The Mass Through the Centuries
by Don Robertson (2008)
*** Some Background ***
The Mass is the Latin liturgical rite that celebrates the Eucharist: the religious ritual that has been re-enacted for many centuries in the Roman Church. Until recent times, Roman mass celebrations were sung in Latin (with a little Greek) using the liturgical text called the Ordinarium Missae (the ordinary of the mass).
The Ordinarium Missae is the consistent portion of the mass that is the same for each mass celebration. Another part of the mass called the Proprium Missae (the proper of the mass), on the other hand, consists of the text that is assigned to specific occasions.
Many different melodies were composed for the ancient Gregorian chant melodic repertory. However, beginning in the 13th century, composers began setting the words polyphonically, meaning that multiple melodies were sung at the same time as opposed to the singing of just a single melody: the case in Gregorian chant. Many different musical settings of the words of the ordinary have been composed over the centuries since then, and the mass text has been used as a basis of musical composition by the finest composers of the European tradition.
The ordinary of the mass has five parts:
1 – Kyrie: The first section of the ordinary of the mass is called the Kyrie. The phrase Kyrie eleison that is sung at the beginning is of Greek origin and became part of the Roman liturgy by the time of Gregory the Great (590-604). Sometime during the following 200 years, the phrase Christe eleison was added. In three parts, the traditional Kyrie movement consists of “kyrie eleison” sung three times, “Christe eleison” sung three times, then “Kyrie eleison” sung again three more times, usually using a different melody.
2 – Gloria: The text of the next section, the Gloria, took its position as a part of the ordinary by the 11th century. It’s text stems from the Latin Gloria in excelsis Deo, or Glory to God in the highest.
3 – Credo: The Credo text contains the words of the Nicene creed, a dogmatic statement that was written by bishops during the early years of Christianity and revised by the first council of Constantinople in 381AD. It became a part of the liturgy of the Eastern church during the following century and was adopted by the Roman catholic church in the 11th century.
4 – Sanctus: The original Sanctus text is from Isaiah 6:30 (holy, holy, holy, etc.) and from Matthew 21:9 (hosanna in excelsis). A Benedictus was then sung, followed again by the text from Matthew 21:9. The text from Isaiah had entered the liturgy very early on. The Liber Pontificalis of 530 states that Sixtus II (119-128) proclaimed that it was to be sung as a communal prayer by the congregation. The Hosanna and Benedictus were added later on. The Sanctus may have remained a congregational chant until the 12th century.
5 – Agnus Dei: In the catholic liturgy, the singing of the Agnus Dei accompanied the breaking of the bread during the serving of the eucharist. It appears to have entered the mass in the late 7th century. The text is derived from John 1:29 and originally was repeated until the rite of the eucharist had completed. By the 12th century, however, the iterations were limited to three, with “grant us peace” (dona nobis pacem) substituted for “have mercy upon us.”
*** My Discovery ***
After over thirty-five years of studying of the European classical music tradition of the past 500 years, I realized that a very definite style of music dominated each century. The new musical idiom that was specific to each century was introduced at the beginning of that century by a composer, or a group of composers, who were creating music in a radical new way. This new music always sparked a controversy, pitting those who promoted the new music against the proponents of the old.
Why had this realization not been recognized before my discovery? The reason is that much of the music before the time of Johann Sebastian Bach is still not generally known or understood by music lovers today. It is important to realize that even the greatest music by the greatest musical master, Johann Sebastian Bach, was unknown except to a select group of astute individuals until almost one-hundred years after his death. Beethoven himself was unsuccessful in finding a copy of Bach’s Mass in B Minor to study when he was writing his own great Mass in D Minor, and Wagner had to travel a great distance to study scores of Bach cantatas.
I arrived at these associations for the past five centuries:
16th century – The Spirit: A century of very spiritual music
17th century – The Body: Secularization, the birth of opera, a spark of new life
18th century – The Mind: The creation of forms, solidification of ideas
19th century – The Heart: The Romantic Era
20th century – Dissolution: The unraveling of all that came before
*** The 15th Century ***
The first great polyphonic masses were written during the 15th century by the first major composer of that century: Guilliaume Dufay (1400 – 1474). Dufay helped make what we call today the cyclic mass an institution. The cyclic mass is a mass by a single composer who sets all five sections of the ordinary of the mass in such a way that there is a cohesiveness between the sections. Seven Dufay masses are in existence as well as twenty-eight individual mass movements. Two other important composers followed in the footsteps of Dufay: Jacob Obrecht (1457 – 1505), whose use of counterpoint in his beautiful masses was of the highest order, and the great Johannes Ockeghem (1410-1497).
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*** The 16th Century ***
The 16th century is one of two “forgotten” centuries (the other is the 17th). Some of the most sublime music ever written was composed during this century, culminating in the works of five great masters: Giovanni da Palestrina, Orlando Lassus, Giovanni Gabrieli, Jacob Gallus/Handl, and Tomás Luis de Victoria. Very few people, including many graduate students in music, realize the importance and beauty of the music created by the masters of this century.
According to Edgar H. Sparks in his book Cantus Firmus: In Mass and Motet 1420-1520, it was around 1500 that a reaction set in against the older style of music that had been initiated by Dufay that had dominated the previous century. A new style that will become the style of the 16th century was introduced by the great master Josquin Des Prez (c.1450-1521). Josquin, as he is called, had begun writing music during the 15th Century using the prevalent style of that century. Many masterpieces were created by 16th century composers including Felice and Francesco Anerio, William Byrd, Clemens non Papa, Giovanni Gabrieli, Jacobus Gallus/Handl, Francisco Guerrero, Marc Antonio Ingegneri, Henri Isaac, Orlando Lassus, Luca Marenzio, Claudio Merulo, Cristobal de Morales, Giovanni da Palestrina, Cipriano de Rore, Michael Praetorius, Thomas Tallis, Tomas Luis de Victoria, and Adrian Willaert.
The masterworks of the great a cappella church music of the 16th century are some of the greatest works of music that have ever been composed. A profound spirituality is embodied in this music of great beauty and simplicity. These are a few of the great masses composed during the 16th century:
Josquin des Prez – Missa Pange lingua
Tomas Luis de Victoria – Missa O magnum mysterium & Missa Quarti toni
William Byrd – Mass for 4 voices & Mass for 5 voices
Jacob Handl (Jacobus Gallus) – Missa Pater noster
Giovanni da Palestrina was one of the great composers of all time and he was “King of the Mass”, having written so many with such great mastery and perfection. These are a few: Missa de beata Virgine, Missa Papae Marcelli, & Missa brevis
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*** The 17th Century ***
The music of the 17th Century is even more obscure in our modern world than that of the 16th. Except for Claudio Monteverdi, whose music was reintroduced by French composer and educator Vincent d’Indy during the early 20th Century, modern editions of most of the masterworks from this century are still lacking. Only during the last decade of the 20th Century did a company called Garland Publishing release volumes that contained some of the major masterpieces from this century, and a single compact-disc label, the Italian label Tactus, began making available to any extent, Italian music from the great 17th century.
The style of music employed during the 17th century was introduced in 1600 after a decade or more of study, discussion, and contemplation by a group of brilliant Italian noblemen who lived in Florence known as the Florentine Camarata. In their regularly held meetings, they discussed ways whereby they might revive Greek tragedy. From these discussions, they derived a new style of music based on extensive research of ancient Greek dramatic music. Emilio De’Cavalieri wrote the first important dramatic and liturgical works in the new style, and he and Jacopo Peri wrote the first operas, which were performed in 1600. From these humble beginnings, an all-new style of music was born, a style that moved away from the dominant polychordal a cappella choral singing of the previous century to solo instrumental music, solo singing, and a mixture of all three. The new extroverted style was radically different from the music of the 16th Century.
Claudio Monteverdi was the first great composer of the era, and the first great operatic masterpiece was his beautiful Orfeo, composed in 1607.
The new style of music spread to all the important music centers in Italy and caused a very famous conflict between the proponents of the old polyphonic choral style, who felt the new music represented a corruption of a pure art form at its highest peak of perfection, and those of the new style founded on concerted music for instruments, ornamented vocal lines, improvised counterpoint, rhythmic dance music, a freer use of dissonance, parallel third and sixth intervals, and chromaticism.
By mid-century, the Italian town of Bologna had become a tremendous center of music where the full flowering of the 17th century took place, not only in sacred music, but in instrumental music as well. Unfortunately, the masterpieces of music composed in Bologna during the 17th century are still unknown to even the most informed composers and musicians today. There was an amazing number of important composers associated with Bologna: Maurizio Cazzati, Giovanni Paolo Colonna, Giovanni Battista Vitali, Tommaso Antonio Vitali, Giuseppe Torelli, and Giacomo Antonio Perti. There were others, whose music I have not yet heard: Pietro degli Antonii, Petronio Franceschini, Domenico Gabrielli, Giovanni Battista Bassani, Giuseppe Maria Jacchini, Pirro Albergati, Giuseppe Aldrobandini, Evaristo Dall’Abaco, Giuseppe Matteo Alberti. The first great composer of the 18th century, Arcangelo Corelli, studied with the Bolognan masters before planting the seeds for the music of the following century in Rome.
There were other important music centers in Italy during the century, among which were Rome, Mantua, and Venice. Composers from these and other Italian centers were Gregorio Allegri, Orazio Benevoli, Francesco Cavalli, Giovanni Antonio Rigatti, Alessandro Grandi, Antonio Lotti, Giacomo Carissimi, and the great master and innovator Lodovico da Viadana.
Italian music was printed and flowed into France and Germany, where music flourished as well. The great German composer Heinrich Schutz studied with Giovanni Gabrieli in Venice and then introduced the new 17th century style of music in Germany after he returned. Slow to recover from the 30-years’ war, new music did not come to fruition immediately in Germany, but by mid-century it was flourishing. Unfortunately, a great deal of this music has been lost due to war during the 20th century.
The greatest German composer of the century was Dieterich Buxtehude. For many years he was considered only as a predecessor of Johann Sebastian Bach. A revival of his music is now taking place in Germany and Holland, and he is now becoming recognized as a master of music. Other 17th century German composers who will eventually see the light of day are Johann Pachebel, Balthasar Erben, Georg Osterreich, Kaspar Forster, Georg Schumann, and Johann Theile.
Among the greatest composers during this century in France were Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Michel Richard Delalande, Andre Campra, André Cardinal Destouches, and Jean-Philippe Rameau (the later three composing into the following century). The music of Charpentier was rediscovered during the 1970s and Campra’s fine music began to be reintroduced in France recently. Destouches is still almost unknown despite efforts on the part of French composer and educator Vincent d’Indy to revive his music.
The great composers of the 17th century provided many wonderful settings of the mass text. Here are some recommendations for study and pure musical experience:
Claudio Monteverdi – Mass for 4 voices
Giovanni Gabrieli – Kyrie-Gloria-Sanctus & Kyrie-Sanctus
Francesco Cavalli – Missa Concertata
Marc-Antoine Charpentier – Messe de minuit pour noel & Messe a 8
Giovanni Paolo Colonna – Mass Concertate & Mass for two choirs
Maurizio Cazzati – Messa a 4 con violini e ripieni a beneplacito
Note – Because, during this century the individual mass movements were greatly expanded in length, each movement was not always set.
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*** The 18th Century ***
During the 18th century, logic and reason ruled in music and a refinement and development of musical form took place. The century began with composer Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1715) breaking new ground with compositions clearly written in the major and minor system of tonality, a refinement of the older modal system. Corelli had spent four years in Bologna learning the musical art from the 17th century masters. One of his principal teachers was Giuseppe Torelli, a very important composer who had contributed to the early development of the concerto form. Corelli then further developed this form, creating his masterful Concerti Grossi that were later published as his Opus 6.
Perhaps realizing its historical importance, Corelli purposely released his famous violin sonatas, Opus 5, on the first day of the century, January 1, 1700. Contemporary violinist Andrew Manze has written that Corelli’s Opus 5 constitutes:
“Arguably the finest and most influential [set of violin sonatas] ever assembled. This publication was the single most important musical link between the shadowlands of the seventeenth century and the eighteenth’s Newtonian Enlightenment. All other baroque sonatas can be defined as being pre- or post-Corelli.”
Although I don’t agree with term “shadowlands” (a disparaging description of 17th century music; a century of music still misunderstood today), this quote shows what a respected violinist has to say about the music of Arcangelo Corelli.
Following the pioneering work of Corelli, the first decades of the century saw a tremendous flowering of string instrumental music in Italy. Masterpieces of great music were created by composers who were inspired by the new musical innovations of Corelli: Tomaso Albinoni, Pietro Antonio Locatelli, Benedetto Marcello, Francesco Manfredini, Francesco Geminiani, Antonio Vivaldi. New musical forms were perfected during this period: the concerto grosso, the trio sonata, and the aria.
The perfection of these forms and the ultimate realization of logic in music were accomplished by J.S. Bach, who studied the Italian, French and German masters diligently. The compositional techniques that were perfected by Bach have influenced every major composer since his time.
Bach died as an obscure organist in 1750. Two of his sons, C.P.E. and Christian Bach, were key to the introduction of the lighter rococo, or gallant, style of music that abandoned the serious learned style of their father, and their music will be a major influence on Haydn and Mozart, the two composers who will create the final flowering of the century, where the concerto grosso will be transformed into Mozart’s piano concertos, and Haydn will create the symphony and string quartet out of the ashes of the trio sonata and the sinfonia.
Among the greatest masses every written are those by Johann Sebastian Bach:
The Great H Moll Messe (B Minor Mass)
Lutheran Mass (just the Kyrie and Gloria) in A Major
Lutheran Mass in G Minor
Lutheran Mass in G Major
Lutheran Mass in F Major
Sanctus in D Major
But many composers wrote mass settings during the 18th Century. To name just a few:
Johann Christian Bach – Kyrie in D Major
Antonio Lotti – Mass for three choirs
Wolfgang Mozart – Mass in C KV 167 in honorem Sanctissimae Trinitatis
Johann Sebastian Bach’s great B Minor Mass, requiring about two hours to perform, was too long to be used in a church service, as will be Beethoven’s large Missa Solemnis. By the time of Bach and Beethoven, the mass had taken on a life of it’s own, outside of religious rites.
Learn More About 18th Century Choral Music
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*** The 19th Century ***
The musical gift of the 19th century was a music that resonated with feeling and emotion. Music historians call this century the Romantic Era. The forms that were perfected during the preceding century now become the vehicle for intense personal feeling.
It all began with Ludwig Van Beethoven. After announcing that he was going to create a new kind of music, Beethoven composed the great Eroica Symphony, his third symphony, creating a turning point in the history of music. Up to the time of this great work, Beethoven’s music was stylistically similar to the music of his time, the style of Mozart and Haydn among others, but during the winter of 1801, Beethoven broke with his predecessors and opened the doors to a new kind of music. The Eroica Symphony was first performed in 1804. With this music, Beethoven opened the door to a music so filled with emotion that women in his audiences sometimes began to uncontrollably sob and weep.
Many wonderful masterpieces of romantic music were produced by the great composers of this century: Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, Bloch, Borodin, Brahms, Bruch, Bruckner, Chabrier, Chausson, Cherubini, Chopin, Debussy, Delibes, Dukas, Duparc, Dvorak, Elgar, Enescu, Faure Franck, Glazunov, Gliere, Glinka, Grieg, Humperdink, d’Indy, Lalo, Lekeu, Liadov, Liszt, Loeffler, MacDowell, Magnard, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Offenbach, Puccini, Rheinberger, Rimsky-Korakov, Ropartz, Saint-Saens, Satie, Schubert, Schumann, Sinding, Smetana, Strauss, Tanaev, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Wagner, Weber and Wolf.
But the culmination of the expression of emotion and feeling in music culminated in the music of Richard Wagner, who had begun where Beethoven had ended. Wagner drew inspiration and knowledge from Beethoven’s last works: the 9th Symphony, the last string quartets, and the last piano sonatas – works that few people understood at the time. The deep feelings that Wagner’s music evokes are so powerful and personal that many people are afraid of Wagner’s music and have turned against it.
Here are some of the great mass settings of the 19th century:
Ludwig Van Beethoven – Mass in C & Mass in D Minor (the so-called Solemn Mass)
Franz Schubert – Mass in G Major & Mass in Eb Major
Cesar Franck – Messe solennelle
Anton Bruckner – Mass in F Minor
Luigi Cherubini – Mass in E Major
Antonín Dvorák – Mass in D
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*** The 20th Century ***
The 20th century is the most controversial century of music, and the most controversial topic I have written about and discussed for the past forty years. The 20th century witnessed the dissolution and breakdown of the musical system itself.
The main aspect of the music of this century is its foundation and reliance on discord. As the century unfolded, concert halls witnessed the appearance of more and more discordant music, and people began calling the new music “contemporary” or “modern” music. For many listeners, this music was (and still is) puzzling, even repugnant, but as the years progressed, it gained such a foothold in the musical institutions of the western world that it achieved a certain status.
The composer who introduced the new music style for the 20th century was Arnold Schönberg, generally credited as being the greatest and the most influential composer of the century. Schönberg, like Beethoven, Corelli, Monteverdi, and Josquin before him, was a master of both the old 19th century and the new 20th century music styles. In fact, his Gurrelieder, which he began composing in 1900 (the turn of the century) for many voices and a large orchestra, is a masterpiece of romantic-era music. After the new century began, however, Schönberg began to teach and compose music that “liberated the dissonance”, and eventually allowed it full equality with consonance. Meanwhile, Schönberg’s two students, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, followed in their teacher’s footsteps and the later, during 1909 (the same year that Schönberg composed his discordant Three Piano Pieces Opus 11), opened the door to terror and darkness when he composed Six Pieces for Orchestra, Opus 6. Hisses and laughter accompanied Webern’s 1909 composition when it was first performed on March 31, 1913. This prophetic music reveals the truth of the coming 20th century: it is music filled with the angst, stress, fear, horror, doubt, and ugliness that will characterize the art of the new century: The resonance that will accompany the so-called “progress of technology” on its destructive journey through the century.
As the 20th century unfolded, the liberation of dissonance became the tyranny of discord. Students and followers of Schönberg proclaimed that all music composed before the emancipation of dissonance should not be performed, studied, imitated, taught, or listened to. Popular music, tuneful melodies, romantic sentiments…all this was no longer welcome in the academic community during the onslaught of the discords. Some 20th-century composers attempted to continue writing beautiful harmonies and melodies, but they were so completely scorned by music critics, philosophers, and fellow composers and conductors that some composers stopped writing music altogether.
The important point, one that I have been writing and speaking about for 40 years, is that the consonances in music create a positive harmonic resonance, the discords create a negative harmonic resonance. Emotions of love, laughter, and happiness can only be expressed with music using consonances. Emotions of hate, horror and suspense can be expressed with dissonances. Naturally, there are gray areas between the extremes.
All of the ancient masters of theory and composition knew that the harmonic system (based on the overtone series: the basis of everything in nature) consisted of positive and negative elements. However, new spokesmen emerged during the 20th century to spout complicated intellectual theories to support the new music.
Schönberg’s negative discords were little appreciated by the concert-going public, however, and many concert venues emptied during the 20th century. But those discords found a willing home as background for television and motion picture violence, suspense, and horror. Just as concords can express positive feelings when employed by a gifted composer, so can discords express negative feelings, and therefore, during the 20th century, their use in the extreme drama of American motion pictures was required. This is how the public slowly became accustomed to discordant music.
During the 1950s, two separate styles emerged from the mainstream of discords on which so much classical music was based. One was inspired by the work and philosophy of John Cage, the other on the music of Schönberg’s student Anton Webern. Two composers, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, lead a revolution of extremely disjointed and discordant music that was initially inspired by Webern’s music. Theirs was a music stripped of all influence of the previous centuries. But it was John Cage, really a philosopher more than a musician, who proposed killing the entire 500-year European musical tradition altogether. He revolted against all composed music, and left us with nothing, telling us that every sound, from the sound of nature to the sound of machinery, was some kind of music, and there was no longer any need to create structured music at all.
From this void of nothingness, music was reborn, and some young composers of the 1960s, me included, began working with scales and natural harmonies again, leading up to the beginning of the new century and millennium. Our greatest influence was the ancient, and solid, harmonic framework of North Indian classical music.
In 1968, I discovered a quote in a then-new book by Peter Yates called Twentieth Century Music. It read: “Music is born with the ordering of noise”. It was this quote that helped me realize that John Cage’s noise would now undergo a process of becoming ordered… ordered according to the acoustic realities of creation.
During the 20th century, very few settings of the mass were composed by the century’s recognized composers. Igor Stravinsky, whom many consider the greatest composer of the century, wrote a single mass in 1948. He reportedly stated that for this mass he wanted to write, “very cold music, absolutely cold, that will appeal directly to the spirit.” The fact is, Stravinsky’s frigid and discordant music provides us with the antithesis of the great masses of Bach, Palestrina, and Victoria. It is not Stravinsky’s cold discord that appeals to the spirit, but concord. I believe that my own Jubilation Mass offers an alternative to Stravinsky’s disturbing music.
Church full of singing
Out of tune
Everyone’s gone to the moon
Jonathan King, 1965
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