![Josquin Missa BV Kyrie](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Josquin_Missa_BV_Kyrie.jpg)
A paraphrase mass is a musical setting of the
Ordinary of the
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 ...
that uses as its basis an elaborated version of 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 ...
, typically chosen from
plainsong
Plainsong or plainchant (calque from the French ''plain-chant''; la, cantus planus) is a body of chants used in the liturgy, liturgies of the Western Church. When referring to the term plainsong, it is those sacred pieces that are composed in La ...
or some other sacred source. It was a common means of mass composition from the late 15th century until the end of the 16th century, during the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
period in music history, and was most frequently used by composers in the parts of western Europe which remained under the direct control of the
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
. It is distinguished from the other types of mass composition, including
cyclic mass In Renaissance music, the cyclic mass was a musical setting of the Ordinary of the Roman Catholic Mass, in which each of the movements – Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei – shared a common musical theme, commonly a cantus ...
,
parody
A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its subj ...
,
canon
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western ca ...
,
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 ...
, free composition, and mixtures of these techniques.
History
Musical paraphrase, in general, had been used for a long time before it was first applied to the music of the Ordinary of the Mass. It was common in the early and middle 15th century for a work such as a
motet
In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margar ...
to use an embellished plainchant melody as its source, with the melody usually in the topmost voice.
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 ...
's ''Gloria'' is an example of this procedure, as are the two settings by
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 ...
of the
Marian Antiphon
Marian hymns are Christian songs focused on Mary, mother of Jesus. They are used in both devotional and liturgical services, particularly by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches. They are often used in the mont ...
''Alma redemptoris mater.'' Many compositions in
fauxbourdon
Fauxbourdon (also fauxbordon, and also commonly two words: faux bourdon or faulx bourdon, and in Italian falso bordone) – French for ''false drone'' – is a technique of musical harmonisation used in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, ...
, a characteristic technique of the
Burgundian School
The Burgundian School was a group of composers active in the 15th century in what is now northern and eastern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, centered on the court of the Dukes of Burgundy. The school inaugurated the music of Burgundy.
The ...
, use a paraphrased version of a plainchant tune in the highest voice. In these cases the source would not be obscured by the paraphrase; it was still easily recognizable through whatever ornamentation was applied.
Dufay was probably one of the first to use paraphrase technique in the mass. His ''Missa Ave regina celorum'' (written between 1463 and 1474) is similar to a cantus firmus mass in that the tune is in the tenor, however it is paraphrased by elaboration (and he also includes bits of his own motet on that antiphon, foreshadowing the
parody
A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its subj ...
technique). By the 1470s or 1480s, the first masses appear that use paraphrase in more than one voice: two examples survive by
Johannes Martini
Johannes Martini (c. 1440 – late 1497 or early 1498) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance.
Life
He was born in Brabant around 1440, but information about his early life is scanty. He probably received his early training in Flan ...
, the ''Missa domenicalis'' and the ''Missa ferialis''.
By the beginning of the 16th century, it was becoming more common to use the paraphrased tune in all voices of a polyphonic texture. The most famous example from the early 16th century, and one of the most famous paraphrase masses ever composed, was the ''
Missa pange lingua'' by
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 ...
, which is an extended fantasia on the ''
Pange Lingua
''Pange lingua'' may refer to either of two Mediaeval Latin hymns of the Roman Catholic Church: one by St. Thomas Aquinas and one by Venantius Fortunatus (530-609), which extols the triumph of the Cross. He wrote it for a procession that brought a ...
'' hymn for Corpus Christi by
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...
. This mass was probably composed near the end of Josquin's life, around 1520. In the ''Missa pange lingua'', all voices carry variants of the hymn, with the beginnings of successive phrases marking points of imitation in the mass. All voices are given equal weight, and the score achieves a motivic unity which was a significant change from previous practice.
Another composer of Josquin's generation who was important in the development of the paraphrase mass was
Pierre de La Rue
Pierre de la Rue ( – 20 November 1518) was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of the Renaissance. His name also appears as Piersson or variants of Pierchon and his toponymic, when present, as various forms of de Platea, de Robore, or de Vic ...
. Like Josquin, he began with the cantus firmus technique, and continued to use it for most of his life; but he began to elaborate the source material, eventually integrating it into multiple voices of a
polyphonic
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 ...
texture where all the voices had equal weight.
Later in the 16th century, paraphrase remained a common technique for construction of masses, although it was employed far less frequently than was parody technique.
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 ...
used paraphrase technique in 31 of his masses, second only to parody, which he used in 51. Most of his masses based on hymns are paraphrase masses. In these works, the source hymns are often presented in a condensed form. When the
Council of Trent
The Council of Trent ( la, Concilium Tridentinum), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trento, Trent (or Trento), now in northern Italian Peninsula, Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation ...
prohibited the use of secular songs as sources for masses in 1562, a large corpus of music was no longer available to composers who had been ransacking it for parodies; those composers who followed the Council's dictates often returned to using
monophonic
Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction (often shortened to mono) is sound intended to be heard as if it were emanating from one position. This contrasts with stereophonic sound or ''stereo'', which uses two separate audio channels to reproduc ...
hymns and plainsong, sources which suggested the paraphrase technique. Indeed, during this period, it was the favored method of using
Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe durin ...
s to construct masses.
[Harvard Dictionary of Music, p. 608. ]
Paraphrase masses were written relatively infrequently in England and Germany, especially after the
Protestant Reformation
The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
. Composers of masses in those regions developed styles independently, and in both areas tended to use variations of the cantus firmus technique.
Notes
References
* J. Peter Burkholder: "Borrowing"; Honey Meconi, "Pierre de La Rue"; Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed November 6, 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, "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 Sherr, ed., ''The Josquin Companion.'' Oxford University Press, 1999.
{{refend
Renaissance music genres