Viennese Classical Masses?

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The present issue includes several articles touching upon the sacred music of Viennese classicism. This provides an opportunity to reflect upon questions that arise concerning that repertory. These have been persistent questions, asked in their own time, in succeeding generations, and even in the present.

The fundamental question is one that pertains to the church music of our own time as well: to what extent can the music of the church adopt the idioms and procedures of the surrounding secular musical world? We read complaints from the eighteenth century that the church music had become too operatic, that it did not respect the conventional distinctions between music of the church, chamber, and theater. Yet masses of Haydn and Mozart particularly, but also of other composers--Schubert, Michael Haydn, Weber, and even Beethoven--have had a stable place in the repertories of certain large city churches, particularly in Europe, but also in the United States; so it will be useful to consider the issues surrounding these works to come to an understanding of their use in the sacred liturgy.

The focus should be upon the normative works, not the curious exceptions. For example, there are certain masses of the type missa brevis in which the texts of the longer movements, particularly the Credo, are "telescoped," the text is divided among the four voice parts, which then sing four successive lines of text simultaneously, resulting in a very brief setting of the complete text, but one for which it is difficult for any listener to discern just what is being sung. At the opposite extreme are extended compositions with ample space for the development of each movement; perhaps the most obvious example is the Missa solemnis of Beethoven, a …