The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 11 (2005) No. 1

Seventeenth-Century Italian Sacred Music. Anne Schnoebelen, General Editor.  20 vols. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995–2003. Volumes 1–10: Masses, 1995–1999.

Vol. 2, Masses by Giovanni Francesco Capello, Amadio Freddi, Ercole Porta, Ignazio Donati. Edited by Anne Schnoebelen, 1995. [xx, 259 pp. ISBN 0-8153-2167-8. $140.]

Vol. 3, Masses by Carlo Milanuzzi, Leandro Gallerano, Alessandro Grandi. Edited by Anne Schnoebelen, 1995. [xix, 282 pp. ISBN 0-8153-2168-6. $140.]

Vol. 6, Masses by Giovanni Pietro Finatti, Maurizio Cazzati, Giulio Cesare Arresti. Edited by Anne Schnoebelen, 1997. [xxviii, 296 pp. ISBN 0-8153-2412-X. $140.]

Vol. 7, Masses by Maurizio Cazzati, Giovanni Antonio Grossi, Giovanni Legrenzi. Edited by Anne Schnoebelen, 1997. [xxxi, 258 pp. ISBN 0-8153-2413-8. $140.]

Vol. 8, Masses by Giovanni Andrea Florimi, Giovanni Francesco Mognossa, Bonifazio Graziani. Edited by Anne Schnoebelen, 1998. [xxvii, 247 pp. ISBN 0-8153-2414-6. $110.]

Vol. 9, Masses by Domenico Scorpione, Lorenzo Penna, Giovanni Paolo Colonna. Edited by Anne Schnoebelen, 1999. [xxi, 215 pp. ISBN 0-8153-2415-4. $125.]

Vol. 10, Masses by Pietro Degli Antoni and Giovanni Battista Bassani. Edited by Anne Schnoebelen, 1999. [xx, 245 pp. ISBN 0-8153-2416-2. $135.]

Reviewed by Stephen R. Miller*

1. Unanswered Questions about the Seventeenth-Century Mass

2. Overview of the Series

3. Organization of the Series

4. Making the Series Representative

5. Editorial Issues

6. Payoff

References

Figures

Tables

1. Unanswered Questions about the Seventeenth-Century Mass

1.1 Laurence Feininger, the German-Italian-American musicologist who did such important work for liturgical music of the Seicento, was fond of pointing out that Orazio Benevoli (b. 1605, Rome) was born at the precise historical midpoint between Palestrina (b. 1525?) and Bach (b. 1685).¹ The historical coincidence served as a humorous pretext for his fixation on the seventeenth-century Roman, whom he saw as a link between Palestrina’s ars perfecta and Bach’s contrapuntal art. In essence, the many Benevoli Masses that Feininger edited and published were a conduit connecting the Pope Marcellus Mass and the B-Minor Mass.²

1.2 Already by the time of Feininger’s death in 1976 (in a car accident on the Brenner Autobahn—he was sixty-four years old at the time), the preoccupation with Benevoli masses appeared somewhat dubious. His most celebrated work, the 53-part Missa Salisburgensis, had been identified as an opus dubium, with a corrected attribution assigning it perhaps to Biber.³ Nonetheless, our understanding of seventeenth-century Italian masses in general is still in its nascence. While seventeenth-century operas, instrumental compositions, and even motets are performed and recorded in increasing numbers, masses remain something of a terra incognita. Who were the great composers of masses in the seventeenth century? It is much easier to answer the question for the sixteenth century: Josquin, Palestrina, Lassus, and a handful of others were both extraordinarily accomplished and extraordinarily prolific in composing masses. Even if there were not such great mass composers in the seventeenth century, can we at least identify specific instances of great masses? The questions do not become much easier by turning from the qualitative to the contextual and cultural. How did masses function in the post-Tridentine liturgy? Were they felt to be essential to religious observances? Did they tie the aural, visual, tactile, and olfactory together with the liturgical in an integral way? Or was the music considered apart from the liturgy? Perhaps these seventeenth-century masses point the way towards a common eighteenth-century attitude, that music for the Mass was in essence a concert separate from the liturgy, the only connection being the coincidence of time and place. Or further, to what extent were masses written for musical academies, where they would have been performed and subjected to close professional scrutiny?⁴ With respect to these kinds of questions no comprehensive treatment of seventeenth-century masses has as yet been attempted.

2. Overview of the Series

2.1 The ten volumes of seventeenth-century Italian masses edited by Anne Schnoebelen in the series “Seventeenth-Century Italian Sacred Music” (hereafter “SCISM”) allow us at last to begin to contemplate such questions. Alongside the parallel volumes in SCISM of Vesper and Compline compositions, edited by Jeffrey Kurtzman, these volumes have the potential to elevate significantly the study of sacred music in the Seicento.⁵ Heretofore, relatively few seventeenth-century masses have been available in modern edition, and it has been nearly impossible to identify general stylistic features and trends. Schnoebelen’s volumes change that situation entirely. Comprising thirty-three masses, the series includes works published between 1610 and 1698, is chronologically organized, and offers at least one mass published during each decade of the century. Introductions to each mass highlight passages of note and alert the reader to significant technical developments. The editions themselves suffer from uneven quality, but that should not distract from the more general point that by bringing out a significant number of masses from across the century, Prof. Schnoebelen has done the field a tremendous service.

2.2 Particularly in the first half of the mass series, Schnoebelen selected works that fit hand-in-glove with previous scholarship. In an earlier JSCM review of some of the mass and office volumes, Jonathan Glixon notes that the series provides access to some of the music described in Jerome Roche’s North Italian Church Music in the Age of Monteverdi. Indeed, volumes 1–6 of the masses could serve exceedingly well as an anthology to Roche’s important work. The masses by Capello (vol. 2), Cazzati (vol. 6), Chinelli (vols. 4 and 5), Donati (vol. 2), Freddi (vol. 2), Gallerano (vol. 3), Grandi (vols. 1, 3, 4), Lappi (vol. 1), Merula (vol. 4), Milanuzzi (vol. 3), Porta (vol. 2), and Rovetta (vol. 4) are all mentioned in the pages of North Italian Church Music.⁶ From both Roche’s observations and Schnoebelen’s introductions it is clear that many of these masses have historical significance. Capello’s Missa ad votum (1615) seems to be the first published with obbligato instruments (these are unspecified, but Capello also provides a separate “chitarroni” part to augment the organ continuo). Porta’s Missa secundi toni (1620) offers the first “orchestral mass”: its two violins and three trombones constitute a self-sufficient ensemble and supply an independent sinfonia. Another mass is based in its entirety on a repeating ground bass pattern (Merula’s Messa concertata of 1640). Grandi’s Messa concertata (1630) is claimed as the “first self-contained monody in a Mass setting.”⁷ In terms of technical innovation alone many of these masses justify inclusion in the series.

3. Organization of the Series

3.1 The chronological organization of the series takes advantage of these technical innovations. The earlier volumes provide examples of masses ad imitationem (see Villani’s Missa Tu es Petrus, Capello’s Missa ad votum, and Milanuzzi’s Missa Liquide perle), and it takes a couple of volumes before continuo parts become standardized as a figured part for organ (e.g., Villani’s of 1610 has organ accompaniment but no figures, Lappi’s Missa octavi toni of 1613 has a two-stave partitura for organ). Schnoebelen’s introductions stress that a stylistic evolution is underway. By volume 4 “this historical survey moves directly into the mid-Baroque style” (p. xvii), and the masses of volume 6 “typify the mature Baroque mass at mid-century” (p. xiii). Indeed, masses in the later volumes do reveal more assured, responsive writing between the voices and instruments (Grossi’s Messa concertata of 1664, for instance), and ripieno/soloist indications become more explicit. Also, a theorist studying the emergence of harmonic tonality could do worse than to take the masses here as a core repertory. Masses, insulated from the more dramatic sentiments endemic to the motet and opera, may better reveal the “background” development of harmonic syntax. Cazzati’s Missa l’Austriaca (1662) relentlessly relates chords through root movement of descending fifth (or ascending fourth)—at a time when Corelli had barely learned to tune his violin. Just a few decades earlier, in Rovetta’s Mass of 1639, root movement by descending fourths was common.

3.2 If the chronological organization has much to recommend it, there are also other ways to imagine putting the series together.⁸ Two such possibilities include division by sub-genre, that is, by a typology of masses, or regional organization based on where the composer was trained and served as maestro. To organize masses by sub-genre would first require identification of appropriate categories. While the most obvious principle is that of scoring—polychoral, with or without organ, addition of obbligato instruments, etc. (this is the principle Scacchi used⁹)—a more productive division might combine elements of scoring with function. These sub-genres would include, inter alia, masses with large forces for feast days in major churches, masses with reduced forces for smaller churches, missae breves for everyday usage, and masses without organ for penitential seasons. This division, though imprecise on account of local variations, would allow for more direct comparison of how composers addressed different liturgical, seasonal, and contextual requirements. Organizing the series thus would have an important advantage: it would belie the still-common notion that in the seventeenth century composers wrote either for full choir or for concerted forces, depending on how committed they were to “progressive” trends. The misconception is that any au courant composer would reject full-choir writing and instead adopt the small-scale idiom. My research relating Roman masses and the institutional affiliations of their composers suggests a much different model.¹⁰ In the seventeenth century, institutional considerations took priority over personal agency, at least with regard to the question of scoring.

3.3 Another possible principle of organization for the series would be to divide the masses by regional orientation. There are a few true itinerants represented among these mass composers—Domenico Scorpione (a Franciscan), for instance, held posts as distant as Messina (Sicily) and Bologna—but mostly composers remained in a particular regional orbit. Several maestri were employed in both Novara and Milan, others in both Bergamo and Ferrara, and a couple of others in Venice and its environs. There was certainly much traffic in maestri across the northern cities, but there was remarkably little exchange between those northern cities and points farther south, particularly Rome. The advantage to a geographical ordering of the masses would be to highlight significant differences in regional practices. For instance, Schnoebelen cites a rubric in the Capello Mass, “Sanctus et Agnus Breves more Veneto” (“the Sanctus and Agnus [are] brief, after the Venetian manner”), which she usefully amplifies by reference to Donati, another northern composer who explains the preference for shortening or indeed eliminating the Sanctus and Agnus movements so as to accommodate more instrumental music at the Elevation and Communion.¹¹ Needless to say, the “Venetian manner” was not observed in Rome; masses there almost invariably included these two movements (though the Benedictus is normally omitted). The matter of instrumental accompaniment is also relevant. From the 1630s, most north Italian masses include obbligato instrumental parts, but in Rome such instrumental usage remains quite exceptional. A regional ordering of masses would encourage these kinds of comparisons.

3.4 One might, however, wryly claim that the series already is organized regionally, to wit, that it offers almost exclusively north Italian masses. The close association between the choices for the series and Roche’s North Italian Church Music does accurately suggest a prejudice in favor of northern compositions. Of the twenty-nine composers represented in the series, just one, Bonifatio Gratiani, had a long-term involvement with Roman choirs, and only three others were even temporarily associated with Rome (Colonna, Scorpione, and Tarditi). Recent bibliographical work has shown the Eternal City to be fertile territory for mass composition—my online database lists nearly 400 of them composed there during the seventeenth century—so their paucity within the SCISM volumes may be due to other reasons. Based on personal communication I have had with Prof. Schnoebelen, I know that in some cases her selections were generously considered so as not to infringe on other scholars’ plans to publish their own editions of masses.¹²

4. Making the Series Representative

4.1 We would also do well to avoid second-guessing Schnoebelen on another question, namely, to what degree the series aims to be “representative” of the mass in seventeenth-century Italy, since she does not claim to provide examples of all types of seventeenth-century Italian masses. The introduction to the Mass volumes simply states:

The ten volumes in this series presenting music for the Ordinary of the Mass illustrate an extraordinary variety in style form and setting. Arranged chronologically (with a few adjustments for volume size), they include masses ranging from conservative works in sixteenth-century style to works in contemporary Baroque style for soloists, choirs, and instruments.¹³

One might assume from the title of the series (“Seventeenth-Century Italian Sacred Music: Masses”) that it was intended to be “representative,” but it is clear that a truly comprehensive sampling of masses from the Seicento would take us far afield from these vocal prints. Italians’ experience of music at Mass in the seventeenth century was far more diverse than this (or any) series could suggest. Starting with the most “rustic” examples, we might remember that the numerous seventeenth-century “canto fermo” manuals reveal that plainchant remained an important aural medium through which many congregations encountered the liturgy. Small churches that lacked fixed organs but had access to positives could still have managed alternatim, and organ masses would have been possible. One might also follow Bianconi and wonder if the most important composer of masses in seventeenth-century Italy was not Palestrina:

Musicologists in some future attempt to reconstruct the history not only of musical style and composition but also of what the listener actually heard, would not be unjustified in asking, paradoxically indeed, whether the composer of greatest significance for seventeenth-century liturgical music were not, in reality, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (d. 1594).¹⁴

4.2 Beyond these impish conjectures, however, there are several other types of editions that can usefully complement the SCISM masses. Most important, as Schnoebelen notes in the general introduction to the series, there are a couple of opera omnia for major seventeenth-century Italian composers that one should consult, in particular the Monteverdi and Benevoli editions.¹⁵ There are isolated publications devoted to some high-profile masses that should also be taken into account, including the Cavalli Messa concertata, Cozzolani’s Messa à 4, and Schnoebelen’s own edition of Colonna’s nine-voice Mass.¹⁶ Finally, less obvious but no less important, is a string of dissertations devoted to specific Italian composers of masses, in particular four Roman-orbit composers: Giovanni Francesco Anerio, Francesco Soriano, Gregorio Allegri, and Angelo Berardi.¹⁷ By taking these additional editions and their sources into account, a more complete sketch of the seventeenth-century mass emerges, one that includes masses without continuo and masses in manuscript sources. Schnoebelen had excellent reasons for selecting the SCISM works exclusively from prints, but it is important not to be blind to the conformity inherent in prints.¹⁸ An instructive example is Monteverdi’s Missa In illo tempore; in the 1610 print the Mass is provided with an up-to-date basso per l’organo, but it also exists in manuscript in the papal choir archives, there in choirbook format without organ.¹⁹ The medium molds the message.

5. Editorial Issues

5.1 A more practical question about the SCISM masses concerns whether or not they might serve performers. Unfortunately, the editorial decision to craft these editions in the tradition of the so-called “diplomatic transcription” means that performers will find the masses very difficult to use. Many accidentals, necessary according to modern orthography, are simply not included. In some cases, however, editorial accidentals and ficta appear on the page undifferentiated from accidentals natively in the sources. (There is no use of accidentals in parentheses, brackets, or outside the staves). The editorial additions then are listed cumbersomely in the Introduction. Earlier reviews have commented on the problems related to the handling of the figured bass, ficta, and accidentals, so there is no reason to belabor those issues now. I did go through volumes 2 and 7 closely, and the corrections go on for pages (see Table 1 and Table 2). Another unwieldy aspect of the editorial apparatus concerns clefs: the original clefs are not given at the beginning of movements, and it sometimes requires looking in two different passages in the Introduction to determine them. Also, there are extended passages where either the source or the transcription errs. (For example, in Table 2, see the note on Grossi’s Messa concertata, Kyrie, mm.  84–7.) To make matters worse, the publisher, Garland, and the printer were not always the editor’s allies. In my copy of the second volume dozens of pages were left completely blank.

6. Payoff

6.1 Whatever their editorial problems, these volumes have, as Jonathan Glixon noted in his review, come out in years, not decades.²⁰ For this much music to become available so quickly is a tremendous boon, and most scholars, while perhaps annoyed by inconsistencies in the text, will not find them too difficult to read around. Simply having access to the editions, warts and all, can quickly offer significant returns. What historical irony to find masses by Giulio Cesare Arresti and Maurizio Cazzati rubbing elbows in Volume 6! These two were involved in a nasty feud that led first to one’s dismissal from San Petronio (Bologna) and then the other’s, and it was Arresti’s publication in 1663 of one of his masses alongside a “corrected” edition of one of Cazzati’s that brought matters to a head.²¹ Having their editions side-by-side is likely to clarify the technical debates between these two.

6.2 Scorpione’s Missa à 5 (vol. 9) offers a more concrete example of the kind of payoff that the series promises. His concerted Mass, published in 1675, derives from at least two of Francesco Foggia’s masses (which are not in SCISM but can be consulted elsewhere).²² Scorpione’s opening Kyrie (Figure 1) has clear connections with the Kyrie from Foggia’s Missa La piva (1650; Figure 2). The motives of the two Masses differ only marginally in these examples, and the connection is even closer in Scorpione’s Kyrie II (though now in triple meter).

6.3 Another instance of modeling occurs in the “Amen” fugue of Scorpione’s Credo (Figure 3). Here Scorpione owes a debt to the Kyrie II of Foggia’s Missa detta La battaglia (1663; Figure 4). After a brief, three-measure fanfare figure, the Kyrie II of Foggia’s Mass embarks on a quasi-imitative trio, which Scorpione takes over verbatim as the conclusion for his Credo. (Foggia would have approved the re-use of a Kyrie fugue at this point in the Credo: he does the same thing in most of his masses.)

6.4 It is possible, though unlikely, that Scorpione believed that he was stealing from Foggia in order to improve upon him (à la Handel). It is more likely that we have here an imitatio relationship: the younger Scorpione, employed perhaps for just a brief time in Rome (he served at Sancti Dodici Apostoli in 1675), may have been trying to impress or honor Foggia. By 1675 Foggia had served as maestro with some of the most prestigious Roman cappelle (Santa Maria in Trastevere, San Lorenzo in Damaso, San Giovanni in Laterano), and had just been elected the previous year to the very influential post of “guardian” of the maestri di cappella in the musicians’ guild. To enjoy Foggia’s favor would have been to Scorpione’s definite professional advantage.

6.5 The Scorpione-Foggia connection highlights the immense value of the SCISM masses, but it also reminds us of how little we know about the genre of the mass in seventeenth-century Italy. How important within the genre was its honorary potential? As the century goes on, Masses are increasingly named for particular patrons or honorary figures,²³ and might that not imply a disconnect from the spirituality of the era? Or could the mass have been a proving ground, demonstrating composers’ mastery of the arcane contrapuntal art and granting access to the elite echelon of the maestri di cappella? Such questions are more peripheral for other sacred genres. Much recent scholarship for the Seicento  shows, for instance, how intimately motets connect with contemporary spirituality. For masses, the SCISM series allows us at last to begin asking such questions more confidently.

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