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Musical Forms

Mass

The chants of the Proper served as melodic material for early organum in the 10th century; in the 12th century the new polyphonic art was enriched by organum settings of Mass items. In the 14th century, polyphonic settings concentrated on the Ordinary, which was used at all times of the liturgical year. Early settings were compiled in Tournai and in Italy; the Messe de Nostre Dame by Machaut (circa 1350) stands out as the earliest by a single composer. English composers continued to set mass sections throughout the 15th century; Dunstable is credited with an early cyclic mass unified by a tenor cantus firmus.

By 1450, when the Mass Ordinary was regarded as central in composition, the 'cantus firmus' or 'tenor' mass predominated. Dufay used both sacred and secular melodies as the basis for his masses, and in the period of Ockeghem and his contemporaries (circa 1460-90) the chanson was increasingly used as a source of tenor melodies around which an often very intricate contrapuntal web was woven. Josquin's 20-odd masses form a culmination of traditions while opening the way to further developments in the use of free cantus firmi and in drawing on the entire polyphonic substance of a model. This 'parody' technique was much used in 16th-century mass composition. The principal movements normally begin with varied treatment of the model's opening subject and close with its final cadence: the borrowed material is interlaced with new. Masses based on motets, chansons or madrigals were written by most late Renaissance composers, including Palestrina, Victoria, Lassus and Morales; freely invented masses were also composed. Other types include the canonic mass and the paraphrase mass with free use of plainchant; the old tenor mass is also found.

Parody techniques and even cantus firmi survived into the Baroque penod, and the stile antico was used as late as Domenico Scarlatti. But the development of a style with choruses in stile antico (with instruments doubling) or independent instrumental support and music for solo voices led to a type in which the various sections (especially the Gloria and Credo) were divided into several movements. This 'cantata mass' was associated with early 18th-century Neapolitan composers, but the greatest work of this kind is Bach's b Minor Mass.

The early Classical Viennese composers introduced a more integrated structure, often on symphonic lines. The masses of Haydn and Mozart served a liturgical function, and even Beethoven's Missa solemnis was intended for a church service. But thereafter most musically significant masses were written either for the concert hall or for some splendid occasion. Liszt's for the coronation of Emperor Franz Joseph as King of Hungary (1867) and Bruckner's f Minor Mass (1867-8), commissioned by the Viennese chapel royal, are outstanding examples of large-scale settings; and it is significant that the greatest 20th-century mass, that by Stravinsky (1948), has been most often performed in the concert hall.