ, L'orgue mystique (1927–32), paraphrasing Gregorian themes; they are designed to be played as organ masses for all the Sundays and important feasts of the liturgical year. The leading French organ virtuoso, Marcel Dupré (1886–1971), wrote two large-scale organ works on religious themes: the Symphonie-Passion op.23 (1924) and 14 meditations on Le chemin de la croix op.29 (1931). His few organ works for liturgical use include the 15 pieces of the Vêpres du commun des fêtes de la Sainte Vierge op.18 (1919–20), of which 11 versets (to the psalms and Magnificat) cleverly paraphrase the Gregorian melodies; the hymn versets quote more directly the hymn Ave maris stella. Maurice Duruflé (1902–82), a student of Tournemire and the organist and composer Louis Vierne (1870–1937), produced a comparatively small but significant number of organ pieces, but he is equally known for his choral works, particularly the Requiem op.9 (1947) in the tradition of Fauré, which paraphrases and elaborates the chant melodies of the Mass for the Dead. His Quatre motets op.10 (1960) and the Messe ‘cum jubilo’ op.11 (1966) are largely based on Gregorian themes.

Olivier Messiaen (1908–92) mingled devotion to the liturgy with personal mysticism and imposed his religious experiences even on works destined for the concert hall. Apart from an intensely moving eucharistic motet, O sacrum convivium, Messiaen neglected sacred vocal music in favour of music for the organ. From his earliest compositions for organ, Le banquet célèste (1928) and Apparition de l'église éternelle (1932), the presence of a unique creative personality was evident, an impression confirmed by the imaginative suite L'Ascension (1934, originally for orchestra), the cycle of meditations La nativité du Seigneur (1935) and the later organ mass, Messe de la Pentecôte (1950). Messiaen prefaced his works with biblical quotations signifying the source of his inspiration and the spirit that should guide the performer's interpretation. Although he improvised on Gregorian themes, he did not make use of them in his published organ music. Jean Langlais (1907–91), though blind, pursued an active international career as a concert organist and improviser. He composed a Messe solennelle for choir and organ (1951), but most of his liturgical music was written for organ. He frequently used chant themes, as in the Trois paraphrases grégoriennes (1933–4), the Rhapsodie grégorienne (1945) on eucharistic hymns and the Suite médiévale (1947) in the form of an organ mass.