Roman Catholic church
music.
This article surveys the liturgical and ‘paraliturgical’ music of the
Roman Catholic Church from the time of the Council of Trent
(1545–63), summoned by Pope Paul III to counteract the
changes taking place in the Church in the wake of the
Reformation.
I. Introduction
II. The 16th century in Europe
III. The 17th century
IV. The 18th century
V. The 19th century
VI. Music outside the European orbit
VII. The 20th century: up to the Second Vatican Council
VIII. The 20th century: from the Second Vatican Council
JOSEPH DYER
Roman Catholic church music
I. Introduction
The liturgical diversification that had occurred in Europe during
the first half of the 16th century was to have a profound effect
both on the role of music in worship and on its style. Some
Reformers rejected all music except unison congregational song,
while others saw the value of continuing older practices and
adapting contemporary musical styles to a new repertory in the
vernacular. The Council, in response, reasserted the use of Latin
and Latin plainchant in the Catholic liturgy, prohibited singing in
the vernacular, approved the use of polyphony and rejected
secular musical influences. From this point in the history of
music, therefore, it is possible to begin to speak of a distinctly
‘Roman Catholic’ musical tradition.
The major themes of the ensuing discussion are the
correspondence between music and piety and the relationship
between liturgical music and the contemporary styles that arose
in the secular sphere. These styles were either accepted (the
more usual course of action) or rejected by composers writing for
the Catholic liturgy. The text most frequently set to music was the
Ordinary of the Mass, but the vesper psalms and Magnificat were
sometimes given elaborate settings for solo voices, chorus and
instruments. There also exists a large repertory of sacred music
with Latin text, whose use within the framework of the liturgy
cannot always be determined precisely.
Gregorian chant was regarded – at least ideally – as the principal
musical heritage of the Catholic Church until the Second Vatican
Council. Although many medieval elements were eliminated from
the vernacular liturgy introduced in the 1960s, the use of chant
was not proscribed. However, the virtual disappearance of the
Latin Mass, the adoption of metrical hymnody in the vernacular,
and the cultivation of idioms derived from popular music
relegated plainchant to a subordinate position, its use in the
liturgy now being mostly confined to monasteries and some
cathedrals.
At the end of the 16th century the glory of Catholic church music
was the polyphonic idiom that had achieved an extraordinary
degree of perfection in the hands of late Renaissance masters
such as Lassus, Palestrina and Victoria. With the dawn of the
17th century, monody – a new style based on completely
different, indeed antithetical, textural, structural, formal and
expressive principles – superseded it, although the art of 16th-
century polyphony, henceforth known as the stile antico, was
never completely neglected. Opera, the dominant vocal genre
from the mid-17th century into the 19th, exercised a frequently
irresistible influence on composers of Catholic church music, and
by the latter half of the 18th century the rapidly maturing
symphonic style began to influence orchestral masses and
vesper psalms. The 19th century was less notable for its
contribution to the repertory of Catholic church music than for the
initiation of projects to ‘purify’ liturgical music of secular influence.
Renaissance polyphony was revived and served as the model for
(generally uninspired) imitations. The singing of Gregorian chant
was encouraged, and efforts to restore the authentic medieval
melodies gained ground.
In the early 20th century, Catholic church music continued largely
on the course laid out in the last third of the previous century, but
a number of notable original compositions in contemporary styles
were added to the Church's musical patrimony. In the wake of
the liturgical revisions authorized by the Second Vatican Council,
however, the proliferation of musical styles rooted in popular
idioms has given rise to an ironic situation. Secular musical style,
denounced for centuries by Church Fathers, councils, synods,
popes and bishops, has become in a very real sense the basis of
many of the songs sung at the liturgy in Catholic parishes today.
Roman Catholic church music
II. The 16th century in Europe
1. The Reformation and the Council of Trent.
The Reformers of the 16th century demanded that Christian
worship be modified more or less radically to permit the laity's
meaningful participation. Their opposition to the Mass was thus
not confined to theological issues but extended to its celebration
in a language (Latin) understood only by the clergy and educated
laity. In addition to the linguistic barrier, some churches had a
large choir-screen of wood, wrought iron or stone that virtually
hid the officiating priest and his assistants from view; in a few
Italian churches a transverse wall (tramezzo) across the nave
blocked the entire altar space from the view of those standing in
the nave.
The spectrum of opinion among the Reformers about new
patterns of worship was wide indeed. Luther proceeded
cautiously, maintaining that he had no intention of abolishing the
Mass but of reforming it. He recognized the value of
congregational song, and his various orders of worship provided
for frequent singing in the vernacular by pastor, congregation and
choir. The Swiss Reformers Ulrich Zwingli and Jean Calvin
created new orders of service for, respectively, the German- and
French-speaking parts of Switzerland. Zwingli, though well-
versed in music and its performance, made no provision for
music in the Reformed service he designed for Zürich. Calvin
permitted only unison congregational singing in the vernacular.
The Roman Catholic Church could not ignore the profound
changes that had taken place in the way people worshipped and
in the music used for worship in the Reformed Churches, but this
subject did not receive formal consideration until the Council of
Trent, which met intermittently between 1545 and 1563, had
nearly completed its work. Apart from resolutions affirming the
use of Latin as opposed to the vernacular, the primacy of
Gregorian chant and the use of polyphonic music (see §I above),
the Council made few detailed decisions about the future course
of Catholic church music. Provincial councils and local synods
retained their authority to determine specific guidelines
‘according to the custom of the country’. Anything redolent of
secular music was strictly forbidden, as was music intended
merely to give pleasure (‘inanem aurium oblectationem’) to the
listeners.
Intelligibility of the words in polyphony (‘ut verba ab omnibus
percipi possunt’) was paramount, but this expectation had been
the norm for decades in secular genres such as the frottola and
the madrigal. While ecclesiastics would have memorized the
texts to which many motets were set (not to mention the text of
the Ordinary of the Mass), comprehensibility could be thwarted if
all the voices sang different words simultaneously. (See §II, 2,
ex.1, bars 12–16; by this point in the piece, however, the three
text fragments would have already been clearly declaimed.)
One of the primary goals of the Tridentine liturgical regulations
was uniformity in the celebration of the Mass and the Divine
Office throughout the Roman Catholic Church: ‘typical’ editions of
the reformed breviary (1568) and missal (1570) were printed and
made obligatory. Spain enjoyed a special dispensation from the
imposition of the Roman books, as did liturgical uses that could
claim an antiquity of 200 years or more. (Under these provisions
the Dominican Order was able to preserve its special Mass ritual
until the 1960s.) Pope Sixtus V charged the Congregation of
Rites, which he established in 1588, with the task of ensuring
that the liturgy prescribed in these books was observed and of
adjudicating whatever questions might arise.
2. The polyphonic mass and motet.
The masses and motets composed during the latter half of the
16th century generally avoided the complex contrapuntal artifices
(e.g. canons, abstract cantus firmi and complicated proportional
schemes) of the earlier part of the century in favour of polyphonic
transparency and formal clarity. The music flows naturally from
points of imitation into homophonic passages designed to
produce a clear rhythmic and melodic declamation of the text.
The two techniques were made to blend almost imperceptibly,
creating a seamless web of sound, as in the motet Exaltata est
(see ex.1) by Giammateo Asola (c1532–1609). The music of
Palestrina (1525/6–94), which represented for succeeding
generations the epitome of the sacred in music, reconciled the
demands of linear elegance, harmonic clarity, contrapuntal
mastery, control of dissonance and clarity of textual declamation
in a music of rich sonority.
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Although Palestrina dominated the Roman school of polyphony,
his was not the only style cultivated in the latter half of the 16th
century. A leading figure in Spain, Francisco Guerrero (c1528–
99), a student of Cristóbal de Morales (c1500–53), was for 50
years associated with Seville Cathedral. His works are much
more strongly flavoured by dissonance and the use of voice
spacings generally avoided by Palestrina and his followers.
Guerrero influenced the leading composer of Spanish sacred
music in the 16th century, Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548–1611).
Often compared with Palestrina, Victoria cultivated a sober style,
expressive harmonic language, careful text declamation and a
subtle use of ‘madrigalisms’ to illustrate the text. His music and
that of other Spanish composers was transmitted to the Americas
in the 16th century.
The prolific Orlande de Lassus (1532–94), Kapellmeister of the
Bavarian ducal court at Munich, produced large quantities of
Latin sacred music of all types: masses, motets (as many as
1200), offertories, psalms, hymns, passions and litanies in
settings ranging from duets to large-scale polychoral works in the
Venetian style. Lassus mixed polyphonic and homophonic
textures freely, resulting often in a strongly individual
interpretation of the text. The same features are found in the
music of his student Gregor Aichinger (1564/5–1628), who later
studied with Giovanni Gabrieli in Venice. Aichinger, inspired by
Lodovico Viadana (c1560–1627), also cultivated the sacred
concerto for one or more voices with basso continuo, a genre
that came into vogue in the early years of the 17th century. His
contemporary, Hans Leo Hassler (c1564–1612), a pupil of
Giovanni's uncle Andrea, had little interest in the modern
italianate innovations that fascinated his German colleague; even
his many polychoral works eschew the colourful Venetian
instrumental practice that he knew so well. In Augsburg, where
both composers worked – one a Catholic priest (Aichinger), the
other (Hassler) a Protestant writing for the Catholic Church – a
confessional détente had been reached.
Religious tolerance in England was notably less relaxed than on
the Continent. Repressive measures were taken against
Catholics (‘recusants’), some of whom were members of
aristocratic families which had remained faithful to Rome.
Attendance at a clandestine Mass could bring serious reprisals,
and there could be no question of cultivating liturgical music in a
way that might attract undesired attention. England's leading
composer, William Byrd (1543–1623), was a Catholic, but since
he enjoyed the singular favour of Queen Elizabeth I, he was
permitted to publish music patently intended for Catholic worship.
Neither Byrd's Propers for the major feasts of the liturgical year
contained in the two Gradualia volumes (1605 and 1607) nor his
three settings of the Mass Ordinary make reference to chant
themes. Byrd's choice of texts implies a departure from the
traditional English Sarum rite in favour of Roman use.
3. The revision of chant.
In the ‘typical’ editions of liturgical books that appeared after the
Council of Trent, the chant texts were only slightly emended and
would therefore have required minimal changes to the melodies.
The work of adaptation was entrusted by Pope Gregory XIII
(pontificate 1572–85) to Palestrina and Annibale Zoilo (c1537–
92), a member of the papal chapel. They embarked on a
comprehensive revision of the traditional melodies according to
humanistic principles, which conflicted with the aesthetic of
medieval chant. The general concepts that guided Palestrina and
Zoilo had already been promoted in the 16th century and were
embodied most notably in Giovanni Guidetti's influential
Directorium chori (1582), in which rhythmic values were assigned
to each note of a chant melody according to the long (i.e.
accented) and short (unaccented) syllables of the text. In practice
this process led to the truncation or elimination of melismas on
weak or final syllables, the abbreviation of some melismas falling
on accented syllables, and the rearrangement of the text under
the neumes. When it became known how radically the two
revisers intended to transform the melodies, work on the project
was halted.
After Palestrina's death, his son Iginio tried to publish his father's
revision of the chants of the Temporale (and not incidentally to
profit therefrom), but in attempting to pass off as Palestrina's
work a forged revision of the Sanctorale he became involved in
legal proceedings. Two other Roman musicians, Felice Anerio
(c1560–1614) and Francesco Soriano (1548/9–1621), finally
undertook to revise the melodies on the basis of guidelines
(allegedly promulgated by Pope Paul V) stipulating that only
‘faults that might possibly damage the melodies’ were to be
corrected. Anerio and Soriano went further than this, however,
and incorporated some of the methods applied by Palestrina and
Zoilo; their Gradual, essentially a private, publisher's edition of
the chants, was printed by the Medici Press at Rome in 1614–15.
Although identified on the title page as ‘reformed by order of
Pope Paul V’, the pope refused to endorse the imposition of the
Medicean Gradual as the ‘typical’ edition of the Church's
plainchant repertory. (This Gradual was revived in the 19th
century and for a while did become the official version of the
chants; see §V, 6 below.) During the 17th and 18th centuries
many dioceses and religious congregations printed their own
chant books. Consequently, chant in the Catholic world never
attained the same degree of uniformity imposed on the spoken
texts and ceremonies by the printed books, all of which had to
receive Rome's official approbation.
New melodies were composed that could be presented as ‘chant’
merely because they used the traditional note shapes and were
unharmonized. Editions of chant, including some newly
composed pieces, were published in mensural notation (cantus
fractus), many of them provided with a (sometimes optional)
basso continuo accompaniment.
Interest in plainchant as a living tradition was strong in France
throughout the 17th and 18th centuries: it even displaced the
king's favourite grand motet on Sundays in the chapel at
Versailles. The long chant melismas and ‘defective’ accentuation
did not suit the humanistic literary tastes of the time in France
any more than they did in Italy. Accordingly, the melodies were
revised, adapted to the principles of tonal music with the
introduction of leading notes etc., and set to modern rhythms
(plain-chant mesuré). This step having been taken, it was
perhaps only logical that an entirely new repertory of essentially
syllabic chants would be composed. Henry Du Mont's Cinq
messes en plein-chant (1669) immediately achieved great
success and continued in use for centuries.
4. Polychoral music at Venice and Rome.
The polychoral psalms, masses and motets of the late 16th and
early 17th centuries aimed for sheer splendour of musical
sonority. The first works for two choirs (cori spezzati) have been
traced to north Italian composers working in Padua, Treviso and
Bergamo, but the ultimate flowering of the polychoral idiom on a
grand scale occurred at Venice and Rome.
The dazzling Byzantine opulence of the Basilica di S Marco in
Venice served as a fitting backdrop for the realization of the
ingenious works of the Gabrielis. Galleries above the main floor
of the church allowed for the spatial dispersion of vocal,
instrumental and mixed choirs of voices and instruments that
often contrasted in range. (It has been argued, however, that
double-choir psalms were performed with both ensembles
standing together in the ‘pulpitum magnum cantorum’ outside the
chancel.) Venetian polychoralism made effective use of short
rhythmic motifs either repeated by a single choir or echoed by a
second or third choir in dialogue, a stylistic device that was to
have powerful influence on succeeding generations of
composers.
Venetian church music was first raised to a level of international
renown by the South Netherlandish composer Adrian Willaert.
Engaged as maestro di cappella at S Marco in 1527, he
introduced polychoral music in the 1540s, but it was not until two
decades later that polychoralism began to flourish in Venice. One
of Willaert's successors, Andrea Gabrieli (1532/3–85), created
works for multiple choirs of voices and of instruments, the
quintessential hallmark of Venetian music. Many were psalms
and Magnificat settings designed to enhance Vespers on the
great feast days celebrated as magnificent religious and civic
occasions. Giovanni Gabrieli (1553–1612), Andrea's nephew,
published representative examples of his polychoral music in two
volumes of Symphoniae sacrae (1597 and 1615). Two other
composers who added to the musical lustre of 16th-century
Venice were Claudio Merulo (1533–1604) and Giovanni Croce
(c1557–1609). The former, well known for his brilliant organ
toccatas and intonations, was organist at S Marco between 1557
and 1584, while the latter was appointed maestro di cappella in
1603.
Composers in Rome carried the polychoral idiom far into the 17th
century. Though harmonically and rhythmically more
conservative than the Venetians, they disposed multiple choirs
around the galleries of the large Roman churches, thus creating
for listeners the overwhelming impressions that gave rise to the
label ‘colossal Baroque’. The most celebrated representative of
this phenomenon was Orazio Benevoli (1605–72), a Roman by
birth. Although he wrote smaller works for general use, his
reputation rests on the grand masses and psalms composed for
uncommonly large ensembles. A polychoral mass for 48 voices
divided into 12 choirs (now lost) was performed at the dedication
of the new cathedral in Salzburg, a building modelled after the
earliest Baroque churches of Rome. (The famous mass for 54
voices previously attributed to him has been provisionally dated
1682 and assigned to the Salzburg composer Heinrich Ignaz
Franz von Biber.) The ‘colossal Baroque’ style was cultivated by
other Roman composers, among them Giacomo Carissimi
(1605–74) and G.O. Pitoni (1657–1743). Even Palestrina's
esteemed Missa Papae Marcelli fell victim to the Roman
fascination for full sonority: it was arranged for double choir by
the composer's pupil Francesco Soriano.
In Germany both Catholic and Lutheran composers who enjoyed
access to the necessary resources emulated the works that
made Venice shine in the musical firmament. Music for multiple
choirs was thus not emblematic of the Counter-Reformation, as
has been sometimes maintained. It passed easily over
confessional barriers and inspired some of the greatest music of
Heinrich Schütz, for three years a student of Giovanni Gabrieli,
and Michael Praetorius.
