Unger M.P. Historical Dictionary of Choral Music

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Claude Debussy’s music (which he encountered around 1908) and

that of Igor Stravinsky. A 1913 visit to Paris (where he befriended

Alfredo Casella and attended the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of

Spring) caused him to withdraw most of the pieces he had written to

that point.

With Casella he sought to modernize Italian music, while link-

ing it to pre-Romantic traditions. He was a prolific and innovative

composer. His choral output includes some 20 works, almost all with

orchestra. Among them are La Passione, for S, 2 T, Bar., chorus, and

orch. (1935); Magister Josephus, a “rappresentazione da concerto”

for S, A, T, Bar., and orch. (1957), in which Gioseffo Zarlino is pre-

sented as fighting against the trends of his day (allowing Malipiero to

reference idioms of Zarlino’s time); and Ave Phoebe, dum queror, for

chamber chorus and 20 insts. (1964), which clothes a text by Virgil

with the chromaticism characteristic of his late works.

MANCHICOURT, PIERRE DE (C. 1510–5 OCTOBER 1564).

Franco-Flemish composer. The few known details about his life

come largely from the title pages of his publications. In 1539 he was

director of the choir at Tours Cathedral; in 1545 he was maître de

chapelle at Tournai Cathedral. In 1559 he became director of the

Flemish chapel at the court of Philip II in Madrid. His extant works

include 19 masses (mostly for four voices, and mostly of the parody

type), more than 60 motets (which follow the stylistic trend of the

time: from the gentle melodic lines and full textures of Jean de

Ockeghem, to the shorter phrases and duet textures of Josquin des

Prez, to the pervasive imitation of Nicolas Gombert and Clemens

non Papa); and more than 50 chansons (mostly in the contrapuntal

Franco-Flemish style).

MÄNTYJÄRVI, JAAKKO (27 MAY 1963– ). Finnish translator,

composer, and choral conductor. An active choral musician and

self-described “eclectic traditionalist,” he has written much practi-

cal choral music, which uses modernist techniques only sparingly.

From 2000 to 2005 he was composer-in-residence of the Tapi-

ola Chamber Choir. His works include Four Shakespeare Songs

(1984); Dagen svalnar . . . [Day Is Cooling] (1991/93); Ave Maria

(1991); Pseudo-Yoik (1994); Kouta (1996); El Hambo (1997); More

Shakespeare Songs (1997); Canticum Calamitatis Maritimae, a

memorial to the victims of the 1994 sinking of the car ferry Estonia

282 • MANCHICOURT, PIERRE DE

(1997); Die Stimme des Kindes, for AATTBBBB (with counterten-

ors) or SSAATTBB (1998), which led to commissions from both

Chanticleer and the King’s Singers; Salvat 1701, a choral drama for

SATB choir, soli, and speakers (2000); Deux ballades de François

Villon (2001); the 40-part motet Tentatio (2006); and Face the Music

(2007); among many others. All pieces mentioned are SATB divisi

unaccompanied unless otherwise specified.

MARCELLO, BENEDETTO (BORN 24 JUNE OR 24 JULY

1686; DIED 24 JULY 1739). Italian composer and writer. He is

best remembered for Il teatro alla moda (1720), a satirical account

of contemporary opera, and Estro poetico-armonico (1724–26), a

collection of 50 Italian psalm settings for voices and instruments in

eight volumes. Although he was a Venetian nobleman whose official

career was in government service, he nonetheless established himself

as a leading composer (known especially for his solo cantatas and

the psalms settings mentioned above), a successful teacher of sing-

ing (Faustina Bordoni was among his students), and an influential

writer on music (who argued for musical reform along classical lines,

predating Christoph Willibald von Gluck’s statements by many

years). His psalms were intended to bring dignity back to devotional

music by reviving the timeless practices of antiquity. Over the next

one-and-a-half centuries they achieved international recognition,

appearing in Italian, Latin, French, English, German, Swedish, and

Russian translations; they also appeared in instrumental versions.

Marcello’s other surviving choral works include four oratorios, and

eight masses for three to eight voices (including one Requiem).

MARENZIO, LUCA (1553/54–22 AUGUST 1599). Italian composer,

renowned for his madrigals and villanellas, of which more than

400 survive. He spent most of his life in Rome. In the 1570s he was

employed by Cardinal Madruzzo until his patron’s death in 1578.

Thereafter he served Cardinal Luigi d’Este until the cardinal died

eight years later. From about 1587 to 1589, he worked for the Medici

family in Florence, after which he returned to Rome. In 1595 he was

assigned to the court of the Polish king at Warsaw. By 1598 he was

back in Rome, where he died a year later.

Until 1580 he was known primarily as a singer, but that year he

began publishing prolifically. During the following decade, he is-

sued some 17 volumes of madrigals and villanelle: one volume of

MARENZIO, LUCA • 283

madrigals for four voices, six volumes for five voices (including one

volume of madrigali spirituali), four volumes for six voices, one

volume for four to six voices, and five books of villanelle for three

voices. These works gained a huge following. Often reprinted, they

established him internationally as the unrivaled master of the genre

before Claudio Monteverdi’s innovations in the early Baroque.

Another half-dozen volumes of madrigals appeared in the 1590s—

four for five voices, and two for six voices. In these later works, he

employed more serious poetry—dark and anguished texts, which he

clothed in an intense musical language of jagged melodic lines, and

pervasive chromaticism and dissonance. His later collections also

show an increased interest in cyclic settings—for example, the 1595

volume for six voices consists essentially of two large cycles.

Marenzio’s technique varied constantly with the texts he chose,

which tend to have strong emotional profiles. Each phrase is treated

concisely and distinctively. There is no lengthy manipulation of mo-

tives, but rather a continuously varied texture, with homophonic

sections interrupting the polyphonic flow. His madrigals also in-

corporate much musical symbolism—not only vivid word-painting

(which includes audacious dissonances and chord progressions for

affective representations), but also Augenmusik and musical reflec-

tions of the text’s syntactical and rhetorical structures.

Marenzio’s surviving sacred works include some 70 motets, and

settings of liturgical texts (a handful of masses, 2 Magnificats, and

2 Te Deums). These latter works tend to be polychoral, as are a few

of the motets. Like the secular pieces, the sacred compositions gener-

ally employ much imagery. Many of them were published only after

Marenzio’s death. Some are expansive rather than concise, and are

therefore judged to be early works (written before 1580).

MARTIN, FRANK (15 SEPTEMBER 1890–21 NOVEMBER

1974). Swiss composer. He was born in Geneva, the youngest child

of a Calvinist minister. After World War I, he lived in Zurich, Rome,

and Paris, before returning to Geneva, where he studied at the Jaques-

Dalcroze Institute (1925–27), then taught there (1927–38). In Geneva

he also served as the director of the Technicum moderne de musique,

a private music school (1933–39). After World War II, he lived in

the Netherlands, commuting to Cologne to teach at the conservatory,

where his pupils included Karlheinz Stockhausen (1950–57). He

traveled widely, performing his own music.

284 • MARTIN, FRANK

Largely self-taught as a composer, Martin gradually developed a

highly individualistic style that combined Germanic elements (Jo-

hann Sebastian Bach being an especially strong influence) with the

expanded harmonies of early 20th-century French composers. He

was one of the first composers to use Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-tone

technique, yet he continued to regard harmony as the most important

musical determinant. Convinced that music had to have a tonal ba-

sis, he used tone rows to produce what he called “gliding tonality,”

a harmonic language of ambiguous relationships and shifting tonal

centers.

Of some 30 choral works, several have found a firm place in the

standard choral repertoire. Especially popular is the Mass for unac-

companied double chorus (1922/1926). His oratorios include Les

dithyrambes, for 4 solo vv., chorus, children’s chorus, and orch.

(1918); Le vin herbé (a secular chamber oratorio based on the Tristan

legend), for 12 solo vv., 2 vn., 2 va., 2 vc., db., and pf. (1941); In

terra pax, for S, A, T, Bar., B, 2 choruses, and orch. (1944); Gol-

gotha, for S, A, T, Bar., B, chorus, orch., and org. (1948); and Pilate,

for Mez., T, Bar., B, chorus, and orch. (1964). Among other choral

works are Ariel (five songs employing texts from Shakespeare’s The

Tempest), for 4S, 4A, 4T, and 4B (1950); Pseaumes de Genève, for

chorus, boys’ chorus, orch., and org. (1958); Ode à la musique, for

chorus, tpt., 2 hn., 3 trbn., db., and pf. (1961); and Requiem, for S,

A, T, B, chorus, orch., org. (1972).

MARTINI, [PADRE] GIOVANNI BATTISTA (24 APRIL 1706–3

AUGUST 1784). Italian composer and internationally influential

music theorist and teacher, active in Bologna. He was an indefatigable

collector, letter writer, and composer. Among his students (whom he

instructed mainly in counterpoint) were Johann Christian Bach,

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Christoph Willibald von Gluck, Nic-

colò Jommelli, and André Grétry; among his correspondents were

Pietro Metastasio, Johann Quantz, and Jean Philippe Rameau. His

prodigious library reportedly contained some 17,000 volumes. Of his

hundreds of compositions, most remain unpublished. They evidently

show his antiquarian leanings—in particular, his appreciation for the

enduring, expressive qualities of chant. His choral works (which para-

doxically tend to be homophonic and treble-dominated) include 32

masses for two to eight voices (some of them incomplete, and many

with instruments), nearly 200 psalms for voices and instruments (some

MARTINI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA • 285

50 for double chorus), some 26 Magnificats, and many other liturgical

pieces. He also wrote a few oratorios and some secular works.

MARTINI, JOHANNES (BORN C. 1430–40; DIED 1497). Franco-

Flemish composer. He spent much of his career at the ducal chapel

in Ferrara. A good portion of his surviving sacred music appears in

a two-volume manuscript containing double-choir psalms, hymns,

and other sacred music for Lent and Holy Week, written jointly

with Johannes Brebis. If the unattributed works in this source are

assigned to Martini, his surviving compositions include 11 masses

(10 for four voices, 1 for three), 68 psalms (36 for two voices, 32

for three voices), 6 Magnificats, some 9 other motets, 2 Passions,

and some 36 secular works to French and Italian texts (two-thirds of

them for three voices, the rest for four). His musical style is more

conservative than that of Josquin des Prez, in that structural con-

cerns take precedence over text expression. While most of his works

are contrapuntal, the psalms are homophonic, as befits antiphonal

presentation.

MARTINÛ, BOHUSLAV (8 DECEMBER 1890–28 AUGUST

1959). Czech composer. After unsuccessful studies at the Prague

Conservatory (1906–10), he taught violin lessons, composed, and

played (with increasing frequency) in the Czech Philharmonic Or-

chestra until 1923, when he left for studies in Paris. There he estab-

lished a growing reputation as a composer. In 1941 he emigrated

to the United States, where he stayed after the war ended (teaching

at Tanglewood, Princeton University, and the Mannes School of

Music), despite having accepted an offer of a position at the Prague

Conservatory. In 1953 he returned to Europe, living first in France,

then after some time, in New York and Rome. He spent his final

years in Switzerland.

A prolific composer who wrote in every genre, Martinû developed

a distinctive (largely neo-Classical) voice influenced by the works of

Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky, Czech folk music, Baroque

forms and techniques, Renaissance counterpoint (especially English

madrigals), and jazz. As a result, his music is characterized by rhyth-

mic energy, dissonant yet tonal harmonies, clarity, and precision.

He was on the forefront of musical-dramatic experiments in radio,

film, and television. His instrumental groupings are often unusual,

frequently including the piano.

286 • MARTINI, JOHANNES

Martinû’s choral works include some half-dozen with orchestra,

among them, the cantatas C

eská rapsódie, op. 118, for Bar., chorus,

orch., and org. (1918); Kytice, op. 260, for solo vv., chorus, and orch.

(1937); Polní mše [Field Mass], op. 279, for Bar., male vv., winds,

pf., hmn., and perc. (1939), whose libretto by Jiří Mucha combines

his own poignant text with Czech translations of liturgical texts and

psalms; and the oratorio Gilgameš, op. 351, for spkr., solo vv., cho-

rus, and orch. (1955). Among some 10 works with (sometimes un-

usual) chamber accompaniment are the small-scale cantatas Otvírání

studánek [The Opening of the Wells], op. 354, for spkr., solo vv.,

female and children’s vv., 2 vn., va., and pf. (1955); Legenda z dýmu

bramborové [Legend of the Smoke from Potato Tops], op. 360, for

solo vv., chorus, fl., cl., hn., accdn., and pf. (1956); and Mikeš z hor

[Mikeš from the Mountains], op. 375, for solo vv., chorus, 2 vn., va.,

and pf. (1959). Among one dozen unaccompanied works are C

eské

madrigaly, op. 278, 8 madrigals on Moravian texts, for mixed vv.

(1939); C

eských madrigalu

, op. 321, five madrigals on Czech texts,

for mixed vv. (1948); and Madrigaly op. 380, a partsong book on

Moravian texts, for mixed vv. (1959).

MASON, LOWELL (8 JANUARY 1792–11 AUGUST 1872).

American music educator, church musician, and hymnologist, ac-

tive in Savannah, Boston, and New York. His greatest contribution

to American musical life was to establish congregational singing in

churches, and music education in churches and schools, by provid-

ing hymnals and instructional materials, and by organizing training

classes for teachers. Distinctly European in musical orientation, he

tried to elevate the musical taste of the masses with publications such

as The Boston Handel and Haydn Society Collection of Church Mu-

sic (1922), which ran to 22 editions, and many subsequent hymnals.

He himself served as president and music director of the society from

1827 to 1832. In 1833 he and George James Webb founded the Bos-

ton Academy of Music. Along with Thomas Hastings, he resisted

the less polished music of revivalism, offering as alternatives such

enduring hymns as Antioch (“Joy to the World”), Bethany (“Nearer

My God to Thee”), Hamburg (“When I Survey the Wondrous

Cross”), and Olivet (“My Faith Looks Up to Thee”).

MASQUE. A dramatic precursor to opera, very popular among the

English nobility during the 1500 and 1600s, which developed around

MASQUE • 287

a masked dance. Employing allegorical or mythological subjects, it

combined secular poetry, music (both vocal and instrumental), danc-

ing, and acting with elaborate stage machinery, scenery, and cos-

tumes. During the Commonwealth, public performance of masques

was prohibited, although the ban was sometimes circumvented by

the mounting of masque-like “concerts.” However, masques were

allowed in private homes and in schools. After the Restoration, with

the growing popularity of theaters (encouraged by Charles II and

James II), the theater masque came into being, ultimately reaching

the peak of its development in the dramas and semi-operas of Henry

Purcell.

MASS [LAT. MISSA; FR. MESSE; GER. MESSE; IT. MESSA;

SPAN. MISA]. The Roman Catholic eucharistic liturgy; also a mu-

sical setting of the sung texts of the Ordinary of the Mass (Kyrie,

Gloria, Credo, Sanctus/Benedictus, Agnus Dei, and sometimes, Ite

missa est) as opposed to the texts of the Proper of the Mass. The

Requiem Mass or Mass for the Dead (Lat. Missa pro defunctis)

follows the general outline of the normal Mass, but with the Gloria

and Credo omitted, and the Dies irae added. Requiem settings also

include Proper texts, since they remained constant from the Council

of Trent until the Second Vatican Council.

In common usage, Mass (capitalized) designates the entire liturgy,

mass, the musical genre. Of significance to the development of music

is the fully sung form (High Mass) as it was practiced from about

1000 until changes were made in the wake of the Second Vatican

Council (1962–65). A typical High Mass before Vatican II is outlined

in table 1.

The Mass dominates the early history of Western music because

the prescribed chants (especially those of the Proper) served as me-

lodic material for early polyphony, preserved in Musica enchiriadis

(c. 900), the Winchester Troper (11th century), manuscripts from St.

Martial at Limoges, the Codex Calixtinus from Santiago de Com-

postela (12th century), and the Magnus Liber Organi (from c. 1170),

among others. Often the chant melodies were troped, their melis-

matic lines intended for soloists (see CHORAL POLYPHONY).

In the 1300s, polyphonic settings of ordinaries began to appear in

French manuscripts. Though small, the repertory was widely dissem-

inated. Similar collections emerged in Italy and England. Thereafter,

composers focused on the texts of the Ordinary, usually leaving the

288 • MASS

propers to be sung as chant, presumably because they would be heard

only on their appointed days, while polyphonic ordinaries could be

sung repeatedly.

At first composers did not set the Ordinary as a coherent whole

(presumably because there is no liturgical reason for doing so) and

copyists usually grouped settings of like texts together in manu-

scripts. Notwithstanding occasional cyclic groupings in such col-

lections (the earliest of which is the six-movement cycle known as

the Tournai mass), the first work that is stylistically coherent and

evidently conceived as a unit by a single composer is Guillaume de

Machaut’s four-voice Messe de Nostre Dame (c. 1360).

MASS • 289

Table 1. High Mass before Vatican II.

Proper Ordinary Function Performer(s)

Mass of the Catechumens

Introit entrance cantor/choir

Kyrie supplication choir

Gloria (omitted in

Advent and Lent) praise choir

Collect opening prayer clergy

Epistle scripture lesson clergy

Gradual psalm response cantor/choir

Alleluia (or,

in penitential

seasons, tract) Gospel invocation cantor/choir

Gospel Scripture lesson clergy

Credo confession of faith choir

Mass of the Faithful

Offertory procession of gifts choir

Preface praise clergy

Sanctus/Hosanna/

Benedictus/Hosanna praise choir

Pater noster Lord’s Prayer clergy

Agnus Dei supplication choir

Communion distribution of

sacrament choir

Postcommunion closing prayer clergy

Ite Missa est (or, in

penitential seasons,

Benedicamus

Domino) dismissal clergy/choir

In the following century, cyclical settings became the norm, and

composers found various means of unifying the five movements, de-

spite the fact that they were separated in the liturgy (a fact obscured

by modern concert performances). On the Continent, composers used

the same thematic material at the beginning of each movement in one

or more of the voices. Such “motto masses” or “head-motive masses”

appear in northern Italian sources; examples include works by Arnold

de Lantins. Ultimately of greater historical importance was cantus

firmus technique, in which the same chant melody is used for the

tenor of each movement. Presented in long note values (often in an

isorhythmic pattern), or sometimes elaborated variously, the cantus

firmus provides structural unity to the whole. The earliest surviving

examples of such “cantus firmus masses” or “tenor masses,” dating

from c. 1420–35, are by the English composers John Dunstable and

Leonel Power. After 1440 the technique also appeared in Continen-

tal sources.

Many sources of English masses of this time have no Kyrie move-

ments. Proposed theories to explain this phenomenon include: (1) the

English Sarum rite had extended Kyrie tropes for high feasts, which

were performed monophonically and therefore the Kyrie was not

set by composers; and (2) since some polyphonic settings of English

troped Kyries do exist, Continental scribes must have commonly

omitted them in their manuscripts because they were unusable in

their own liturgical contexts.

By the second half of the 15th century, the mass had become the

most significant musical genre in Western music, developed espe-

cially by Continental composers—principally by Guillaume Dufay

and his successors. The cantus firmus mass was by far the most

widely cultivated type. Sometimes Dufay and his contemporaries

combined motto and cantus firmus techniques, further increasing the

cohesiveness of their works. In Missa Se La Face Ay Pale and Missa

L’Homme Armé (both for four voices), Dufay used secular tunes as

cantus firmus, establishing a practice that became commonplace in

the later 1400s, continuing through the early 1500s, with chansons

becoming a favorite source of melodies. The most popular tune

was evidently “L’Homme armé”—more than 30 masses based on it

survive, by such composers as Dufay, Jean de Ockeghem, Jacob

Obrecht, Josquin des Prez, Pierre de la Rue [La Rue], Cristóbal

de Morales, and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, among others.

290 • MASS

Occasionally composers included the propers in their cycles, produc-

ing so-called plenary cycles or proper masses; among these are two

by Dufay.

Franco-Flemish composers dominated the genre for many years.

Ockeghem’s masses are models of expressive counterpoint and

technical prowess. Characterized by seamless, nonimitative polyph-

ony, they employ structures ranging from the use of a cantus firmus

(often taken from a chanson) to complex canonic schemes (see, for

example, the Missa prolationum). Ockeghem’s four-voice Missa Ma

maistresse (surviving as Kyrie and Gloria) and the five-voice Missa

Fors seulement (a partial cycle of Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo) are two

of the earliest masses to use incipient parody technique (borrowing

more than one voice from the model—in both instances, chansons of

his own). He also wrote the earliest surviving Requiem.

Obrecht’s 27 securely attributed masses (mostly for four voices)

represent the most significant part of his output. Many of them are

structurally complex. Especially remarkable is the Missa Sub tuum

presidium, which begins with three voices, then gains an additional

voice in each successive movement as cantus firmi are added. De-

spite such complex structural schemes, his works have warm, grace-

ful melodies, audible imitation, and a clear sense of harmony and

“tonality.” Some of his later works employ parody technique.

Although Josquin’s masses were not as famous as his motets, they

were nevertheless recognized in his day as masterful examples of the

genre, a fact exemplified by Ottaviano Petrucci’s decision to start

his series of mass publications with three volumes devoted to him.

Josquin cultivated all contemporary types: cantus-firmus mass (e.g.,

Missa L’homme armé super voces musicales), paraphrase mass—an

important type around 1500, in which a borrowed melody provides

the motivic material for all voices in an imitative texture (e.g., Missa

Pange Lingua), canonic mass (e.g., Missa Ad fugam), and parody

mass—historically, perhaps more correctly called imitation mass

(e.g., Missa Fortuna desperata).

Probably the most significant contribution of Josquin and his gen-

eration was the establishment of pervasive contrapuntal imitation

as the dominant structural technique. Thoroughgoing imitation was

inherent to approaches that involved paraphrase and especially parody

(where the “parodied” model was itself pervasively imitative—often

now a motet instead of chanson). After Josquin’s death in 1521, the

MASS • 291