An Introduction to the Post-Tridentine Mass Proper (review)

Musicologists interested in the history of sacred music have long noted the importance of the Council of Trent (1545–63), which in its closing sessions sought, among other things, to restore the textual integrity of plainchant and insure its intelligibility. The former goal was readily achieved with the publication of a reformed Roman Breviary and Missal in 1568 and 1570, respectively. Addressing the perceived musical shortcoming of Catholic plainchant, with its "barbarisms, obscurities, contrarieties, and superfluidities," took more time and effort. Indeed, no fewer than six independent revisions of the Mass Propers followed in the council's wake, the best-known being a two-volume Graduale Romanum published in 1614–15 by the Medici Press of Rome. Among the editors were skilled composers of sacred polyphony. Although the Editio Medicea and other reform editions contain new music, most chants were reworkings of traditional melodies. The most striking revisions involved the truncation of melismas in florid alleluias, tracts, and graduals, but other changes are no less interesting musically. Chant melodies were brought into conformity with late Renaissance concepts of modality in which pitches functioned not just melodically but also within a developing network of implied harmonic relationships. The editors also took classical Latin prosody into consideration. Although the chants were generally notated in equal rhythmic values, the notes were arranged so that accented syllables received more and higher pitches than unaccented ones.

One imagines that this reform would have had a lasting impact, but Theodore Karp challenges this assumption in his valuable two-volume study of post-Tridentine Mass Propers. Among Karp's contributions are documenting the survival of medieval traditions and showing just how isolated the Editio Medicea was. That some reformed melodies turn up in later chantbooks may be more a matter of trade or availability than evidence of sustained interest in prosody and modal propriety. Part 1 of Karp's study traces the many connections between medieval and modern practices; part 2 compares fifteen or more readings of the same chants to illustrate them. The larger-format, soft-bound second volume contains eighty-six musical examples drawn from late sixteenth- through the nineteenth-century sources published across a wide swath of Europe. Besides synoptic editions of five complete formularies (five Proper chants each) for the Third Mass on Christmas, the First and Second Sundays of Advent, the Third Sunday after Epiphany, and Easter, part 2 includes ten chants with interesting musical pedigrees, melodies from an unusual seventeenth-century Gradual for nuns, and nine Neo-Gallican chants. The different versions are printed in stemless noteheads on modern five-line staves, ligatures being indicated by slurs, some conjecturally reconstructed. Signs for special note shapes are employed. In most cases, readings from the modern Graduale Triplex are provided for comparison.

Those hoping to gain the most from Karp's study might begin with part 2, since part 1 is largely devoted to discussing the examples. The level of detail in chapters 3 through 8 occasionally challenges, but the lack of scholarly familiarity with the research materials arguably justifies it. Indeed, Karp is at his best when uncovering melodic interrelationships. Readers with limited musical backgrounds will especially appreciate the accompanying compact disc recording. The nineteen selections performed by the Schola Antiqua of Chicago, directed by Calvin Bower, compare favorably with commercial releases. Chapter 2, comprising about a quarter of part 1, is a useful checklist of printed sources of the Graduale Romanum from 1585 to 1902. The four remaining chapters survey Mass chants in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century editions, including some for the Neo-Gallican rite for which little evidence of a unified musical tradition is found.

Karp himself remarks that much historical work on late chant remains to be done...