AVE YOU EVER HEARD that Palestrina single-handedly saved sacred polyphony? As the story goes, the council fathers of Trent were all set to get rid of the use of polyphony at Mass, because complex polyphony obscures the clear recitation of the sacred text. In response to this threat, the famous composer wrote his sublime Missa Papae Marcelli, which uses sections of homophony (allowing the listener to understand the words being sung) skillfully mixed with beautiful counterpoint to add variety. When the council fathers heard the Mass, they relented, allowing the continuation of polyphonic settings, as long as they don’t stray too far from a clear and comprehensible declamation of the text.
Tridentine Reforms: the Legend • This is one of those legends that seems to grow more impressive with each telling. As far as I know, the earliest source for the story is the 1607 treatise on basso continuo accompaniment by Agostino Agazzari:
And it is for no less than this reason that Holy Church very nearly abandoned music by act of a Sovereign Pontiff, had not Giovanni Palestrina shown that the vice and error lay with composers and not with music itself, and as confirmation of this he composed his mass entitled Missa papae Marcelli.
I have on my shelf a wonderfully flowery book called Palestrina: Savior of Church Music by Charles Angoff, viewable here, which recounts the story in much more lavish detail. There is also even an oft-neglected opera on the subject.
Tridentine Reforms: the Reality • These portrayals are a bit larger than life; but they add some delightful (if unverifiable) narrative color to real historical events. The truth of the matter is that the council really did want to reform the music of the Church in a way that gave more respect to the comprehensibility of the words. One canon of the council asserts:
The whole plan of singing in musical modes should be constituted not to give empty pleasure to the ear, but in such a way that the words may be clearly understood by all, and thus the hearts of the listeners be drawn to the desire for heavenly harmonies, in the contemplation of the joys of the blessed.
This reforming spirit is precisely what led to the commission of reform in the field of plainchant, a process that initially involved a Papal command (by Gregory XIII, the pope from the picture accompanying this post) to Palestrina but that eventually resulted in a diverse plethora of seventeenth-century chant editions, which shorten the more elaborate melodies to a greater or lesser extent, as has been discussed in a recent post on this blog. The chant of this era has, I think, a certain charm, including the much maligned Medicean edition, which grew out of Palestrina’s work and which took on an outsized importance during the nineteenth-century controversies over chant. That’s a story for another post. At any rate, the trend shown by this era’s sacred music—paying more attention to the intelligibility of the words—mirrors contemporary trends in secular music.
Palestrina’s Marvelous Mass • Whatever its origin, Palestrina’s Mass is a superb example of this post-Tridentine style of polyphony, in which the longer texts of the Gloria and Credo are set in a way that allows the words to be communicated clearly. Recordings such as that of the Tallis Scholars are simply magnificent. Naturally we would all like to adorn our liturgies with this beautiful music, which of course belongs in its original context within the liturgical glory of a real Roman Catholic Mass! Two features of this setting—its length and its voicing for six parts—may place this Mass out of the reach of most parish choirs.
A Simpler Way • Fortunately, there is a remedy! The composer Giovanni Francesco Anerio made a reduced version of Palestrina’s Mass, scored for four voices (see a print copy from 1646 here). This is also not merely an arrangement using clever switching between parts, but a new composition that shortens the Mass while retaining much of the original counterpoint and tonal plan. It’s like an abridgment or a Reader’s Digest version. It is quite skillfully done, and I have found great satisfaction in singing this version of the Mass. I offer it here at two different pitch levels.
Some Performance Notes • The print that I took this from included a fifth part for the organist to play from the bassline. This part merely adds harmonic support without adding any new counterpoint. You should feel free to either accompany or not according to your particular needs. In two places, I rewrote a few notes that do not sound as good when the choir is unaccompanied, and I have marked these notes with a star. In general, as with most music of this era, you will have better results feeling two beats to the measure (corresponding notionally to the old idea of the tactus). I have also left the Credo out since I engraved this for use at a couple of weddings this summer. I would add it to the edition if there is sufficient interest. This leaves only the vexed question of pitch.
The Alto Problem • The original notation (in particular, the clefs used in the partbooks) leaves no doubt that the music as printed is meant to be sung at a lower pitch, usually a fourth or a fifth lower than the original notation. Pitch in seventeenth-century Italy varied widely by region, with A4 (now usually standardized as 440hz) being anywhere from 392hz to 466hz. I find the lower of the two keys given here to be a pretty good placement. However, it will be noted that the alto part is too low for the alto section of most modern parish choirs. The reason is that the altus in the Renaissance was a name that reflected its meaning well: the alto is a high male voice, not singing in falsetto. In general, pretty much any female voice would feel most comfortable on the soprano line of continental polyphony of the sixteenth century. Of course, that line would most likely have been sung by males as well in a seventeenth-century liturgical setting, whether by boys, castrati, or falsettists.
As a compromise, if your alto section is composed of female voices, as is typical of modern choirs (it’s a fallen world!), you might find it more useful to use the higher of the two versions given here. This makes the other parts all a bit high, but it corresponds to modern practice.
Perhaps you can introduce this Mass setting with your choirs. An added benefit of learning it is that it would make graduating to the full Palestrina version easier, since the material is very much the same, only on a grander scale. I find Anerio’s work here to be excellent, and I hope you do as well.
