Music and the Mass
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are blessed at Notre Dame to still be able to celebrate Mass with our dorms. However, despite our ability to partake in the Blessed Sacrament and participate in the Eucharistic mystery, some friends and I felt a certain sadness, as the Mass had not felt complete without music. In the daily masses, which are normally without music, its absence was not as prominently felt, but as we joined together as a community on Sunday without music it felt as though something dear was lost.
The presence of music in the liturgy, though differing in style and form, has been a constant throughout much of Christian history, and for good reason. Dr. M. Jennifer Bloxam, professor of music at Williams College, writes that music “provided the sonic underpinnings of this ritual drama [of the Mass]: it accompanied action, gave voice to praise and plea, confirmed belief, and conveyed the sacred stories contained in the ceremony” (518). The music intensifies the time of the festival, and recruits the physical sense of hearing as a spiritual sense.
The missa caput was first written anonymously in the fifteenth century, but was adapted later by composers such as Johannes Ockegham and Jacob Obrecht (582). In keeping with the caput draconis theology associated with the caput masses, Obrecht assigns the caput melody first to the tenor, but eventually to the bass, signifying the descent and defeat of satan throughout the Mass (592). Essential to the caput draconis theology was the image of sin as a serpant, and Christ’s defeat of evil as striking the head of the serpant (as in Genesis 3:15). The setting for the mass alternates between triumph and contemplation. This can especially be heard in Sanctus, which begins in triumph yet, as the drama increases as the moment of consecration draws near, slows and simplifies, before ending with a mix of the two moods. Musician and Theologian Jeremy Begbie posits that “music, does, in a sense, create its own time” (34). Obrecht’s Caput mass does just that, framing the mass within the battle between good and evil, between Christ and Satan. The mass does not so much bring the listener outside of time, but rather brings the conquering of evil within time, to be experienced by the faithful in a physical way. Begbie pushes against the idea that music is free from physicality; instead, he argues, music, and the making of music, “has the capacity for an intense and respectful engagement” that involves “the intrinsic physicality and materiality of musical practices” (34).
Almost half a millennium after Obrecht’s missa caput was penned, Orthodox composer John Tavener composed his missa wellensis, a different take on the mass. With great use of tension and dissonence, Tavener emphasises the holiness — the “otherness” — of the mass. His Kyrie, in particular, uses tension and release to great effect, presenting both the pain of sin, along with the wrath of God, and the peace of forgiveness in Christ. Tavener’s mass, in its emphasis on tension and release, with much of the emphasis on tension, mirrors and represent’s the faithful’s longing for Christ to rescue them. The time that Tavener brings to the mass, in other words, is one of Babylonian exile. Hence, a key moment of release happens in the middle of the Sanctus, around two minutes in, coinciding with the consecration of the Eucharist and the salvation of Christ. The paradox of time is also presented in the dissonance: eternity is being revealed in time, and God is revealed as a man — in the words of Begbie, “[eternity] has been made known decisively through an engagement and action with the created world […] climaxing in the history of Jesus Christ” (145). This dialogue of tension and release is deeply tied to Tavener’s faith as an Orthodox Christian, and his emphasis on both the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Christ — he shuns the focus on “the murdered Man rather than on the Resurrected one […] we never speak of the Crucifixion without the Resurrection” (145). The mass seeks to present both the Crucifixion, and the sin that caused it, as well as the Resurrection, and the salvation it brings.
Both masses are tied with theology, and through their materiality instigate a certain measure of time. Despite their differences in style and emphasis, there is a common focus on the conquering of sin by Christ, and how the salvation he brings is presented, in materiality and truth, in the mass. Both are authentic musical expressions of the wonder of the Eucharistic liturgy, and seek to attune the spiritual senses of the faithful to welcome them into God’s time and recognize the reality behind and of the liturgy. In this sense, they offer a unique vision of Christ and the Christian story of salvation — so, in the words of Christ: “He who has ears, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15).
