Learning Something New Every Single Day!

Earlier this week, recovering from an allergic reaction with a rash and swelling all over my face--two trips to the Immediate Care and ER; pills and potions, etc, etc.--I found out that Igor Stravinsky composed a Catholic Mass between 1944 and 1948. According to some quotations in a Wikipedia article:

"My Mass was partly provoked by some Masses of Mozart that I found at a secondhand store in Los Angeles in 1942 or 1943. As I played through these rococo-operatic sweets-of-sin, I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one."
— Igor Stravinsky to Robert Craft[1]

And although he was a Russian Orthodox Christian, he had to write a Catholic Mass if he wanted to have orchestral accompaniment, so:

I wanted my Mass to be used liturgically, an outright impossibility as far as the Russian Church was concerned, as Orthodox tradition proscribes musical instruments in its services- and as I can endure unaccompanied singing in only the most harmonically primitive music.[4]

I don't appreciate his comments about Mozart's Masses ("these rococo-operatic sweets-of-sin"!), but I appreciated his setting of the Mass, especially 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.[4]

You may find several performances on YouTube and on CD (perhaps available used?)

Stravinsky's comment about Mozart's "rococo-operatic" Masses reminded me of Kenneth Clark's description in Civilisation of how listening to the G minor Quintet changed his mind about that characterization of him:

And yet to pronounce the name of Mozart in the Amahenburg is dangerous . It gives colour -- very pretty colour -- to the notion that Mozart was merely a Rococo composer. Fifty years ago this was what most people thought about him, and the notion was supported by horrible little plaster busts which made him look the perfect eighteenth-century dummy. I bought one of these busts when I was at school, but when I first heard the G minor Quintet I realised that it couldn't have been written by the smooth, white character on my mantelpiece and threw the bust into the wastepaper basket. I afterwards discovered the Lange portrait [169] which, although no masterpiece, does convey the single-mindedness of genius. Of course a lot of Mozart's music is in the current eighteenth-century style. He was so much at home in this golden age of music, and so completely the master of its forms, that he didn't feel it necessary to destroy them. Indeed he loved the clarity and the precision that had been brought to perfection in the music of his time. I like the story of Mozart sitting at table absentmindedly folding and refolding his napkin into more and more elaborate patterns, as fresh musical ideas passed through his mind. But this formal perfection was used to express two characteristics which were very far from the Rococo style. One of them was that peculiar kind of melancholy, a melancholy amounting almost to panic, which so often haunts the isolation of genius. Mozart felt it quite young. The other characteristic was almost the opposite: a passionate interest in human beings, and in the drama of human relationships. How often in Mozart's orchestral pieces - concertos or quartets - we find our- selves participating in a drama or dialogue; and of course this feeling reaches its natural conclusion in opera.

I love to listen to Mozart's operas! Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Idomeneo, La Clemenza di Tito, Cosi fan Tutte, and Die Zauberflöte! Especially Le Nozze di Figaro!! 

And I enjoy listening to lots of Mozart's music in general, as often demonstrated on this blog. 

Finally, I'm not sure how settings of the Catholic Mass--especially by a composer like Mozart--could ever be considered "sweets-of-sin"!

Nevertheless, I recommend you listen to Stravinsky's Catholic Mass!

Image Credit (Public Domain) Photoportrait of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. Taken by George Grantham Bain's news picture agency.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Act 1: Cherubino hides behind Susanna's chair as the count arrives.

Newman and Gregorian Chant

Susan Treacy, professor of music at Ave Maria University, and a member of the board of directors of the Church Music Association of America (CMAA) writes in the online edition of the Adoremus Bulletin about Blessed John Henry Newman and liturgical music, commenting on Newman's interest in Gregorian Chant, his preference for orchestral Masses, and his efforts to use popular hymns for their catechetical value:

Newman and his friends spent Holy Week in Rome. Here he met with the Abbé Fortunato Santini, the Vatican’s music librarian, in an effort to learn what he could about Gregorian chant. Back in England, a revival of Gregorian chant was under way, both in Anglican and in Catholic circles, and the young minister sought to become better informed about this ancient sacred art. Newman’s taste in church music, despite his interest in Gregorian chant, was eclectic, and often as not reflected the contemporary penchant for the orchestrally accompanied Mass settings of Haydn, Mozart, and others. He also believed in the utility of popular hymns in evangelizing and catechizing people of many walks of life. In his autobiographical novel, Loss and Gain, three young men —Bateman, Campbell, and Reding — vigorously discuss the merits of Gregorian chant versus “modern” music, along with Gothic versus Classical architecture. After a while, Bateman admits to preferring instrumentally accompanied chant, “the glorious old chants, and just a little modern richness”.8 Bellasis comments that:

The foregoing would probably open out … a wide field for further discussion, but so much may be fairly gathered, viz., that the Cardinal’s musical views were sensible ones, even if open, theoretically, to some differences of opinion. Omnia probate, he seems to say, quod bonum est tenete. [“Test everything, hold fast to what is good”, from Thessalonians 5:21. – Ed.] He had, of course, no sympathy with extravagances. His was a cultured, at any rate a refined taste, sui similis [“like himself”], and when it was said in April, 1886, that Niedermeyer’s B minor Mass was “elaborate”, he observed: “Well, I like a medium in music, although I may be wrong in that.” All was well, we suppose, provided the best gifts of Catholic masters in their art were in good faith proffered to Almighty God.… All was well, too, if singers and players were animated with the Catholic spirit that breathed in a Haydn and a Mozart, to say nothing of later giants. Under such conditions, and with due observance of the unaccompanied chant in Advent and Lent, the male choirs of both Oratories in England have probably done a good work, and if so, one worthy of Saint Philip’s blessing.9

Newman, despite his love for the full sound of an orchestral Mass, was cognizant of the dangers of this kind of church music, as he revealed in The Idea of a University.

Doubtless, here, too, the highest genius may be made subservient to religion … but it is certain that religion must be alive and on the defensive, for if its servant sleep a potent enchantment will steal over it…. If, then, a great master in this mysterious science … throws himself on his own gifts, trusts its inspirations and absorbs himself in those thoughts which, though they come to him in the way of nature belong to things above nature, it is obvious he will neglect everything else. Rising in his strength he will break through the trammels of words; he will scatter human voices, even the sweetest, to the winds; he will be borne upon nothing else than the fullest flood of sounds which art has enabled him to draw from mechanical contrivances; he will go forth as a giant, as far as ever his instruments can reach, starting from their secret depths fresh and fresh elements of beauty and grandeur as he goes, and pouring them together into still more marvellous and rapturous combinations —and well indeed, and lawfully, while he keeps to that line which is his own; but should he happen to be attracted, as he well may, by the sublimity, so congenial to him, of the Catholic doctrine and ritual, should he engage in sacred themes, should he resolve by means of his art to do honor to the Mass, or the Divine Office — he cannot have a more pious, a better purpose, and religion will gracefully accept what he gracefully offers; but — is it not certain from the circumstances of the case, that he will be carried on rather to use religion than to minister to it, unless religion is strong on its own ground, and reminds him that if he would do honor to the highest of subjects, he must make himself its scholar, must humbly follow the thoughts given him, and must aim at the glory, not of his own gift, but of the Great Giver?10

Her discussion of Newman and liturgical music matches well the article I cited several years ago by Revd. Guy Nicholls M.A. S.T.L. C.O. Priest of the Birmingham Oratory (from 1999).

She references a book by Edward Bellasis, published in 1892, Cardinal Newman as a Musician. It is available online here. Bellasis was the son of Edward Bellasis, a convert to Catholicism. Bellasis attended Mass at Newman's Birmingham Oratory and so reflected on the experience in his book, for example:

Altogether we have ever felt that there is an indescribable brightness, a radiant cheerfulness, which might have pleased St. Philip, about the Birmingham selection of hymns and tunes, with Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Pleyell, Crookall, Webbe, Moorat, and others laid under contribution. In the Saint's time, we know, "there were sung at the Oratory many Laudi, motets, madrigals, and sacred songs in the vulgar tongue, and these gave scope for composers to essay a simpler, and more popular and stirring style of music."[53] Take up then the Father's book, hear the people at the May devotions sing such winning songs as the "Pilgrim Queen" (No. 38, Regina Apostolorum), and the "Month of Mary" (No. 32, Rosa Mystica), or listen during St. Philip's Novena, to "St. Philip in his School" (No. 49), "in his Mission" (No. 50), "in Himself" (No. 51, "Regulars and St. Philip"), and "in his Disciples" (No. 54, "Philip and the Poor"), and we conclude that, as with the Saint, so with his distinguished son, it has been his "aim to make sacred music popular;"[54] and may we not further say that the Cardinal, without any parade whatever, but in the simplest fashion, has somehow succeeded at Birmingham in his aim?

The Webbe that Bellasis refers to is Samuel Webbe. Ignaz Pleyel wrote sacred works for the Catholic cathedral in Strasbourg, but he also wrote music during the French Revolution celebrating the Temple of Reason, the Supreme Being, and victories of the Revolutionary armies thus keeping his job and his head. Dr. Monsignor John Crookall was choir-master at St. Edmund's College and composed Masses and hymns. Moorat? I haven't been able to find that composer (Mouret?)