Cyclic mass
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

In
Renaissance music Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century '' ars nova'', the Tr ...
, the cyclic mass was a musical setting of the Ordinary of the
Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...
, in which each of the movements – Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei – shared a common musical theme, commonly a
cantus firmus In music, a ''cantus firmus'' ("fixed melody") is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition. The plural of this Latin term is , although the corrupt form ''canti firmi'' (resulting from the grammatically incorrect tr ...
, thus making it a unified whole. The cyclic mass was the first multi-movement form in western music to be subject to a single organizing principle. The period of composition of cyclic masses was from about 1430 until around 1600, although some composers, especially in conservative musical centers, wrote them after that date. Types of cyclic masses include the "motto" mass (or "head-motif" mass), cantus-firmus mass or ''tenor mass'',
soggetto cavato Soggetto cavato () is an innovative technique of Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez that was later named by the theorist Zarlino in 1558 in his '' Le istitutioni harmoniche'' as ''soggetto cavato dalle vocali di queste parole'', or literally, a ...
mass,
paraphrase mass A paraphrase mass is a musical setting of the Ordinary of the Mass that uses as its basis an elaborated version of a cantus firmus, typically chosen from plainsong or some other sacred source. It was a common means of mass composition from the la ...
,
parody mass A parody mass is a musical setting of the mass, typically from the 16th century, that uses multiple voices of another pre-existing piece of music, such as a fragment of a motet or a secular ''chanson'', as part of its melodic material. It is dist ...
, as well as masses based on combinations of these techniques.


History

Prior to complete settings of the Mass Ordinary by a single composer, which had become the norm by around the middle of the 15th century, composers often set pairs of movements. Gloria-Credo pairs, as well as Sanctus-Agnus Dei pairs, are found in many manuscripts of the early 15th century, by composers such as
Johannes Ciconia Johannes Ciconia ( – between 10 June and 13 July 1412) was an important Flemish composer and music theorist of trecento music during the late Medieval era. He was born in Liège, but worked most of his adult life in Italy, particularly i ...
,
Arnold de Lantins Arnold de Lantins ( fl. 1420s – before 2 July 1432) was a Netherlandish composer of the late medieval and early Renaissance eras. He is one of a few composers who shows aspects of both medieval and Renaissance style, and was a contemporary o ...
and
Zacara da Teramo Antonio "Zacara" da Teramo (in Latin Antonius Berardi Andree de Teramo, also Zacar, Zaccara, Zacharie, Zachara, and Çacharius; c.1350/1360 – between May 19, 1413 and mid-September 1416) was an Italian composer, singer, and papal secretary of ...
. While it is possible that some of these composers wrote an entire setting of the mass, no complete cyclic setting by a single composer has survived. (The ''
Messe de Nostre Dame ''Messe de Nostre Dame'' (''Mass of Our Lady'') is a polyphonic mass composed before 1365 by French poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–1377). Widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of medieval music and of all religious music, ...
'' by
Guillaume de Machaut Guillaume de Machaut (, ; also Machau and Machault; – April 1377) was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the style in late medieval music. His dominance of the genre is such that modern musicologists use his death to ...
(c. 1300–1377), which dates to before 1365 is generally not considered to be a true cyclic mass, but is the earliest surviving complete mass setting by a single composer, although the existence of at least four earlier such pieces is known.) Some mass cycles from the period 1420–1435, especially from northern Italy, show that composers were working in the direction of a unified mass, but were solving the problem in a different way: often a separate tenor would be used for each movement of a mass that was otherwise unified stylistically. The true cyclic mass most likely originated in England, and the first composers known to have organized a mass by using the same cantus firmus in each movement were
John Dunstable John Dunstaple (or Dunstable, – 24 December 1453) was an English composer whose music helped inaugurate the transition from the medieval to the Renaissance periods. The central proponent of the ''Contenance angloise'' style (), Dunstaple was ...
and
Leonel Power Leonel Power (also spelled ''Lionel, Lyonel, Leonellus, Leonelle''; ''Polbero''; 1370 to 1385 – 5 June 1445) was an English composer of the late Medieval and early Renaissance music. Along with John Dunstaple, he was a dominant figure of 15th ...
. However it was the ''
Missa Caput The ''Missa Caput'' was a musical setting of the Roman Catholic mass, dating from the 1440s, by an anonymous English composer. It circulated widely on the European continent in the mid-15th century and was one of the best-loved musical works of ...
'', an anonymous English composition once attributed to
Guillaume Dufay Guillaume Du Fay ( , ; also Dufay, Du Fayt; 5 August 1397(?) – 27 November 1474) was a French composer and music theorist of the early Renaissance. Considered the leading European composer of his time, his music was widely performed and repr ...
, "one of the most revered compositions of the 15th century", which was to be the most influential on continental practice; this work appears in seven separate continental sources of the 15th century, more than any other mass prior to the 1480s. Among other features, it was the first widely influential work to use a freely-written bass line underneath the tenor cantus firmus. As a result of the spread of the ''Missa Caput'', composers commonly added this lower voice to their polyphonic textures after about mid-century; this allowed a harmonic and cadential flexibility which was previously lacking. The earliest consistently-used method for organizing the movements of the mass was use of a
head motif In music, a motif IPA: (Help:IPA/English, /moʊˈtiːf/) (also motive) is a short musical phrase, a Salience (neuroscience), salient recurring Figure (music), figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importa ...
, also known as a "motto". In this case, a recognizable theme or thematic fragment began each of the important sections of the mass. Many "motto" masses were also unified by some other means, but such a procedure was not necessary. An early example of a "motto" mass is the ''Missa verbum incarnatum'' by Arnold de Lantins, probably from around 1430, in which each movement is linked by use of a head motif. Additionally, the movements contain subtle references to his own motet ''O pulcherrima mulierum''. Many of Dufay's masses use the head-motif technique, even when they employ another, such as cantus-firmus. The motto technique was common on the continent, but rare with English composers. During the late 15th century, cantus firmus technique was by far the most frequent method used to unify cyclic masses. The cantus firmus, which at first was drawn from Gregorian chant, but later from other sources such as secular chansons, was usually set in longer notes in the tenor voice (the next-to-lowest). The other voices could be used in many ways, ranging from freely composed
polyphony Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, h ...
to strict canon, but the texture was predominantly polyphonic but non- imitative. In some cases the cantus firmus appeared also in voices other than then tenor, with increasing freedom as the century reached its close. Secular
chanson A (, , french: chanson française, link=no, ; ) is generally any lyric-driven French song, though it most often refers to the secular polyphonic French songs of late medieval and Renaissance music. The genre had origins in the monophonic s ...
s became the favored source for cantus firmi by the time of Ockeghem and his generation (the last third of the 15th century), and composers began writing their own; for example Ockeghem's ''Missa au travail suis'' is based on his own chanson of that name. Ockeghem was a particularly experimental composer, writing probably the first example of a mass organized entirely by canon: the ''Missa prolationum''. Instead of being based on a fixed cantus firmus, each movement is a
mensuration canon In music, a prolation canon (also called a mensuration canon or proportional canon) is a type of canon, a musical composition wherein the main melody is accompanied by one or more imitations of that melody in other voices. Not only do the voice ...
, with the interval of imitation expanding from the unison to the octave during the course of the mass (Leeman Perkins called this "the most extraordinary contrapuntal achievement of the 15th century", and compared it in scope and execution with the ''
Goldberg Variations The ''Goldberg Variations'', BWV 988, is a musical composition for keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations. First published in 1741, it is named after Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who may also have ...
'' of
J.S. Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late baroque music, Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suite ...
). Another of Ockeghem's masses, the ''Missa cuiusvis toni'', is so written that it can be performed in any of the four modes. By the beginning of the 16th century, the cantus firmus technique was no longer the preferred method for composition of masses, except in some areas distant from Rome and the Low Countries (Spanish composers, in particular, used the method into the 16th century). Some other methods of organizing cyclic masses include paraphrase and parody. In
paraphrase A paraphrase () is a restatement of the meaning of a text or passage using other words. The term itself is derived via Latin ', . The act of paraphrasing is also called ''paraphrasis''. History Although paraphrases likely abounded in oral tra ...
technique, a source tune, which could be either sacred or secular, is elaborated, usually by ornamentation but occasionally by compression. Usually in paraphrase masses the tune appears in any voice.
Josquin des Prez Josquin Lebloitte dit des Prez ( – 27 August 1521) was a composer of High Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, he was a central figure of the ...
' ''Missa Pange lingua'' (c. 1520) is a famous example;
Palestrina Palestrina (ancient ''Praeneste''; grc, Πραίνεστος, ''Prainestos'') is a modern Italian city and ''comune'' (municipality) with a population of about 22,000, in Lazio, about east of Rome. It is connected to the latter by the Via Pren ...
also used the method extensively, second only to parody technique. The
parody mass A parody mass is a musical setting of the mass, typically from the 16th century, that uses multiple voices of another pre-existing piece of music, such as a fragment of a motet or a secular ''chanson'', as part of its melodic material. It is dist ...
, also known as the imitation mass (for the use of the word "parody" implies no satire, but is based on a misreading of a 16th-century source), uses many voices from a polyphonic source to unify the different movements of a cyclic mass. Parody technique was the most commonly used of all the methods in the 16th century: Palestrina alone wrote 51 parody masses. Either sacred or secular source material could be used in constructing a parody mass, and some of the songs were secular indeed: a late example was
Orlande de Lassus Orlande de Lassus ( various other names; probably – 14 June 1594) was a composer of the late Renaissance. The chief representative of the mature polyphonic style in the Franco-Flemish school, Lassus stands with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palest ...
' ''Missa entre vous filles'' (1581), based on an obscene popular song by
Clemens non Papa Jacobus Clemens non Papa (also Jacques Clément or Jacob Clemens non Papa) ( – 1555 or 1556) was a Netherlandish composer of the Renaissance based for most of his life in Flanders. He was a prolific composer in many of the current styles, and ...
, "Entre vous filles de quinze ans" ("You sweet 15-year-old girls").Haar, "Orlande de Lassus", Grove


See also

*
Cyclic form Cyclic form is a technique of musical construction, involving multiple sections or movements, in which a theme, melody, or thematic material occurs in more than one movement as a unifying device. Sometimes a theme may occur at the beginning and e ...
*
Cantus firmus mass In music, a ''cantus firmus'' ("fixed melody") is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition. The plural of this Latin term is , although the corrupt form ''canti firmi'' (resulting from the grammatically incorrect tr ...


Notes


References

* J. Peter Burkholder: "Borrowing"; Hans Schoop/J. Michael Allsen: "Arnold de Lantins"; Lewis Lockwood, "Mass"; Andrew Kirkman, "Caput"; Leeman Perkins, "Johannes Ockeghem". Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed November 12, 2006)
(subscription access)
*
Gustave Reese Gustave Reese ( ; 29 November 1899 – 7 September 1977) was an American musicologist and teacher. Reese is known mainly for his work on medieval and Renaissance music, particularly with his two publications ''Music in the Middle Ages'' (1940) ...
, ''Music in the Renaissance''. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. * Harold Gleason and Warren Becker, ''Music in the Middle Ages and Renaissance'' (Music Literature Outlines Series I). Bloomington, Indiana. Frangipani Press, 1986. *
Lewis Lockwood Lewis H. Lockwood (born December 16, 1930) is an American musicologist whose main fields are the music of the Italian Renaissance and the life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven. Joseph Kerman described him as "a leading musical scholar of the postw ...
, "Mass." ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. * ''The New Harvard Dictionary of Music'', ed. Don Randel. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1986. * Robert Scherr, ed., ''The Josquin Companion.'' Oxford University Press, 1999. * Anne Walters Robertson, "The Savior, the Woman, and the Head of the Dragon in the ''Caput'' Masses and Motet". Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 59 No. 3., pp. 537-630. Fall 2006. ISSN 0003-0139 {{refend Renaissance music Christian liturgical music