MASS IN MUSIC Musical settings of the Mass are of central importance in the history of music during the i5th and 16th centuries.
I. Polyphonic Masses.—As an art-form the musical Mass is governed by the structure of its text. The supremely important parts of the Mass are those which have the smallest number of words, namely the opening Kyrie; the Sanctus and Benedictus, embodying the central acts and ideas of the service; and the concluding Agnus Dei. A i6th century composer could best write highly developed music when words were few and such as would gain rather than lose by repetition. Now the texts of the Gloria and Credo were more voluminous than any others which i6th century composers attempted to handle in a continuous scheme. The practical limits of the Church service made it impossible to break them up by setting each clause to a separate movement, a method by which Josquin and Lasso contrived to fill a whole hour with a penitential psalm. Accordingly the great masters evolved for the Gloria and Credo a style midway between that of the elaborate motet (adopted in the Sanctus) and the homo phonic reciting style of the Litany.
This gave the Mass a range of style which made it to the 16th century composer what the symphony is to the great instru mental classics. Moreover, as being inseparably associated with the highest act of worship, it severely tested the composer's depth and truthfulness of expression. The story of archaic and de cadent corruptions in polyphonic Masses is touched upon else where. (See Music, section 3, and PALESTRINA.) In the 20th century a decree of Pius X. again inculcated the restoration of the Palestrina style to its proper position in liturgical music. But the trouble with modern settings of the Mass is not the decadence of an old art but a fundamental incompatibility between the modem orchestra and a good liturgical style.
The i6th century Mass was often written for a definite day, and when the composer bases its theme on those of his setting of an appropriate motet (q.v.) for that day, the whole musical service becomes a single tissue of significant themes. Thus, Victoria wrote for All Saints' Day a motet 0 quarn gloriosum est regnum, and a Mass with the same title and on the same themes. The motet is given as an illustration to the article on that sub ject ; and the accompanying example shows the relation between the themes of the Mass and those of the motet.
2. Instrumental Masses in the Neapolitan Style.—The Neapolitan composers who created classical tonality and instru mental art-forms (see Music, sec. 5) created a style of Church music best known (but not always best represented) in the Masses of Mozart and Haydn. By this time the resources of music were such that a reasonably expressive setting of the Gloria and Credo would overbalance the scheme. Only a very small proportion of Mozart's and Haydn's Mass music may be said to represent ideas of religious music at all, though Haydn defended himself by saying that the thought of God always made him feel irrepressibly cheerful, and he hoped God would not be angry with him for worshipping Him accordingly. The best (and least operatic) features of such unabashed music are those which develop the polyphonic aspect of the Neapolitan style. Thus Mozart's most perfect example is his extremely terse Mass in F, written at the age of 17, and scored for four-part chorus and solo voices accompanied by the organ and two violins mostly in independent real parts. This scheme, with the addition of a pair of trumpets and drums, and occ,osionally oboes, forms the normal orchestra of 18th century Masses. Trombones often played with the three lower voices.
3. Symphonic Masses.—The enormous dramatic development in the symphonic music of Beethoven made the problem of the Mass with orchestral accompaniment liturgically insoluble. Yet Beethoven's second Mass (in D, op. 123) is not only the most dramatic ever penned, but is, perhaps, the last classical Mass that is thoughtfully based upon the liturgy. It was intended for the installation of the archduke Rudolph as archbishop of Olmiltz ; and, though not ready until two years after that occasion, it shows much thought for the meaning of a church service, unique in its occasion and therefore exceptionally long. Immense as was Beethoven's dramatic force, it was equalled by his power of sublime repose ; and he was accordingly able once more to put the supreme moment of the music where the service requires it to be, viz., in the Sanctus and Benedictus. In the Agnus Dei he writes as one who has lived in a beleaguered city. Beethoven read the final prayer of the Mass as a "prayer for inward and outward peace," and, giving it that title, organized it on the basis of a contrast between terrible martial sounds and the triumph of peaceful themes.