Music in the Catholic liturgy

Church Music, Etc.

Music in the Catholic Liturgy

In the seventeenth century, there was an ongoing debate in the Catholic Church between the forces that desired more variety -- not to say exuberance -- in the music played and sung during the Mass, and those who desired a less fulsome expression of the ideas of the Mass through music, particularly vocal music. The work of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina symbolized, at the time and since, the forces that desired liturgical music to embrace and even extend the conventions of secular music of the day.

The debate began early, arguably when Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli appeared in 1609. Two other composers, Francesco Soriano and Giovanni Francesco Anerio, were also successful arrangers of sacred music, and they were regarded as descendants of the Palestrina tradition, which was, moreover, a Roman tradition.

That fact, also, contributed to the discord regarding music for the liturgy. By that time, Rome -- which is to say the Pope and the prelates who surrounded him -- desired to be in control of all aspects of the Mass, determining what was sacred, and what was profane. While most of Rome lauded the Missa Papae Marcelli, some preferred a more rigid stylistic code.

The Sistine Chapel -- the Cappella Sistina -- was in favor of Palestrina's exuberance and polyphonic sound. St. Peter's Basilica, finished during the seventeenth century, was such a grand building that it called for a grand scale of voices to fill it.

Still, at times, Palestrina's work was set aside in favor of simpler works with fewer voices.

The debate was not, however, only about the music. At the same time, orthodoxy in the church was also under discussion. The Council of Trent was an attempt to solve doctrinal problems that coincided with the debate concerning the proper use and form of vocal music in the Mass.

The Holy Apostolic Visitation, a body that assumed the role of enforcing Papal bulls regarding the conduct of the Mass, issued a lengthy document demanding that the style of music must be "grave, ecclesiastical and devout." This would seem to argue for simpler forms than Palestrina created.

The same body mandated how many voices could sing psalms, hymns or motets; it decreed that singers must not be actually seen by the congregation; it decreed that anyone presuming to be a maestro di capella or otherwise charged with music for Mass must swear on the seventeenth century equivalent of a "stack of Bibles," -the hand of the Vicar Cardinal of Rome or his viceregent -- that he would not violate the nine other demands of the edict regarding music.

There were two realities in the church at the time. First, there was a "worrying degree of exploitation of the various compositional, vocal and instrumental resources as required by contemporary taste" which it was thought represented a "form of sensuous enticement" in contravention of the officially sanctioned Church codes of conduct. The reality was the secularization was creeping into the church, and had been since before the Council of Trent. It was only after that that a distinction between secular and sacred music came about, a creation of the Counter-Reformation, and arguably having more to do with keeping the 'faithful' in line than with the music itself, or even with the supposed interference of the music with the purity of the liturgy.

Another apparent intention of the Visitation's edict was to quell the growing tendency for churches to add music virtually at will, without prior 'vetting' by the liturgical powers. On the other hand, it was also desired by Church powers that music be specific to each Mass and each portion of each Mass. Refining and redesigning the great "systematic" collections such as Palestrina's would have proved an impossible task. As a result the seventeenth century saw the almost total disappearance of collections of offertories such as Palestrina's and antiphones such as Anerio's.

While there was great debate about the use of human voice because the voices of the celebrant of the Mass had to carry the entire burden of the rite, there was none where the organ was concerned. Indeed, the Church prescribed the playing of the organ.

However, music for the Mass was not so rigidly thought of outside of Rome. In Northern Italy, in particular, the organ made way for a trio of two violins and bass. Eventually, entire musical Masses are created.

In particular, Venice desired to affirm is autonomy from Rome, and levels of tolerance for music in the liturgy were very expansive.

One of the results of the various edicts and responses to the Church fathers attempting to retain a hold on the entire liturgy and its music, or lack thereof, was that composers became more and more complex in handling the demands for fewer voices, or more voices, or instruments and so on. The result was sometimes "florid polyphony" which seems certainly to be the opposite of what the Visitation attempted to ensure.

What was being sought in all of this was 'musico-liturgical coherence.' Monteverdi is thought to have solved the problems inherent in this search through use of musical conditions that seem at first to contaminate the liturgy but which, in the end, "provide that very stylistic seal' the liturgy requires.

The liturgical music of Monteverdi is solemn and destined for only the highest order of musical religious services. Palestrina, of course, is exemplary of a more fluid and arguably lasting tradition. However, even these two were not alone at the top of the seventeenth century music ladder; each locality in Italy developed traditions of its owner, with local liturgical traditions in basilicas and churches in Bologna and Naples as well.

-- Music in the Catholic Liturgy (outline)

I. Seventeenth century church music: debate

A. Exuberance, joyful noise

B. Decorum and tradition

II. Palestrina

A. Embrace the 'secular' music conventions of the day