Celebrate With The Harvard Glee Club: Two Renaissance Masses For Equal Voices

Celebrate with Harvard Glee Club Liner Notes

The Mass, the pivotal service of the Roman Catholic Church, centered in the rite of the Eucharist or Holy Communion, took a long time—perhaps six or seven centuries—to evolve.It is neither desirable nor possible here to explore its origins and general history, both of which are not entirely clear. Suffice it to say that the service takes its Latin name, missa from its final section in which the celebrant proclaims to the gathering Ite, missa est, (“Go, the meeting is dismissed”). By a process for which I can find no really satisfactory explanation, missa became old English maesse and modern English Mass. Our chief concern here is with the Mass as a musical form. As such, the term is really a misnomer, for the musical Mass as we know it has to do with only a part of the whole. Traditionally the Mass included segments that were sung and segments that were read or spoken (e.g. prayers, Bible readings). In both categories there were passages designated for special days, times of day, and occasions, and others that remained constant for all celebrations of the Mass. The former are known as the Proper of the Mass, the latter as the Ordinary. It is the five chief sections of the Ordinary -- Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus (and Benedictus) and Agnus Dei-that define the vast majority of composed Masses.