Introduction To Choral Music In The Renaisssance

The History Of The Mass

Table Of Contents

Introduction To Choral Music In The Renaisssance
Palestrina And The Counter-Reformation
Dufay And The Isorhythmic Motet
Josquin Desprez And His Motets
Morales And Spain
Senfl And The Germanic Territories
Tallis And England

The musical structure of the mass up to the fourteenth century had no real unity; that is a way to give each movement an element that relates to what comes before and after it. This problem was solved by the development of the cantus firmus. In cantus firmus elaboration, a composer embellishes a plainchant melody by adding a rhythm to it and interpolating notes between the original ones. Plainchant is used to refer particularly to the chant repertories with Latin texts - that is, those of the five major Western Christian liturgies. The first composers to write masses with a cantus firmus running through all movements were Lionel Power's (Alma Redemptoris mater) and John Dunstable's (Da gaudiorum premia) in the 1440's.There are a variety of types of masses but the largest and most elaborate is the Mass Ordinary. This mass can be broken down into its component parts in order to fit the occasion. The term 'Ordinary', as opposed to 'Proper', refers to any part of the Mass, sung or spoken, that has the same text at every enactment of the service. The sung Ordinary is usually said to consist of five items: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei. Masses that are based on a 'cantus firmus' or other borrowed material which are called 'tenor' masses.

The material for the mass could be a popular song. Many outstanding masses are based on popular tunes of the day. Or the material might be based on an original creation (Missa sine nominee). This material could be stated in every movement of the mass in the same rhythm and the same intervals or the complete melody is elaborated in a different form in each movement. After 1450 most masses were based on secular songs that were carried by not only the tenor voice as was done previously, but by all the voices. This development had a major impact on the evolution of the mass. The repeated use of the same song as the basis for the mass has its most famous instance in the song L'homme arme. Many of the finest composers of the day wrote masses based on this tune, which is completely secular in content. These composers include DuFay, Ockeghem, Busnoys and many others.

The movements of the mass, while being held together by a simple melody of one sort or another, were at the same time differentiated by the dropping of one voice or the shifting of rhythms to create variations of the same movement within the mass. Jacob Obrecht (1457-1505) wrote 'Sub tuum presidium'that demonstrates how complex variations in a mass can be while still carrying a common melody. The mass uses the original plainchant throughout, but for the last three movements he adds one new chant per subsequent movement and in the final movement states all four chants simultaneously. He combines construction with complex numerical symbolism. This was a prototype for the level of complexity masses were to take on in the future As the fifteenth century came to a close, a new genus of mass based on borrowing from sources that other composers had tried previously rose in popularity and in stature. This type of mass came to be known as an 'imitation mass' or 'Parody mass' A musical setting of the five movements of the Ordinary of the Roman Catholic Mass that is unified by the presence of the entire texture of a pre-existing polyphonic work, represented by borrowed motifs and points of imitation. The relationship is usually clearest at the beginning, middle and end of each movement. The importance of this development can not be over stated. Now all voices were using the same material simultaneously and it was no longer possible to identify a cantus firmus that ran through any given mass or its constituent movements. The freedom that borrowed melodies allowed meant that composers were no longer tied to the dozen or so notes that constituted the cantus firmus.The imitation mass was the musical vehicle that carried the Renaissance in to the early baroque.

Preexisting passages that needed to be crafted to fit new word schemes provided sixteenth century composers with a challenge. Often you can hear jazz musicians incorporate snippets of a very familiar tune in to a solo and make it fit. Imagine the difficulty of making that tune fit into four or five simultaneous melodies while underscoring the meaning of the words. Short musical motifs came to be associated with specific parts of the mass and if they were used, it was expected by the audience to be placed at specific points. Audiences always seemed to enjoy when it Charlie Parker did it and probably as much as when Palestrina did it. Is it art or just showing off? I can not say.

Valid XHTML 1.0!