Organi, Bartolomeo degli. See Bartolomeo degli Organi. Organino (i)

(ii) Alternatim styles.

At the Mass one plays five times at the Kyrie when it is sung in the choir in plainchant; four times when it is sung ‘en musique’ [i.e. organ–Kyrie–organ–Christe–organ–Kyrie–organ]; and twice only when the musicians sing Kyrie, Christe, Kyrie without a break [i.e. organ–Kyrie+Christe+Kyrie–organ].

This ceremonial also explains that when the Gloria is sung ‘en musique’, the organ does not intervene at all. For the remainder of the Ordinary ‘en musique’, the organ plays once before the Sanctus, for the Benedictus and for the first and third Agnus. A similar scene is used in several vocal mass settings by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. His Messe pour le samedi de Pâques à 4 voix contains instructions for the interpolation of organ versets in the Kyrie and Sanctus. The Benedictus is wholly sung. (The Agnus is omitted in accordance with liturgical practice on Holy Saturday.) The Sanctus bears the following rubrics: ‘Premier Sanctus pour l’orgue sur le plein jeu’; ‘Second Sanctus’ (polyphonic vocal setting); ‘Troisième Sanctus pour l’orgue sur les petits jeux’; ‘Pleni sunt … in excelsis’ (to a polyphonic vocal setting). Here therefore, Charpentier introduced the organ between the second ‘Sanctus’ and ‘Pleni sunt’. Somewhat later Michel Corrette published a collection of masses (Quatre messes à deux voix égales, avec l’accompagnement de l’orgue à l’usage des dames religieuses) showing the alternation of vocal settings and organ versets. In the second and third masses only half of the liturgical text is set (including the Gloria), Corrette directing the organist to interpolate versets at the breaks. Appropriate versets, according to a note at the head of the second mass, were to be found in the composer’s ‘Ie livre d’orgue’, referring not to Corrette’s Premier livre but to a much later ‘livre Ir’ of Pièces pour l’orgue dans un genre nouveau à l’usage des dames religieuses.

Organ mass, §2: The extant literature

(iii) History.

A more flexible approach to the cantus firmus is found in the three-part settings belonging to the Buxheim Organbook (D-Mbs, c1470). Here the plainchant is organized rhythmically. This source contains (in addition to the troped Gloria mentioned above, several settings of the Kyrie, a single Credo and a Sanctus) versets for three introits.

Two English organ masses survive from the very early years of the 16th century: Missa in die Paschae by Thomas Preston, which consists exclusively of settings of the Proper, and a complete setting of the Ordinary, with a troped Kyrie for Trinity Sunday, by Philip ap Rhys (EECM, x, 1969, no.1). There remain also a significant number of English offertory versets, among which Felix namque settings predominate. The offertory antiphon Felix namque was prescribed for Lady Masses. (Surviving examples of pre-Reformation English organ music for the Mass are transcribed in EECM, x (1969).)

The two earliest extant French organ masses also date from the first half of the 16th century. Moreover, they are the first printed organ masses. They appear in Attaingnant’s Tabulature pour le jeu d’orgues (1531), which set the pattern for printed organ masses for the next 200 years. The versets are for the Ordinary and, with the exception of those for the Kyrie of the Mass ‘Kyrie fons bonitatis’, based on the fourth plainchant. This setting (Cunctipotens genitor Deus) was favoured (and continued to be favoured in France) for ‘annual and solemn feasts’. The plainchant is still treated as a strict cantus firmus, mainly in the bass.

Cavazzoni, in his Intabulatura d’organo … libro secondo (?1543), was one of the first composers to break away from the strict cantus firmus style and to produce a more unified texture. His versets normally start with a compact series of imitative entries, taking the plainchant incipit as their ‘point’, and proceed to a fuller statement of the plainchant, either in the soprano or in the bass. The Intabulatura contains three masses, Missa apostolorum (IV), Missa domenicalis (XI) and Missa de Beata Virgine (IX). The same basic titles, and the same plainchants, occur in the three organ masses by Andrea Gabrieli (in one of the Turin tablatures, I-Tn) and in those by Claudio Merulo (Messe d’intavolatura d’organo, 1568). Organ versets for the Mass also appear in the work of Hans Buchner (Fundamentum) and Cabezón, and in a Polish manuscript (PL-Kp: the Lublin Tablature).

Towards the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th the extant literature of organ versets from the Catholic parts of Germany is much slighter than from Italy, but there are manuscript sets of versets for the mass by Hans Leo Hassler (one complete in the Turin manuscripts) and Christian Ehrbach (five Kyries and one Gloria), which show that alternatim organ music was in use. An anonymous German 16th-century source contains three masses in organ tablature (Wolff, 1994).

The 17th century is the most important in the history of the organ mass, both for the number of publications and for the degree of technical accomplishment. Banchieri’s treatise L’organo suonarino (1605), of which the third edition (1622) contains a Missa alla domenica, was followed by Bottazzi’s Choro et organo (1614), Frescobaldi’s Fiori musicali (1635), Salvatore’s Ricercari … e versi per rispondere nelle messe (1641), Croci’s Frutti musicali (1642) and Fasolo’s Annuale (1645), each of which contains three masses: the familiar Mass for the Apostles, Mass for Sunday and Mass for Our Lady. Frescobaldi’s publication is exceptional in that, of the Ordinary, only the Kyrie is set. The remaining pieces are for the processional (‘avanti la Messa’), the gradual (‘dopo l’epistola’), offertory (‘dopo il Credo’), the Elevation and the post-communion. The Kyries use the normal plainchants, but for each mass there are more than five versets; clearly some are alternatives.

In France also, publications containing organ masses abound, beginning at about the time that Italian publication ceased: Nivers’ 2e livre d’orgue (1667), Lebègue’s Second livre d’orgue (n.d.), Gigault’s Livre de musique pour l’orgue (1685), Raison’s Livre d’orgue contenant cinq messes (1688), Grigny’s Premier livre d’orgue (1699) and the most outstanding masses of the French classical school, those of François Couperin (ii) in his Pièces d’orgue consistantes en deux messes (1690). There are also settings in manuscript: two in an anonymous livre d’orgue formerly belonging to Marguerite Thiery (now in F-Pc), another in an anonymous collection of organ music sometimes attributed to Jean-Nicolas Geoffroy (all three published in A.C. Howell: Five French Baroque Organ Masses, Lexington, Kentucky, 1961), and five in the Livre d’orgue de Montréal, a late 17th-century compilation of Parisian provenance (ed. E. Gallat-Morin, Paris and Montreal, 1988).

With the emergence of the French classical school, notable changes are found in compositional techniques. The old polyphonic structures were discarded in favour of the new concertato style: the récit, the Tierce en taille, the basse de trompette and the dialogue appeared; the old forms were transformed into the fugue, the plein jeu and the fond d’orgue, and the organ was exploited for its variety of colour. The structural use of plainchant diminished to such an extent that the Paris diocese actually directed (in the Caeremoniale parisiense) that the plainchant in use should appear, completely unaltered, in the versets for the first and last Kyrie, at the words ‘Et in terra pax … suscipe deprecationem nostram’ and ‘In gloria Dei patris. Amen’ of the Gloria, and also in the versets for the first Sanctus and Agnus. However, the full force of this injunction appears seldom to have been felt by composers. Even so sensitive a liturgist as Nivers only went so far as to observe it for the first versets of the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus. A similar compromise was reached by both Couperin (in his Messe pour les paroisses) and Grigny, with the exception in Couperin’s case of a cantus firmus setting of the last Kyrie. The treatment of the cantus firmus plainchant in these instances is often rather selfconscious, partly because the standard registration for versets with a cantus firmus calls for the plainchant to be played on the loudest stops of the organ: the pedal Trompette and Clairon. This contrasts with the easy manner in which other versets may freely paraphrase the plainchant.

In other settings, notably Couperin’s Messe pour les couvents and the five masses of Raison’s Livre d’orgue (1688), the demands of the Paris ceremonial seem to be totally ignored, but for understandable reasons. These organ masses were intended for use in religious houses where the diocesan ceremonial had no jurisdiction, and where local usages existed, such as the employment of special chants for the Mass. Many of these chants were often newly composed (i.e. messes musicales) and required organ versets which remained in the same key throughout the Ordinary, unlike organ masses written to alternate with the fourth plainchant. It was these demands which Couperin and Raison had to meet. Raison’s publication with its variety of keys is intended to supply versets for any messe musicale. Interestingly, Couperin’s Messe pour les couvents, written in the 8th mode (more or less G major), conforms to the key needed for alternation with Nivers’ ‘plainchant’ setting for feasts of the first solemnity, transposed from F to G (perhaps to suit nuns’ voices). Nivers’ messes musicales were in wide circulation in service books published for the use of monastic orders.

French organ masses continued to dominate the scene in the 18th century. Although Gaspard Corrette’s Messe du 8e ton (1703) stands firmly in the classical tradition, his son Michel was responsible for a new development in compositional technique, altogether uncharacteristic of the classical school. Each of the four masses of his IIIe livre d’orgue … contenant les messes (1756) consists of versets written almost without exception upon a strict plainchant cantus firmus in the bass. This return to cantus firmus settings became very popular and continued well into the 19th century, but whatever its liturgical advantages it produced nothing of artistic merit (van Wye, 1995).

The French also cultivated the messe en noëls, which became a notable Christmas attraction in fashionable Paris churches. Here each verset is based upon a popular Christmas carol. Claude-Bénigne Balbastre was renowned for his improvised messes en noëls, and some examples by Benaut survive. The cult of the organist as entertainer also led to extravagant and entirely inappropriate versets for the offertory. The Mass in F by Benaut contains an offertoire in several sections inscribed: ‘Prélude, ou Réveil de chasseurs’, ‘Chasse flamande’, ‘Repos de chasse, tempo di minuetto’, and ‘Retour de la chasse’. These trends continued into the 19th century with Christmas enlivened by such works as Alexandre Boëly’s Messe du jour de Noël … sur les airs populaires anciens (1842), while the general production of organ music for the Ordinary continued with such works as the Livre d’orgue op.26 of J.A. Miné. The style of Miné’s versets is similar to Michel Corrette’s, but still simpler. They consist of little more than harmonizations of a plainchant bass, of negligible musical interest (van Wye, 1970). Some 19th-century Italian sources reveal a more ambitious approach. Vincenzo Petrali (1832–89) published versets for the Mass on the scale and in the character of operatic arias and interludes.

The case of the third part of J.S. Bach’s Clavier-Übung being called an organ mass (first by E. Krieger in 1930) forms an interesting footnote to this account. Despite the intriguing appearance of versets for the Kyrie and Gloria in the third part of Scheidt’s Tabulatura nova of 1624 (see Herman, 1969), the use of alternatim organ music for the Mass was generally not adopted by the Lutheran Church, nor indeed by any of the reformed churches. Book 3 of Bach’s Clavier-Übung provides for the Mass only in the sense that it contains elaborate chorale preludes on Lutheran chants for the Kyrie and the Gloria. Bach’s organ music ‘sub communione’ (e.g. Jesus Christus, unser Heiland bwv665) had a specific liturgical role in the Mass, one with which the chorale partitas have also been associated (Clement, 1991). However, there is no alternatim practice at work here.

Although the Roman Church banned alternatim organ music after 1903, much music for use during the Mass has of course been written since then (Kotek, 1974). Messiaen’s Messe de la Pentecôte (1949–50) is a notable example. It consists of five movements (the term ‘verset’ is no longer appropriate): ‘Entrée’, ‘Offertoire’, ‘Consécration’, ‘Communion’ and ‘Sortie’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY