@smt

I do tend to agree with you about the monotony of renaissance music. I have been on a steady diet of Ren Mass settings for about a year with nothing else, and it is becoming quite wearing.

A weak spot in the traditionalist movement is the insistence on an all Ren rep. however, I will grant that there is very little beyond that time that is truly excellent in liturgical music fitting for the Mass.

Here is an Agnus that has roots in traditional western music but has more modern harmonies.

If you’re looking for a setting by a living composer, one of my sleeper picks is Rihards Dubra’s Missa Simplex. Painfully underrated composer. His chosen style is an interesting mix of Renaissance and Romantic, always with a robust melody line so his music is fairly easy to pick up by an amateur choir. Easily scalable too, still sounds wonderful whether you’re in a small chapel or a sprawling cathedral. The choir at a parish near me sang the Missa Simplex for Holy Thursday this year in leu of congressional singing because of Covid, it was absolutely stunning.

Rather than a "favorite masses" thread, we need to break it down into "favorite Masses for WHAT?" ...for NO, for EF, in concert, to listen to, for solo voice, women, men, mixed, etc.

Agree with Francis about the trad obsession with the Renaissance. It's the fault of the Caecilians having gotten to Pius X. You'd think there'd be more interest in the Baroque prima prattica, or Caecilian Masses. I'll say though that nobody has given me guff about my choice of Masses.

I'm hiring a couple guys and doing Byrd in 3 for Christ the King (EF).

Here are some subcategories:

Christmas Masses:
I do the Yon Mass of the Shepherds, which isn't technically a Christmas Mass but "sounds Christmassy". Easy cheesy pleasy, but if the youth at St, John Cantius can do it, I needn't feel embarassed.
For Sunday within the Octave, I'm thinking of Bruno Oscar Klein's MIssa de Nativitate Domini for SA, not far from his teacher Rheinberger
Gevaert's Missa Puer Natus est nobis for women and organ deserves to be better known
As for the Tallis work of the same name, or George Malcolm's Missa ad Praesepe (which I HAVE sung), I can only dream of doing them .

Unison Masses in Latin:
Rheinberger Op 62 leaves everything else in the dust
Willan St. Teresa is sturdy, as is Walkiewicz St. Joseph
Everything else I've done (Yon Melodica, Griesbacher Rosa Mystica etc) is meh

Renaissance: I so want to do Ockeghem Missa Au travail Suis
Classical: I'm a sucker for Michael Haydn's Lenten Masses.

Jernberg- Mass of St. Philip Neri
For Gregorian Chant: Mass Setting IV

.

I think it's rather a "first world problem" that choirs at traditional Masses sing "too much" Renaissance polyphony. I mean, how many parish choirs sing much Renaissance music at all?

A lot of this is purely practical: there are an amazing number of high quality works, available for free online, that lend themselves to being sung by small choirs. I love the Vaughan Williams as much as the next person, but it won't work with the five people I have in the loft this morning. And many directors are not able to play the sometimes challenging organ accompaniments.

But a larger point is that the Renaissance mass settings integrate well with the chant and the motet repertoire. As much as I love some of the classical through 20th century repertoire, it can be jarring to go from a long, ornate (and let's face it sometimes overwrought) Kyrie and Gloria to a more sober Gradual and Alleluia. The mass setting can upstage the rest of the Mass instead of being a part of the larger whole.

In the context of OF/NO the RP is intended as a lection, an extract from scripture, delivered by a psalmist for the words to be heard clearly, although there is the option in GIRM of replacing it with the Gradual. As four readings is probably overload, using the Gradual would make sense.
And GIRM says the Alleluia is to be sung by everyone, standing, which in most congregations currently would preclude anything complex or variable (Jackson's congregation providing a shining exception).

My congregation sings the incipit of Alleluia: Dies sanctificatus from memory, daily.

The difficulty has been/is getting people to realize that the music is integral to the liturgy in itself, and not just a thing to be gotten through while the clergy walk from point A to point B.

After over fifty years of utility music at Mass, beauty has become an unwelcome, foreign interloper in the N.O. speed-Mass culture.

Salieri - it may be deeper than that, radio and television have weakened the liturgical idea that moving from A to B is a significant act itself.

I was thinking about masses for liturgical use – in my case that means: mixed voices, NO, usually unaccompanied

As my own NO situation limits me to the Kyrie XVI/Gloria XV*/Credo III**/Sanctus XVIII/Agnus XVIII minimum standard (cf. Voluntati obsequens/Iubilate Deo), if I were to program a choral Mass setting for my own situation, brevity would be the decisive factor. But even then…

Some years ago I wrote a simple three-part Mass setting (Kyrie/Sanctus/Agnus) intended for the students in my homeschool co-op class. I believed it to be compact (homophonic, declamatory, no “unnecessarily” repeated texts other than two triple Hosanna in excelsis in the Sanctus and Benedictus), but with the way the NO apparently is intended to flow, all parts seemed intrusive in their length when we sang it for said co-op’s graduation Mass.

*ICEL
**ICEL, only used on Sunday and if the celebrant remembers to intone it or explicitly instructs me to intone it in his stead.

Psalm tones were intended for mass recitation of 20+ verses with an easy formula, not 3–5 verses by a solo cantor. The chants that are most proper to the solo idiom are the Gregorian Gradual verse and Alleluia verset, and they should be our compositional models. The use of Office tones for the RP is fundamentally a false tradition and misuse of what was originally intended for the Office.

Even the monks of Solesmes shortened the Gradual and Alleluia to psalm tones for parish use... see the Chants Abreges.

An ICKSP priest a world-class friend works for insists on fauxbourdons for these parts — “this is not a monastery”.

Don’t confuse what is in the pristine books with what was really done. At a parish Missa Cantata with abbreviated ceremonies and no incense, why would we expect the propers to be sung in full always, if the priest is efficient? That doesn’t mean that we abandon ourselves to the Rossini books, either.

Practical, beautiful, time-minding solutions to these moments that respect the flow of the rite set by the celebrant are desirable and needful.

The use of Office tones for the RP is fundamentally a false tradition

It would be a misuse for the Gradual, but the RP is different. We normally get 3 or 4 double verses, because we are supposed to hear and follow the text. Whether the RP is/was a good idea or not it is delivered from the ambo, because it is a reading (sung because it is from the Temple hymn book). This has not been the Roman tradition at Mass, it may reflect ancient practice from the time of Jerome and Augustine.
As I said above, if there are two readings before the Gospel, I think using the Gradual instead of the RP may be sensible, simply because there is too much text to take in. Weekdays have more engaged congregations, and usually fewer readings.

@smt

Some Mass settings I've employed with success within the context of the TLM that fit your criteria:

• Three voices
  
  • Asola, Missa prima a 3
  • Asola, Missa secunda a 3
  • Dalitz, Missa tribus vocibus
  • Dalitz, Missa «Salve Regina»
  • Haller, Missa prima, Op. 4
  • Haller, Messe secunda, Op. 5
  • Lotti, Mass in C major "Student Mass"
• Four voices
  
  • di Lasso, Missa octavi toni (Jäger)
  • Hassler, Missa super «Dixit Maria» 
  • Hassler, Missa secunda
  • Monteverdi, Messa da cappella a 4vv. (1641)
  • Rota, Missa brevis a 4
  • Victoria, Missa quarti toni

Rheinberger, Double Choir in E-flat

Schubert Mass in G

Missa O Quam Gloriosum - Victoria

Martin -- Mass for Double Choir

One that barring one or two solos and themes is non-liturgical:Mass in B Minor - J.S. Bach

Not to derail the thread again, but I happened to be trawling around for a nice quote about sacred music for the worship aid this week and I stumbled across this line in De Musica Sacra et Sacra Liturgia (1958) which jumped out to me in light of what has been discussed above:

21. c) But if for some reason a choir cannot sing one or another liturgical text according to the music printed in the liturgical books, the only permissible substitution is this: that it be sung either recto tono, i.e., on a straight tone, or set to one of the psalm tones. Organ accompaniment may be used. Typical reasons for permitting such a change are an insufficient number of singers, or their lack of musical training, or even, at times, the length of a particular rite or chant.

To those who "tire" of renaissance polyphonic masses, I'd suggest going through ALL the di Lasso Masses. He was, truly, the best of the time, and an excellent singer, too. Even the parody Masses have lots of "puzzles" that are fun. If you have a group of good singers who are also willing to work, I find his work so rewarding. We are doing the Doulce Memoire Mass this coming week, and it's fantastic...but totally different than the di Lasso parody Mass we did last season.

I think where the "Too much Renaissance" problem comes from in Trad. circles is the over-use of Palestrina because of it's alleged "canonization" in Tra le. I don't often hear of Ockeghem Masses being performed, or even Josquin.

Early Renaissance, Franco-Flemish polyphony has more variety, IMHO, than later Roman polyphony. Palestrina is good, but I could easily level against his Masses the same charge as that which is levelled against Vivaldi's concertos.

Atm I really love Byrd's masses. They are truly "composed", not just parody masses, Byrd truly paints the words. Does anybody have experiences with 5v mass? I always assumed that it's the most complicated just bc it has more voices, but actually... after looking at the score I think it's not harder than the 4v. What do you think?

Thanks for the encouragement to Lassus. I also would like to do some really old stuff, like Dufay or from the Trent codices. Any experiences there?

And as a sidenote: When looking at masses I usually just look at the Kyrie, Sanctus/Benedictus and Agnus Dei as these are the parts I could use in the liturgy. The rest would be done as plainchant. Otherwise its simply too long. In the NO even the Sanctus is probably better sung as plainchant.

Is there a conductor daring enough to try an Ockeghem Mass one Sunday?

@Jehan Boutte,

I just transcribed the du Mont mass for a friend in Minnesota, and I liked it as well, the only recordings I listened to on YouTube, were voice and accompaniment, but what I was given was made for 4 voices and organ, minus the Credo. I'll attach the file but in all I liked it and hope to hear the full deal someday.

@Jehan_Boutte

No, I didn't harmonize it, only transcribed it from a copy that looked old, copied, cut and pasted together at some point. He was only looking for recordings to help his choir for a wedding, but regardless, in order for me to do so I had to write out the whole thing to help him in this regard. I'll have to see if he has the Credo in his archives as well, and add that to this.

Go ahead and borrow/use as you please.

Does anybody have experiences with 5v mass?

The first polyphonic mass I ever conducted was Byrd’s Five Voice, done for a friend’s wedding in St Joseph’s down in Jasper. We sang everything except the Credo and the Gloria, which we replaced with the Gloria from Lassus’s Hunter Mass for the sake of brevity. It’s a piece of cake.

@vansensei

That wedding wouldn't happen to have been recently would it?

I don't have a complete mixed ensemble. And I don't do things in Advent and Lent that have independent organ parts (how I keep the "bad choir" loophole an actual loophole instead of an open gate). And we do chant all year around. So we do Mass XVII, and for Gaudete/Laetare we do whatever we would normally do (1-2 voice Mass settings), minus the Gloria of course.