Mass, MUSIC OF. Each part of the service of High Mass has its unisonal plain-song melody, varying according to the season or festival; the first collections of these melodies were made by St
Ambrose, and afterwards more completely by St Gregory. But since the invention of counterpoint certain portions have been selected for more elaborate treatment—viz. the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei; each of which, but especially the Credo, is by common traditional practice divided into separate movements, also designated by the initiatory words. In the early contrapuntal music, a plain-song melody, or even a secular tune, formed the basis on which the whole was constructed, and the mass was named in accordance—e.g. the numerous Missa L'Homme Armé, founded on an old French love-song. This appropriation of secular tunes, which could never wholly lose their association with the often objectionable words, anticipates Shakespeare's Puritan 'who sings Psalms to hornpipes,' and the similar practices of recent revivalists. These compositions soon became more remarkable for their learning and ingenuity than appropriateness or reverential feeling; and to such an extent was this abuse carried that the Council of Trent condemned them in no measured terms, and a commission, appointed in 1564 to carry out certain of its decrees, was on the point of entirely forbidding the use in future of polyphonic music in the church, when the production by Palestrina of his world-famous Missa Papæ Marcelli convinced the cardinals that such music could be profoundly devotional as well as technically skilful; and its use was allowed to be continued. The succeeding epoch of church music, however, was one of decline; but in the later part of the 17th and commencement of the 18th centuries arose a new school, comprising Alessandro Scarlatti, Leo, and Durante, in whose compositions the introduction of instrumental accompaniment was the most important new feature; one which gave to all subsequent masses the style of the cantata, more individual and dramatic than devotional. In this style also are the stupendous masses of Bach in B minor, Beethoven in D, and Cherubini in D and A. Of less importance, though full of beautiful music, are those of Haydn, Mozart, Weber, Schubert, and Gounod.
The music of the Requiem, or Missa pro defunctis, differs of course considerably in its details from that of the ordinary High Mass. The most famous compositions for it are those of Mozart and Cherubini. Brahms' masterpiece, the German Requiem, is not a mass but a sacred cantata on scriptural words.