That's a really good point, donr, with regards to the Times we live in. Such music would be considered very broadly "sacred" today, but back then, perhaps, it was a sign of richness/decadence or a reminder of the opera house.

Father Skeris has noted that "tympani" or kettle drums are pitched and tunable and thus not in the same category as purely rhythm instruments such as the bass drum or snare drum.

Personally, I believe that no orchestral Masses should be allowed at liturgy. It's upstaging the liturgy. Fine to write a Mass, but it would be a concert work. I have written those myself, but would never put them to use in a liturgy.

Of course, tunable bongos would be acceptable then, as well.

Jeffrey:

Yes, you can upstage the liturgy with any presentation of egotistical performance, and I have had many a diva constantly usurp the prayerful presence and focus of liturgy and interject ego many times, even with chant; very frustrating and highly inappropriate. However, with orchestral masses I don't believe there is any way NOT to upstage a liturgy, no matter how well the intention may be. The focus goes away from liturgical sacrifice and onto musical event. It's the nature of the beast. Do it as a concert. Why would one even want to tamper with the norms?

Usually the norm is hymns & the Mass of Creation. Establishing a norm that includes Bruckner & Schubert (as described by Krenek) would be worth a lot of tampering.

francis, though your point is taken, neither hymns nor MoC amount to "abuses." They aren't ideal, yes. They can be thought as objectionable. But as an actual "abuse?" That's hyperbole.

ASIDE:

It is so funny. People ask questions on this forum and then the usual handful of people have a debate over their question. It's just kinda funny.

I hope our differing slants of view give insight!

Shameless plug - I presented a paper on this topic at the Musica Sacra conference at St. Agnes last October (of all places to gently criticize the orchestral mass tradition!), which I believe will be published in the spring or summer edition of Sacred Music (Jared Ostermann - Parallel and Sequential Liturgy). I think it is important to remember that there is more going on here than a question of style or musical taste or the performative aspect of orchestral masses (although those are good topics too). More fundamental, I believe, is the fact that the structure of the liturgy changed dramatically after Vatican II - in such a way that the choral Mass Ordinary does not fit as well structurally with the liturgy as previously. I always get worried when someone brings an orchestral Mass into the Novus Ordo liturgy and proudly says that this important work is once again being heard in its "intended liturgical context." Not so! It was written for a structurally different liturgy, with different considerations at work. And even before the council, overly massive works (no pun intended) were already a concern as they could easily overshadow and distort the liturgy. Thus the statement in TLS that the priest should never be kept waiting at the altar while the music finishes.
And there are various legislative concerns. For example, Musicam Sacram 16b - entrusting the entire Orindary and Proper to the choir, to the exclusion of the people, is to be deprecated; but unless we have congregational propers in use the congregation is excluded from singing both Proper and Ordinary when a choral Mass is used. To my knowledge, having read everything I could find from Schuler et al, orchestral Mass proponents have never addressed MS 16b. Also, there is the statement in the GIRM that the Sanctus is pronounced by all the people with the priest. This one I have seen addressed, but simply by saying "the GIRM is general and doesn't cover every case", which makes sense but at the same time seems to be an extremely broad statement. I'd like to see more thorough thinking on that approach to the GIRM - what else besides Mozart could be easily justified by that approach? And then there are the added rubrics - the sitting during Gloria or Creed, the silent canon continued while the Sanctus is sung, and other changes that vary from place to place. It seems that the "Say the Black, do the Red" crowd is sometimes willing to come up with or explain away a fair amount of red in order to make certain music "work." Is that how things should be done? I do believe personally, also due to my time spent living in Vienna, that orchestral masses can continue to be used in the NO. However, Vienna also has its own history of exceptions granted through proper ecclesial authority (dating back to shortly after TLS, in fact), which address some of these concerns.

Of course, all of the above only applies to the Novus Ordo.

At any rate, considering the structure and legislation of the reformed liturgy, operatic associations of style and instrumentation are the least of my worries when considering whether to program an orchestral mass! These days, I don't think timpani or orchestras or even aria-style solo writing carries any clear secular association for the vast majority of people. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true.

Very interesting points of view. I am not a fan of the orchestral mass, particularly because most orchestral settings seem to have been composed with the view of being used at a concert.

LIKE

"Why would one even want to tamper with the norms?"
Because Catholic is as Catholic does, and in 18th-c. Vienna, these were a norm. It seems prideful to me to accuse an entire culture of liturgical violation.

OTOH, Kirchenmusik nailed the issues in terms of the OF, and even in terms of modern practice of the EF. Just because music worked in its native liturgy does not mean that it can be made to work in a different liturgy. Pre-Reformation English music works with a time scale that was appropriate for the Sarum rite, not the EF. It's gorgeous, heavenly music, and if the priest had something to do up there and the congregation didn't have something to do afterwards, we could use it, but we can't.

francis, your mindstorm represents a great concern of mine that we've discussed here quite thoroughly. Can such a Mass setting even elicit all the desired aspects and expectations?
Conceivably, yes. Universally and actually, who knows?
I've cited this before. After SLC1 I purchased the Chris Mueller "Tertione." Of course, at colloquium 250 musical folk sang the stained-glass infused daylights out of it. When we had it ready (choir LOVED IT) and put it into about 8 months of use at our mother parish, the PIPS seemed to love it as well. They loved it so much they listened to it with attentive quietude. In order to elicit more actuosa, I even employed one of our sopranos to function as a "cantor," which I'm loathe to do ever. Same outcome.
I perused the incredibe Jacob Bancks Mass, I can't even imagine how to deploy that on any regular basis. We've been using (with some adaptations) Msgr. Mancini's THAXTED from CanticaNova with better results, but its shelf life is limited (how much can one milk out of THAXTED?) We're headed next to Richard Clark's MASS OF THE ANGELS, but that, as well, will take some serious preparation of the congregation despite its inherent familiarity.
Please compose your Mass! I'm working ever so slowly on one as well. And I'm going to go through past colloquium repertoire looking for Jeffrey Quick's, Michael Olbash's and other settings I've lost acquaintence with.
The choral/participatory Mass is worth saving.

It seems prideful to me to accuse an entire culture of liturgical violation.

I haven't followed this discussion closely, but you know, you could reasonably accuse America of this...not sure the statement is so crazy after all.

Ben, you may have a point there, but hopefully we are turning the corner with more and more people finding access to the information. I have wondered whether it is worthwhile to compose an orchestral mass along the lines suggested by Francis, but in my area there would not be resources (orchestra) to play it at mass. I still think that such a mass, if it were not long winded, would be a wonderful thing to sit through.

I would suggest that the orchestral masses written by Mozart, Haydn (and others) were written NOT as 'music for a concert' but as 'music requested by their patrons'. That is, the Golden Rule was in operation then, as it is now.

One should not be too cynical about that 'golden rule', either. In charity, we should assume that the patrons (and the composers) were interested in glorifying God and edifying the faithful--raising the minds and hearts of the faithful to God.

The conjunction 'and' between 'minds' and 'hearts' in that phrase is often overlooked. The qualities of the music should be such that it does raise both, equally. So long as we understand 'participation' to require effort (which could be mental, not necessarily physical), we can say that those mass ordinaries are just fine.

They can fit into the NO scheme, as Mgr. Schuler demonstrated. However, personally speaking, I'd reserve them for Big Occasions such as Christmas, Easter, Ordinations, church dedications (etc.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsUq9fWJruY

Salieri - your 3b above lies at the heart of this question. "3b) Whether sung to Chant, classical Polyphony, or in Orchestral settings, the action taking place at the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus-Benedictus, and Agnus Dei is the singing of those texts, therefore the 'action' takes as long as it takes to sing them; unlike the Introit, Offertory, and Communion which accompany another action."

This is true in the Novus Ordo, with the exception of the Agnus Dei (which accompanies the fraction rite, which according to the GIRM "should not be unnecessarily prolonged or accorded exaggerated importance."). And the question is - does this single action of the Ordinary make it better or worse to program a 5-minute choral setting?

In the EF, on the other hand, the priests and servers do have actions which run alongside each sung part of the Ordinary. As you demonstrated with your in-home experiment. If nothing else, the priest recites the Gloria and Credo while the choir sings it, and then can walk to the chair and sit while the choir finishes.

too little respect for the text.

Really? Examples, please?

[A tip about posting YouTube videos: If the URL starts with 'https', change it to 'http'. That way, the automatic embedding works. --admin]

So your definition of 'lack of respect for text' includes repeated and/or overlaid text.

I might agree about 'overlaid' if and only if little of the text is understandable, except that everyone in the church knew what the text was. One doesn't hear Mass every Sunday and NOT know what the text is. But I'll concede that to the extent that it obscures text, it is undesirable.

Repetition? Sorry, can't agree with you there. That actually "respects" the text more by underlining (or emphasizing) portions which the composer wants to emphasize. Your complaint resembles that of the Bugnini-ites who decried 'useless repetition' to dismantle the EF.

Now show me the 'one-minute' Gloria.

(by the way, I've finally gotten around to using my real name in my profile). I'm kirchenmusik...

Palestrina - I've used the Faure or sung in the Faure many times liturgically. But I'm glad you brought it up because the Requiem genre is a different animal. Why? Because it is at least half a setting of the Proper rather than the Ordinary. As such Requiems actually do tend to work well in the Novus Ordo. At least in the sense that you can use the Introit, Offertory, and Communion propers at the respective times and the In Paradisum as a recessional. And maybe the Kyrie and/or Sanctus as well, if you're more daring. The specific difficulty with the Faure is that the Sanctus does not include the Benedictus, so that is out of the question for liturgical use. Also, the Agnus Dei and Communio are put together in one movement. But that actually works well as the communion movement - we all know Cardinal Ratzinger's recommendation of moving the Agnus to communion. Finally, the Introit and Kyrie are in one movement - this makes perfect sense in the EF (this is a pre-conciliar setting) because the introit and kyrie are seamlessly connected in the EF.

All that said, if you leave out the Sanctus and Libera Me, the Faure works quite well in the NO (I usually put the Pie Jesu after communion). I have also conducted the Durufle Requiem liturgically in the NO, and I think it is the best Requiem from a liturgical standpoint. The text is respected and the movements are compact and have a natural dynamic arch (quiet to climactic and back to quiet) that makes them seem to appear organically from and fade back into a chanted liturgy. For that reason nothing approaches the Durufle in my book in terms of liturgical usefulness.
I have also attended four NO liturgies with the Mozart in various places, and done properly (perhaps only excerpts) even that setting can work. In Vienna they did that piece at St. Stephens cathedral when Pope JP II died - still one of the musical highpoints of my life. The entrance procession was so long and slow that the combined introit and kyrie did not even quite cover it.

I suspect that the Austrians don't much care whether or not we like their masses and will continue to do them. I have found Haydn masses more workable for Sunday use than some others, but I really don't have the resources to do those orchestral masses well. Many of them require importing singers and instrumentalists to the degree that you end up with a performance, whether or not that was your original intent. I will stick with the organ and the Alzheimer's volunteer choir as usual.

And don't even dare suggesting heating the building or using anything but candles for illumination. Along with that chant you may use 17-rank mixtures tuned sharp. Monastic dress is required. You can sing the high notes better if you are freezing your arse in the unheated building. Now when is that organ beater going to get here? Musicians! What a pain!

And my point stands: all this music was removed after Pius X's reforms. Why remove it, if Pius X didn't have anything against developments per se? If it was merely a matter of a 'lingua franca', their works would have been fine. They weren't.

So, unlike the Russian Orthodox Church which has allowed sacred compositions to be written and included in Church music, all development in the Roman Rite needs to cease with the death of Palestrina in 1594? Going by this, the following composers are banned from the Church because their sacred compositions use the same techniques as their operatic and secular compositions:

Moteverdi, the Gabriellis, Praetorius, Lassus, Sweelinck, Byrd, Tye, Tallis, Charpentier, Couperin, Mouret, Bai, the Bachs, Handel, Arne, the Purcells, Boyce, the Mozarts, the Haydns, Eybler, Salieri, Schubert, Beethoven, Humperdinck, Fux, Gasmann, Zalenka, Stadler, Freystadtler, Gruber, Mustafa, Bruckner, Rossini, Faure, Franck, Stanford, Durufle, Dupre, Tournemire, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Messaien, Britten, Berkeley, Rubbra, Stravinsky, Tavener, Part, Giffen, La Rocca, Copper, Kwasniewski, etc., etc., etc.

This must also work retroactively too: So much for Josquin, Ockeghem, Mouton, Taverner, Machaut, Dufay, Perotin, Leonin, etc., etc.

Following this 'black list', lets see, that leaves us with, hmm, oh, Palestrina, Victoria, Pietro Yon, Carlo Rossini, and Lorenzo Perosi -- the 1930-whatever "white list".

Dr. Mahrt makes compelling arguments for the use of the Orchestral Mass in Musical Shape of the Liturgy.