Mass - Renaissance Period

Mass

The Mass is part of the Roman Catholic Church Service – making it sacred music. It is always in Latin in the Renaissance period – and right up until the 2^nd Vatican Council happened in 1962. These days, the Mass is translated into languages across the globe, but the Latin words remain the same as they always were. It is usually sung a cappella and has a very polyphonic texture. It has five main sections:

1. Kyrie Eleison (‘Lord have Mercy’)
2. Gloria in excelsis Deo (‘Glory to God in the Highest’)
3. Credo in unum Deum (‘I believe in one God’)
4. Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus (‘Holy, holy, holy’)
5. Benedictus (‘Blessed is he’)
6. Agnus Dei (‘Lamb of God’).

Memorise these words – if you hear them, you are listening to a Mass!

♪      Video: ‘Kyrie Eleison’ from Mass for Pope Marcellus by Palestrina found here:

You can see the words are stretched over several notes (melismatic), and actually it is harder to hear them than you might expect, thanks to the melisma and the polyphonic texture of the music.

So what you should do, is listen out for the Latin words in the following playlist.

This Playlist contains excerpts from the "Kyrie Eleison" section of Renaissance era Masses:

Here is a Playlist containing various other parts of Masses in the Renaissance era - see if you can hear the Latin words that match up to the Mass parts listed above.





Sometimes an established plainchant of other popular melodies of the time was used in a Mass. This was sung by the Tenor soloist and was called the Cantus Firmus.


Important Note: Masses feature throughout all the eras of music, and they're still being composed today. You need to know the words to listen for so you can be confident in identifying a mass and differentiating it from other vocal works!
Look out for posts covering the mass in later eras.