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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: That Divine Baroque...
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Vade Mecum
Shipmate
# 17688
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Posted
A confession: I've never really liked the baroque. I could tolerate it in architecture quite happily, and in furnishings if they're in keeping with the building (unlike my present pile, which has that classic Victorian Anglo-Catholic mélange of neo-Gothic exterior and gilded baroque play pen within). Naturally, for an Anglo-Catholic, this is something of a problem.
But what I really hated was the music which usually completes such a milieu: soupy Mozart Mass settings, operatic Verdi and Rossini settings which I thought did absolutely bugger all for reflection and worship. Endless repetitions, terrible articulation and almost no attempt to evoke the meaning of the text: pieces for concert, maybe, but not for the liturgy.
I use the past tense because, attending a certain North London parish's Patronal festival (first Vespers yesterday and Mass of the Feast today), for a moment it all made sense: the great deformed pearl was suddenly a bit beautiful. What had been corpulent and overripe seemed for an instant a glorious embrace of sound and texture: the gilt wood seemed gold.
I caught a glimpse of why the High Baroque style was meaningful to people like T.S. Eliot, and why people like the super-abundant intricacies which mark late Roman Use liturgies.
I doubt that my guilty fondness for austere Gothic and Gregorian chant will vanish entirely, but I'm glad I did get to 'get it' for a while. What do shipmates think of baroque (music/churches/liturgies)? Gorgeous devotional extravagance fitting to the Holy of Holies or decadent and putrid self indulgence suggestive of a decaying and life denying culture? Or something else entirely?
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I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
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John Holding
Coffee and Cognac
# 158
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Posted
I'd like a clearer idea of what you think baroque is. Just as an example, none of the composers you mention (whose music you loathe) is by any stretch of the imagination a "baroque" composer. That some "baroque" churches program non-baroque music which you dislike (and I agree with you about Verdi and Rosssini) doesn't mean you dislike baroque music.
John
Posts: 5929 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: May 2001
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Angloid
Shipmate
# 159
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
I use the past tense because, attending a certain North London parish's Patronal festival (first Vespers yesterday and Mass of the Feast today), for a moment it all made sense: the great deformed pearl was suddenly a bit beautiful. What had been corpulent and overripe seemed for an instant a glorious embrace of sound and texture: the gilt wood seemed gold.
Anything to do with the weather, perchance?
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Brian: You're all individuals!
Crowd: We're all individuals!
Lone voice: I'm not!
Posts: 12927 | From: The Pool of Life | Registered: May 2001
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Vade Mecum
Shipmate
# 17688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by John Holding:
I'd like a clearer idea of what you think baroque is. Just as an example, none of the composers you mention (whose music you loathe) is by any stretch of the imagination a "baroque" composer. That some "baroque" churches program non-baroque music which you dislike (and I agree with you about Verdi and Rosssini) doesn't mean you dislike baroque music.
John
I know they aren't baroque: that's why I said they partake of the milieu which 'Baroque Anglo-Catholicism' (TM) creates. I know perfectly well what true baroque music is: 'baroque' here really refers to the churches as an whole, I suppose, rather than being rigid with regard to their component 'parts'.
And don't be silly, Angloid: CofE churches are *always* freezing, regardless of the weather...
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I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
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Pearl B4 Swine
Ship's Oyster-Shucker
# 11451
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Posted
Vade Mecum posted:
the great deformed pearl was suddenly a bit beautiful. What had been corpulent and overripe seemed for an instant. . . glorious
Well, golly, thank you VM ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
Pearlie
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Oinkster
"I do a good job and I know how to do this stuff" D. Trump (speaking of the POTUS job)
Posts: 3622 | From: The Keystone State | Registered: May 2006
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roybart
Shipmate
# 17357
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Posted
Vade mecum, what was it about the circumstances (or the occasion itself) of that specific worship service in North London that brought about this change in you?
What did they do? What role did you have? What did it look and feel like? What sort of music did they integrate into the service?
By the way, I love love observing worship the huge spaces of Roman baroque basilicas, I do not find them conducive to personal meditation or prayer. I actually enjoy Baroque music very much, especially Baroque opera. But if I'm honest, I think this is more a matter of admiring it than feeling any kind of deep love, or even affection.
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"The consolations of the imaginary are not imaginary consolations."
-- Roger Scruton
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PD
Shipmate
# 12436
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Posted
I am sort of in the middle on this one. My normal diet is Merbecke and Plainsong. When it comes to polyphony I am more at the Byrd and Palestrina end of the spectrum, but a good Viennese High Mass blowout once in a while never hurt anyone. What makes me a little bit crazyis when the Baroque tips over into the Rococco a little too regularly.
PD
[ 13. July 2013, 20:53: Message edited by: PD ]
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
You will surely permit me to refer to a long-ago MW which provides a description of the baroque in action.
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
When I was young the Observers Book of Churches said St Paul's Cathedral was Classical. After all baroque means nasty, foreign, dubious, poofy and catholic.
Nowadays, it's called baroque (and quite right too).
Indeed, "baroque" can be used as a catchall term for C17 art, so that puritan masterpiece, Paradise Lost, can be called baroque.
Pugin reckoned Gothic was the only truly Christian style.
You could just as well argue that baroque is the only truly catholic style, in which case St Paul's is half way there.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
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Angloid
Shipmate
# 159
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Posted
Architecturally my preference is for austere Romanesque or equally austere 20th century churches like Maguire and Murray (St Paul's Bow Common or Malling Abbey). And for liturgy that goes with them. But there is something thrilling and theatrical about full-on baroque, not particularly as a context for worship although like VadeMecum I think it can work on occasion.
For Anglicans (discounting the English baroque of St Pauls etc) there is the additional thrill of it being rather 'naughty' and unEnglish, hence Betjeman's delight in Martin Travers altarpieces etc. Just like encountering an English gothic church in Rome or Calcutta, there is a similar dissonance in witnessing a Prayer Book eucharist celebrated in lace and fiddlebacks, with full baroque ceremonial. Not that it happens very often!
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Brian: You're all individuals!
Crowd: We're all individuals!
Lone voice: I'm not!
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
Oh, dear.
I love most Baroque music although I find Bach often a little too dry. Handel is my man. And I lurve Early Baroque and Renaissance polyphony.
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
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PD
Shipmate
# 12436
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Posted
The English have swum upstream architecturally a couple of times in our history. The first example is the Perpendicular style - roughly 1350-1550 - where English master masons went their own way, and again in the early 1700s when the Baroque of Wren, Hawksmoor and Vanburgh give away to Georgian neo-classicism.
St Paul's, which was planned in the late 1660 & 1670s is firmly Baroque, and the Observer's Book attriution of Classicism to it always seemed a bit perverse to me too.
What surprises me is that we have not had anyone on here yet raving about Martin Travers. I cannot believe that we are all such Comper addicts! Of course, the Anglican Missal (1921) is a product of the back to Baroque Movement and the Society of SS Peter and Paul which was a reaction against mediaevalism in its 'Parson's Handbook' form, so I am perhaps the last one to be sympathetic to the style except as an 'occasional visitor.'
PD
Roadkill on the Information Superhighway since 1997
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Roadkill on the Information Super Highway!
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
Shipmate
# 11274
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Posted
I had to suffer through some awful, excessively polyphonic setting of the Mass Ordinary today. The Gloria and Sanctus were so overlaid and ornamented that 80 percent of the time I couldn't follow the text. I'm serving in the sanctuary and straining to try to make out the bits where a reverence is required in the Gloria. When you can't even clearly make out the Holy Name amidst a text that is made unintelligible by the polyphony, it is time to re-think the Mass Ordinary settings being used. Thank God we congegationally sung the Creed in English -- I'm sure the Credo going with the choral Mass setting used today would have been complete gibberish as we struggled to listen for Incarnatus... and Simul adoratur. In short, I think these kinds of Mass settings are completely inappropriate for corporate worship: one ought to be able to follow the sung Latin text without undue difficulties!
[ 21. July 2013, 18:14: Message edited by: Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras ]
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Thurible
Shipmate
# 3206
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Posted
But Tommy V's Requiem is one of the fabbest things ever.
Thurible
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PD
Shipmate
# 12436
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Posted
At one stage in my life I was profoundly grateful that Papa Haydn usually does everything short of wave a red flag to tell you the Incarnatus is coming on! I had been Shanghi-ed to act as deacon at a High Mass. I have always rather enjoyed being the deacon. Except for singing the Gospel and administering the chalice all it involves is getting rid of anything that is handed to you to the right person - which I could usually manage!
The previous occasion I had been asked to be the deacon at short notice I discovered that 'learning whilst doing' was a pretty rugged way of discovering the differences between the English Use High Mass ceremonial and that of Mama Roma!
PD
[ 22. July 2013, 03:05: Message edited by: PD ]
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Roadkill on the Information Super Highway!
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Angloid
Shipmate
# 159
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PD:
Papa Haydn usually does everything short of wave a red flag to tell you the Incarnatus is coming on!
That's the function of the Magnificat. ![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif)
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Brian: You're all individuals!
Crowd: We're all individuals!
Lone voice: I'm not!
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
After all baroque means nasty, foreign, dubious, poofy and catholic.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif) I am so stealing that!
There is, of course, baroque and baroque. The Italians excelled at baroque architecture; the English were nervous of it; the French were logical about it; and The Spanish, the Germans, and all points east of the Germans went completely bonkers over it.
I mean, is there really very much in common between the reltively austere, disciplined Sant' Andrea della Valle in Rome and the architectural nightmare that is the Asamkirche in Munich?
The trouble is, I can never really imagine baroque music happening in baroque churches. To me, the Asamkirche just cries out for Haydn's Little Organ Mass (with the usual sniggering from the choir).
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
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Chorister
Completely Frocked
# 473
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Posted
I much prefer Baroque to Rock.
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Retired, sitting back and watching others for a change.
Posts: 34626 | From: Cream Tealand | Registered: Jun 2001
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Gottschalk
Shipmate
# 13175
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Posted
The interior of the Asamkirche literally lept out of the screen and slapped me. French and English Baroque will do - I remember that while visiting San Ignazio, Rome, I was literally suffocating, while, wonder of wonders, my "Wee Free" friend came up with "Aye, that's a comfy kirk", or something like that. And this instantly conjured up in my mind a scene of wee frees dressed in black, looking dour, singing the metrical psalms in San Ignazio or Il Gesu.
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Gottschalk
Ad bellum exit Ajax
Posts: 157 | From: The Kingdom of Fife | Registered: Nov 2007
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PD
Shipmate
# 12436
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gottschalk:
I remember that while visiting San Ignazio, Rome, I was literally suffocating, while, wonder of wonders, my "Wee Free" friend came up with "Aye, that's a comfy kirk", or something like that. And this instantly conjured up in my mind a scene of wee frees dressed in black, looking dour, singing the metrical psalms in San Ignazio or Il Gesu.
I needed that visual to cheer me up this morning. Thank you!
PD
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Roadkill on the Information Super Highway!
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Spike
Mostly Harmless
# 36
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gottschalk:
The interior of the Asamkirche literally lept out of the screen and slapped me.
How can a stationary and inanimate object literally leap out and slap anyone? ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
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"May you get to heaven before the devil knows you're dead" - Irish blessing
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Gottschalk
Shipmate
# 13175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Spike:
quote:
Originally posted by Gottschalk:
The interior of the Asamkirche literally lept out of the screen and slapped me.
How can a stationary and inanimate object literally leap out and slap anyone?
It did in the Alam-al-Mithal.
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Gottschalk
Ad bellum exit Ajax
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Devils Advocate
Shipmate
# 16484
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Posted
"I'm sure the Credo going with the choral Mass setting used today would have been complete gibberish as we struggled to listen for Incarnatus... and Simul adoratur"
Tricky isnt it :-) It's a problem with a lot of this type of mass settings. They were NEVER meant to be used in the form of a "Missa Cantata" with congregational participation, all they were expected to do was attend
What was supposed to happen was that the Altar Party said the requisite parts of the Mass ( ie Gloria Credo etc) to them selves at the Altar with the reverences at those points where they occur and then sat down till the choir had finished singing the Gloria, Credo etc and did not carry out the required reverence as the choir sang the Incarnatus. Basically what happened was the altar party just kept going. The same thing happened at the Sanctus and Benedictus. The Prayer of Consecration would take place even if the choir hadn't finished singing. That was the reason for the ringing of the sacring bell/gong to call the attention of the congregation to the fact that the consecration was taking place.
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"Oh I have wrought much evil with my spells"
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Ceremoniar
Shipmate
# 13596
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Devils Advocate:
"I'm sure the Credo going with the choral Mass setting used today would have been complete gibberish as we struggled to listen for Incarnatus... and Simul adoratur"
Tricky isnt it :-) It's a problem with a lot of this type of mass settings. They were NEVER meant to be used in the form of a "Missa Cantata" with congregational participation, all they were expected to do was attend
What was supposed to happen was that the Altar Party said the requisite parts of the Mass ( ie Gloria Credo etc) to them selves at the Altar with the reverences at those points where they occur and then sat down till the choir had finished singing the Gloria, Credo etc and did not carry out the required reverence as the choir sang the Incarnatus. Basically what happened was the altar party just kept going. The same thing happened at the Sanctus and Benedictus. The Prayer of Consecration would take place even if the choir hadn't finished singing. That was the reason for the ringing of the sacring bell/gong to call the attention of the congregation to the fact that the consecration was taking place.
There is a good deal of inaccurate information here. My parish is an FSSP parish that uses the Extraordinary Form exclusively, so I will make a few observations.
It is indeed true that it can be difficult to follow the texts of some of the polyphonic settings of the Mass because they were written for choirs to sing, and not the congregation. However, knowing when to bow or kneel requires no special knowledge.
The priest (or at Solemn Mass, the sacred ministers) and servers do not say certain parts of the Mass "to themselves." They say them to Our Lord, which is a somewhat different thing. This is a verbal equivalent is referring to the priest facing the altar as "having his back to the people." The orientation (pardon the pun) is a bit off in both instances.
When the priest sits down at the sedilia as the choir continues the Gloria or Credo (and occasionally even the Kyrie), the MC nods, and the servers and people sit, as well. Whenever a part where bowing of the head is involved, the MC nods to the clergy to remove their birettas and bow their heads, and the MC himself turns toward the altar and bows. This also serves as a signal to the people as to when to bow.
As for the Et incarnatus, the priest does not go to the sedilia until after that point. When he is finished reciting it at the altar, he descends to the pavement and waits until the choir reaches Et incarnatus, at which time he kneels on the lowest altar step. He remains there until it is finished, at which time he rises and goes to the sedilia, where he sits and covers.
As for the consecration, usually the Sanctus and Benedictus are split before and after the consecration. The choir sings the Sanctus while the priest begins the Canon of the Mass. With most settings, they usually finish it just as he gets to the words of consecration. In the few cases when this does not happen, the priest will pause momentarily while they finish. He says the words of consecration in a low voice while no music is playing. After the chalice is covered, the priest continues the Canon while the choir sings the Benedictus.
The bells are rung during the genuflections and elevations at all Masses, not just High Masses. The bell is indeed to signal to the congregation that the consecration is happning, but that has more to do with the fact that the Canon of the Mass is said in a low voice than it does any singing by the choir.
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