The Mass in E, Op. 5, is a choral work by American composer

Amy Beach Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (September 5, 1867December 27, 1944) was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her Gaelic Symphony, "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symph ...

. It was the first

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 ...

written by an American woman and Beach's first acclaimed composition. The Mass is a 75-minute work for chorus,

quartet In music, a quartet or quartette (, , , , ) is an ensemble of four singers or instrumental performers; or a musical composition for four voices and instruments. Classical String quartet In classical music, one of the most common combinations o ...

, organ, and orchestra.American Composers.org
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Composition

Beach began work on her Mass in E-flat in 1886. The

Handel and Haydn Society The Handel and Haydn Society is an American chorus and period instrument orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. Known colloquially as 'H+H', the organization has been in continual performance since its founding in 1815, the longest-serving suc ...

premiered the Mass in Boston in 1892. The same group had performed

Luigi Cherubini Luigi Cherubini ( ; ; 8 or 14 SeptemberWillis, in Sadie (Ed.), p. 833 1760 – 15 March 1842) was an Italian Classical and Romantic composer. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the gre ...

's ''Deuxième Messe Solenelle'' in D minor in 1883 and played selections from

Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard w ...

Mass in B minor The Mass in B minor (), BWV 232, is an extended setting of the Mass ordinary by Johann Sebastian Bach. The composition was completed in 1749, the year before the composer's death, and was to a large extent based on earlier work, such as a Sanctu ...

in 1887. There are parallels in overall structure, and in some phrases, between Beach's Mass and Cherubini's. Beach's Mass was not performed again until the 1980s. It has been recorded (see

Discography Discography is the study and cataloging of published sound recordings, often by specified artists or within identified music genres. The exact information included varies depending on the type and scope of the discography, but a discography entry ...

). The Mass is in five sections:

Kyrie Kyrie, a transliteration of Greek , vocative case of (''Kyrios''), is a common name of an important prayer of Christian liturgy, also called the Kyrie eleison ( ; ). In the Bible The prayer, "Kyrie, eleison," "Lord, have mercy" derives fr ...

Gloria Gloria may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music Christian liturgy and music * Gloria in excelsis Deo, the Greater Doxology, a hymn of praise * Gloria Patri, the Lesser Doxology, a short hymn of praise ** Gloria (Handel) ** Gloria (Jenkins) ...

in 4 movements,

Credo In Christian liturgy, the credo (; Latin for "I believe") is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed – or its shorter version, the Apostles' Creed – in the Mass, either as a prayer, a spoken text, or sung as Gregorian chant or other musical setti ...

in 4 movements,

Sanctus The Sanctus ( la, Sanctus, "Holy") is a hymn in Christian liturgy. It may also be called the ''epinikios hymnos'' ( el, ἐπινίκιος ὕμνος, "Hymn of Victory") when referring to the Greek rendition. In Western Christianity, the ...

, and

Agnus Dei is the Latin name under which the " Lamb of God" is honoured within the Catholic Mass and other Christian liturgies descending from the Latin liturgical tradition. It is the name given to a specific prayer that occurs in these liturgies, and ...

. Written in a Romantic style, the Mass is rich in harmony and tonality. It was praised for its contrast in instrumentation and the solos for harp, cello, English horn, and oboe. Beach was apparently unfamiliar with how Latin is stressed, as accents in the music may not agree with those in expected in words such as 'altissimus'.

Influences

In movements of the Gloria, most prominently in the "Quoniam," Beach uses double-dotted rhythms that also appear in Cherubini's

.Block, 1998, p. 65 These rhythms give a march-like quality to the movement. They are paired with trumpets and drums to evoke a sense of the

Church Militant In some strains of Christian theology, the Christian Church may be divided into: *the Church Militant (), also called the Church Pilgrim which consists of Christians on earth who struggle as Miles Christianus, soldiers of Christ against Christia ...

. Beach's frequently modulates to third-related keys, as in "Laudamus te", in which she uses the keys of E major, G major, E minor, and C major. Beach frequently uses C major to indicate heaven or light; here, it refers to divinity.

Reception

The premiere in 1892 was reviewed in 27 newspapers, 18 in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

and 9 "out of town." One criticism was that the opening solo trio in the "Laudamus te" had "pitch and ensemble problems." These may have been due to insufficient instrumental support, or the fact that this was a first performance.Block,1998, p. 71 In general, critics agreed that the work placed Beach "among the foremost rank of American composers." One recording of Beach's Mass, by the Michael May Festival Chorus in 1989, was made without a full orchestra. The performance was criticized for inaccurate tempos, inappropriate rearrangements, and overall interpretation.Block, 1992. No scholarly reviews have been made of the other recording, from 1995, by the Stow Festival Chorus and Orchestra.

Discography

*Amy Beach: Grand Mass in E major. Performed by the Michael May Festival Chorus. Compact disc, 1989, Newport Classic 60008 *Amy Beach: Grand Mass in E major. Performed by the Stow Festival Chorus and Orchestra. Albany Records, 1995, TROY 179

References

Sources

*Fried Block, Adrienne: ''Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian: The Life and Work of an American Composer, 1867-1944''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. *Fried Block, Adrienne: "St. Peter: an oratorio and Grand Mass in E Major" (in Record Reviews) ''American Music'', Vol. 10, No. 2 (Summer, 1992), pp. 229–232. (''St. Peter'': an Oratorio is a work by

John Knowles Paine John Knowles Paine (January 9, 1839 – April 25, 1906) was the first American-born composer to achieve fame for large-scale orchestral music. The senior member of a group of composers collectively known as the Boston Six, Paine was one of those ...

, 1839-1906)

External links

* * {{Authority control 1886 compositions

Beach A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc shel ...

Compositions by Amy Beach