Why are most Masses so long?

[kernelbogey]

While listening to Joseph Haydn's Missa Brevis on TTN I was struck by the question as the familiar parts of the Mass whizzed by.

As a non-believer I greatly enjoy the Masses of Baroque and Classical composers, as well as enjoying Janacek's gloriously humanistic Glagolitic Mass, and Brahms's German Requiem which seems to straddle the religious and the humanistic.

I mean no disrespect by my question, nor by the above remarks. I am curious whether baroque and classical composers were expected to write a Mass that would take an expected length. Haydn wrote several wonderful longer Masses but gets this Missa Brevis done in under 17 minutes. As far as I could tell this was accomplished by lines of text being sung only once, rather than the more usual repeats.

[Pulcinella]

I don't have a score of the Haydn Missa Brevis, but I think it is even more condensed by the words being spread out/shared between parts (not very well explained: each part does not sing all the text).

[Mandryka]

While listening to Joseph Haydn's Missa Brevis on TTN I was struck by the question as the familiar parts of the Mass whizzed by.

As a non-believer I greatly enjoy the Masses of Baroque and Classical composers, as well as enjoying Janacek's gloriously humanistic Glagolitic Mass, and Brahms's German Requiem which seems to straddle the religious and the humanistic.

I mean no disrespect by my question, nor by the above remarks. I am curious whether baroque and classical composers were expected to write a Mass that would take an expected length. Haydn wrote several wonderful longer Masses but gets this Missa Brevis done in under 17 minutes. As far as I could tell this was accomplished by lines of text being sung only once, rather than the more usual repeats.

Wikipedia has a comment about this:


The work is a clear example of the Austrian missa brevis form. Redlich writes of "the Austrian type of the Missa Brevis, notorious for the hurried expediency with which large tracts of the text of the Mass are musically disposed of. In the Creed the text from "Patrem omnipotentem" to "Et vitam venturi" is dealt with in no more than twenty-nine bars. This is managed by the simultaneous singing of different sentences—the profession of catholic faith, "Et unam sanctam catholicam ... ecclesiam", tucked away in the contralto." Redlich adds that, like similar instances of the missa brevis, Haydn repeats the music for the Kyrie in the final "Dona nobis pacem" section.^[3]

[Master Jacques]

To try and address kernelbogey's headline question: large-scale mass settings are the length they are, because the composers' patrons wanted them that way. Patrons and congregations, starved of operatic and theatrical entertainment on Saints' Days, Feast Days and Sundays, needed their musical fix, and got it in the form of extended Mass settings, which have little liturgical sense to them.

Beethoven didn't have a patron directly ordering the composition, but wrote his Missa Solemnis consciously emulating the large-scale forms. Cherubini took the musical organisation to similarly sophisticated heights in his (superb!) extended series of long masses and requiems. Brahms of course is not writing a liturgical work at all in his German Requiem, but a long, non-religious cantata which borrows the patterns of those earlier musical feasts to make secular points. Britten's War Requiem contrives to have its cake and eat it, mixing the sacred and secular in alternating spoonfuls.

[Ein Heldenleben]

It’s a bit like asking why are speeches in Shakespeare so long ? Why do characters take twenty lines to say what could be said in half a dozen ? Because it sounds impressive , because of the artistic effect , because if you say it a lot and effectively repeat it there’s a chance people will hear it and understand it at the back of the Globe . And in music once you get into large scale fugal , contrapuntal sections you have to repeat things with the same words. You can make an Amen cadence from two chords IV I or you can write the end of the Messiah (if you are a once in a generation genius) . The latter is more impressive.

[kernelbogey]

To try and address kernelbogey's headline question: large-scale mass settings are the length they are, because the composers' patrons wanted them that way.....

Thanks MJ: I thought something along those lines would be the answer. Some Catholics I know regard attendance per se a devotional duty, and I sense (though never a Catholic) that there is an element of 'getting it over' as the Haydn does rather well. There was something in Danielle's Intro about it having been written for a hospital setting, which may be relevant.

[kernelbogey]

It’s a bit like asking why are speeches in Shakespeare so long ? Why do characters take twenty lines to say what could be said in half a dozen ?....

Fair enough, but with the difference that the congregation is familiar with all the words - and the better educated would know what the Latin means.

[french frank]

Some Catholics I know regard attendance per se a devotional duty, and I sense (though never a Catholic) that there is an element of 'getting it over' as the Haydn does rather well.

Wikipedia's note on Britten's Missa Brevis suggests that omitting the Credo was 'predisposed towards the liturgy of the Church of England or the Protestant Episcopal Church of America' while the inclusion of the Credo was fundamental to the Catholic liturgy. Omission is a different method of abbreviation not appropriate for Catholic congregations.

[Keraulophone]

By telescoping the text of the Gloria of Haydn’s Little Organ Mass (Missa brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo), with sections of text sung simultaneously, this Allegro molto movement is dispatched in under one minute!

In a liturgical context it takes the clergy by surprise as much as does the Kyrie of Dvořák’s Mass in D by its great length (usually sung in Advent or Lent when the Gloria is omitted).

[smittims]

For similar reasons, rooms in rich men's houses tended to be much bigger the they needed to be. It was a way of showing people that you could afford it. I suppose the equivalent today is these silly fools who spend thousands of pounds on a wedding receprtion and then start married life deep in debt.

[Pulcinella]

I rather like this, from Stravinsky, about the Credo in his own Mass:

Stravinsky also said of the Credo: “One composes a march to facilitate marching men, so with my Credo I hope to provide an aid to the text. The Credo is the longest movement. There is much to believe.”

[kernelbogey]

I rather like this, from Stravinsky, about the Credo in his own Mass:

Very good!