Music Notes for Sunday, May 11, 2025

Music for Fourth Sunday of Easter

 

Messe ‘Cum jubilo’ (Op. 11) – Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986)

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Duruflé’s Mass ‘with rejoicing’, as it is subtitled in Gregorian chant anthologies, is based upon the first of several plainchant settings used in Masses for feast days celebrating aspects in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary. While the vocal line takes its cue from the actual plainchant melody and its constantly shifting metre, Duruflé’s modern setting embraces a much broader tonal spectrum than the original medieval modal scales. The connection between Mary and the month of May can be traced back to ancient times. This setting of the Mass ordinary is offered this Sunday in church in her honour.

In Duruflé’s setting the choral ensemble is streamlined to very simple dimensions: a unison ensemble of tenor and bass voices, with a baritone soloist featured in various sections of the work. In that solo/choral arrangement, it simulates the monastic practice of alternately singing phrases or verses of Gregorian chant antiphonally in two groups, or responsorially by a cantor alternating with a larger chorus.

Like Duruflé’s better-known Requiem, the instrumental accompaniment was originally composed for orchestra and organ, with subsequent arrangements calling for a smaller instrumental ensemble and organ, or organ alone as it is heard in this performance. The general simplicity of the musical texture and the economy of forces make the Mass ‘Cum Jubilo’ an ideal piece of liturgical service music, available for wide use by choirs of varying sizes.

Gerald Harder

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Music Notes for Sunday, May 4, 2025

Music for Third Sunday of Easter

 

Alleluia. Cognoverunt discipuli– William Byrd (1539/40 – 1623)

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William Byrd’s greatest achievement in music publishing was his ambitious two-volume collection of the Gradualia, which contain settings of Mass Propers for the church year. This Sunday’s communion motet in church is Byrd’s setting of the Proper Alleluia for a votive Mass (a Mass offered for a special intention) during Paschal time. It is not known whether Byrd’s settings were intended to be performed in a liturgical framework, or indeed along with any of Byrd’s own Mass settings. In the political climate of the time, it is unlikely that they would have been performed by the Queen’s Chapel Royal, of which Byrd was a member from 1570; this leads to the supposition that they were designed for use in the chapel of a recusant household. Such households may well have been able to maintain a choir capable of meeting the extreme technical demands of the Gradualia, but it is likely that Latin music of the time was performed by small forces—even as few as one to a part—with a female voice singing the top line. However, this does not preclude the possibility that the sound Byrd himself imagined was that of his own choir of the men and boys of the Chapel Royal, had political circumstances permitted.

Alleluia. The disciples knew the Lord Jesus in the breaking of bread.
Alleluia. My flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed.
Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me: and I in them. Alleluia.

Gerald Harder

 

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