Agnus Dei The Agnus Dei, the acclamation addressed to Christ, the Lamb of God, forms part of the Ordinary of the Mass. That is to say, it is part of the...
Agnus Dei
The Agnus Dei, the acclamation addressed to Christ, the Lamb of God, forms
part of the Ordinary of the Mass. That is to say, it is part of the Mass that
does not change, except for the slight modifications used in the Requiem Mass.
As a relatively unchanging, repeated element in the liturgy, it has been a necessary
part of musical settings, whether as plainchant or in the varying styles of
later generations. The words of the Agnus Dei in the Latin Mass form a threefold
acclamation:
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccala mundi,
miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccala mundi,
miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccala mundi,
dona nobis pacem.
Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,
have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,
have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,
grant us peace.
This is placed in the liturgy between the Fraction, the priest's breaking of
bread, and the Communion, a sacred moment in the service. It seems, however,
to be a later addition to the Mass, dating from the seventh century and designed
to accompany what at one time was a much longer part of the rite. The relative
clause, qui tollis peccata mundi, has the features expected of a trope, an addition
to the liturgy that might be replaced, on other occasions, by different attributions,
as in the Kyrie eleison. Any irregularity of this kind was largely removed
in the Western liturgy by the standardizing reforms of the Council of Trent
in the sixteenth century.
The present collection begins with music taken from the later sixteenth century,
a period that found polyphonic practice at its height. Here the greatest composers
were Palestrina, Lassus and Victoria, closely matched by the Englishman William
Byrd, a recusant who lacked the opportunities offered by Catholic countries
for public liturgical composition. Palestrina, his name taken from his probable
place of birth, worked largely in Rome, at first at the Basilica of Santa Maria
Maggiore, then, after a time spent in Palestrina itself, at the Cappella Giulia
under Pope Julius III, followed by promotion to the Cappella Sistina. The tightening
of regulations on the celibacy of singers at the Sistine Chapel under Pope Paul
IV led to employment at St John Lateran, He subsequently returned to Santa Maria
Maggiore and finally to the Cappella Giulia from 1571 until his death in 1594.
His Missa Papae Marcelli, for Pope Marcellus II who reigned briefly in
1555, has been popularly held to have saved polyphonic church music by demonstrating
the necessary textual clarity in a polyphonic context. There had been earlier
discussion of the matter, which later received the fuller attention of the Council
of Trent.
Orlande de Lassus, otherwise known as Orlando di Lasso, was born in Hainault
in 1532 and as a boy seems to have been employed as a chorister by a member
of the Gonzaga family, rulers of Mantua. In Rome he preceded Palestrina as director
of music at St John Lateran, leaving soon to return home and then to enter the
service of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria in Munich, remaining there until his death
in 1594. He left a varied range of music, including an extensive repertory of
church music and of madrigals and chansons. His eight-voice Missa Bell' Amfitrit'
altera, its title derived from the secular source of its basic material,
was published posthumously in 1610.
The Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria, born in Avila in 1548,
spent much of his career in Italy and may even have been a pupil of Palestrina
in Rome. He was employed as director of music at the German College and after
his own ordination joined the Oratorian Congregation. In the 1580s he returned
to Spain as chaplain to the King's sister who, as a widow, had retired to a
convent in Madrid. It was in that city that he died in 1611. His four-voice
Missa O quam gloriosum takes its title from Victoria's own motet on the
same text. This is followed by the work of another Spanish composer, Alonso
Lobo, a musician much respected by Victoria. Lobo served as director of music
at Toledo Cathedral and then in a similar position in Seville, where he had
been a choirboy. His motet Versa est in luctum is included here.
The Catholic tradition in England is represented by William Byrd and, to some
extent, by Thomas Tallis, who served as a musician through the turbulent religious
changes of the sixteenth century. Byrd's music for the Catholic liturgy was
necessarily restricted in scope, in view of the persecutions of the period.
His three Mass settings, for three, four and five voices respectively, were
published in the 1590s and demonstrate his mastery of polyphonic style. The
Masses and his many other Latin sacred compositions provided a valuable and,
in the end, practical compendium for those forced to worship in secret. The
Pavan included here is an effective example of Byrd's secular work, found
in his consort and keyboard music. A near contemporary of Shakespeare, Byrd
died in 1623.
Thomas Tallis enjoyed, with Byrd, a royal licence under Queen Elizabeth to
publish music. His own career had taken him from positions at Dover Priory and
Waltharn Abbey to service of the monarch as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal
through the various reigns of the century. His Mass for Four Voices was written
in the reign of Henry VIII and demonstrates the contemporary tendency towards
textual clarity.
The Italian composer Orazio Benevolo flourished in the following century largely
in Rome, where his paternal ancestry associated him at first with the French
church of S. Luigi dei Francesi. He enjoyed international fame, served the Emperor
in Vienna and finally the Cappella Giulia of St Peter's in Rome, where he died
in 1672. A transitional figure, he is particularly known for his elaborate liturgical
compositions for two or more choirs, as in the present excerpt from a Mass in
honour of Queen Christina of Sweden's counsellor, Cardinal Azzolini.
Johann Sebastian Bach made a distinctive contribution to the Lutheran music
of his time, particularly in his cycles of cantatas. His Christmas Oratorio
was written in Leipzig, where he had assumed the position of Cantor at the Choir
School of St Thomas in 1723. The oratorio provided music in six cantatas for
six days of the Christmas season of 1734-35. The pastoral Sinfonia continues
earlier tradition, setting the scene for the shepherds at Bethlehem when Christ
was born. The Lutheran liturgy continued to make some use of the texts of the
Latin Mass. Bach's great Mass in B minor is a composite work, the whole
finally assembled shortly before his death in 1750, a monument to the composer's
faith rather than music for practical liturgical use. The Agnus Dei draws
on a cantata of 1735.
In Salzburg Mozart was, like his father, a member of the musical establishment
of the ruling Archbishop His Requiem, however, was written and left incomplete
at his death in 1791, ten years after he had achieved precarious independence
in Vienna. The whole work was completed by his pupil Süssmayr, perhaps
according to the composer's intentions. It was at the Lacrymosa, part
of the great hymn of the day of judgement, the Dies irae, that Mozart
broke down in tears, as his friends gathered at his bedside to sing through
the completed parts of the work. The little motet Ave verum corpus, a
hymn to the Blessed Sacrament, also dates from the end of Mozart's life, written
in June 1791 for a church in Baden, where his wife Constanze was taking the
waters.
With Gabriel Fauré we move on a century, shifting from Vienna to France.
The moving Pavane, evokjng an earlier world, was completed in 1887, six
years after a further arrangemem of his setting of the Mass, known as Messe
basse, a work in which, originally, he had collaborated with Andre Messager.
His moving Requiem, a very personal work, was completed in its first
version in 1888, but, like the other works included here, was to undergo later
revision and re-arrangement
The organist and composer Maurice Duruflé was born in 1902. His Requiem
remains the most frequently performed of his works, based, as it is, on Gregorian
melodies, but treated in a recognisably French harmonic style. It remains a
work to rival Fauré's own evocative setting, choosing similar texts from
the funeral service.
Keith Anderson