Haydn's Sacred Music in context

In order to understand Haydn’s roots, one must have at least a rudimentary idea of what church music was like in mid-18th century Austria, and what a huge part it played in the daily lives of the citizens. Unlike its large Protestant (i.e. – Lutheran) neighbor to the north, Austria was very Roman Catholic. The Emperor of Austria was the also Holy Roman Emperor, so Vienna, as the seat of the Holy Roman Empire at that time, was second in importance to Catholicism only to Rome itself.

Masses were a grand affair. Stylistically, the Austrian/Bavarian mass was rather different from the North German musical tradition, and just like much other Austrian music at the time, it was heavily influenced by Italian models, This is all basic to the nature of the celebration though. When you listen to a mass like this ‘in performance’, since the concert hall or a recording is virtually the only place since the Vatican II Council’s clamping down of sacred music performance, what you nearly always hear is the ‘Ordinary’ of the mass. This consists of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei. The words are unchanging no matter what mass is being celebrated. However, that is only the skeleton of the mass music that would be performed in 18^th Century Austria.

One of the things we are going to see here is that secular music was incorporated into the celebration of the mass at that time. Where does one fit a symphony or concerto into a mass? After all, it has no liturgical significance. Or maybe it does and we just don’t recognize it now? If you look into this, available information is very thin. Where does it say ‘and then after the Credo, we play the first movement of the symphony in c minor…’?

 

The first question that I wanted to get answered was ‘how many parts of the mass are there?’. And the answer, of course, is ‘it depends’. As I discussed above, the ‘Ordinary’ contains the five or six parts (not everyone agrees that the Benedictus is a standalone part) that are common to every mass, which is to say, they are what makes a Full Mass. They didn’t all start out being the Ordinary at the same time, but over the centuries, and by the time we are interested in (second half of the 18^th Century in Vienna), the lineup was solidified. When you buy a recording of a mass from this era, no matter how many parts each of these is subdivided into, these six parts will be represented (of course, Requiems are a special case. Let’s leave them out of this for now).  The subdivision into many parts was far more prevalent in the Baroque and before, but still persisted in the Classical Era. It seems to have disappeared by the Romantic. The other part of the mass, the one that changes every day depending on who the mass is dedicated to in the Church Liturgical Calendar, is called the Proper.

In the Oxford Composer Companion to Haydn, David Wyn Jones published a list of the parts that would be played at a typical Missa longa, or what we would call at other times and places a Missa solemnis. I have adapted it for use here, It is a stunning amount of music! Parts of the Ordinary are in CAPS, while parts of the Proper, which changed with every day of the Liturgical Calendar, are in lower case. In parentheses I put a typical piece or movement of secular music that would have been played at that point.  This might be a good time to point out that what we call Church Symphonies many times really were Church Symphonies!  Some of these already don’t have a minuet movement, but for those that do, it wasn’t used in church, and probably was added as an option to make the work more flexible in its uses outside of church. Also, the great number of Organ Concertos are nearly all 'church music' too. The fact that they could be published and played as harpsichord concertos tells you much about the secular nature of much 'church music' of the time.

 

Following is a layout of how a Solemn Mass (or as the Austrians called it, a ‘Missa Longa’).

• Opening music:  Organ solos and/or trumpet/timpani fanfares. Toccatas are a good choice here.
• Music (Proper) and SPOKEN PRAYER: Introit simultaneously with penitential prayers
• Music KYRIE:   (bulleted subsections aren't always broken down into this many parts)
  
  • Kyrie eleison
  • Christe eleison
  • Kyrie eleison
• Music GLORIA
  • Gloria in excelsis Deo
  • Laudamus te
  • Gratias agimus tibi
  • Domine Deus, Rex coelestis
  • Qui tollis peccata Mundi
  • Quoniam tu solus sanctus
  • Cum Sancto Spiritu
• Prayer: Collect
• Reading: Epistle
• Music: Gradual  (1^st movement of a symphony or concerto) or an Epistle Sonata in a shorter mass (Missa brevis)
• Music: Alleluia or Tract (could be a motet or an Alleluia)
• Spoken: Gospel and Homily (Sermon)
• Instrumental music: Trumpet & Timpani fanfares to remind people of the angels playing trumpets in heaven.
• Music CREDO:
  • Credo in unum Deum
  • Et incarnatus est
  • Et resurrexit
• Music & PRAYER: Offertory  (2^nd movement of symphony or concerto)
• Prayer & Secret (Private Prayer)
• Prayer: Preface (Public Prayer)
• MUSIC: SANCTUS
  • Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus
  • Pleni sunt coeli
• BENEDICTUS
• PRAYER: Eucharist Prayer
• PRAYER: Lord’s Prayer
• MUSIC: AGNUS DEI
  • Agnus Dei
  • Dona nobis pacem
• Music: Communion  (3^rd movement of symphony (Finale really, since minuet (if any) was removed) or concerto)
• Prayer: Post Communion
• MUSIC: Dismissal (‘Ite, Missa est’) (often such a short piece that it was not written out. Very few are extant)
• SPOKEN: Closing Blessing

Music: Trumpet/timpani fanfares and organ postlude.

I’m sure that the perceptive reader is already surmising that I will be an advocate for listening to sacred music in a way the recreates this wonderful mélange of sound. More on that next time!

Thanks for reading!