“ Symphonic Masses.—The enormous dramatic development in the symphonic music of Beethoven made the problem of the Mass with orchestral accompaniment almost insoluble. This makes it all the more remarkable that Beethoven’s second and only important Mass (in D, Op. 123) is not only the most dramatic ever penned but is, perhaps, the last classical Mass that is thoughtfully based upon the liturgy, and is not a mere musical setting of what happens to be a liturgic text. It was intended for the installation of Beethoven’s friend, the archduke Rudolph, as archbishop of Olmütz ”

“ In the stead of the Lord’s holy table they give the people, with much solemn disguising, a thing which they call their mass; but in deed and in truth it is a very masking and mockery of the true Supper of the Lord, or rather I may call it a crafty juggling, whereby these false thieves and jugglers have bewitched the minds of the simple people . ”

“ Instrumental Masses in the Neapolitan Form.—The next definite stage in the musical history of the Mass was attained by the Neapolitan composers who were first to reach musical coherence after the monodic revolution at the beginning of the 17th century. The fruit of their efforts came to maturity in the Masses of Mozart and Haydn. By this time the resources of music were such that the long and varied text of the Gloria and Credo inevitably either overbalanced the scheme or met with an obviously perfunctory treatment. ”

“ Polyphonic Masses.—The composition of musical settings of the Mass plays a part in the history of music which is of special importance up to and including the 16th century. As an art-form the musical Mass is governed to a peculiar degree by the structure of its text. It so happens that the supremely important parts of the Mass are those which have the smallest number of words, namely the Kyrie, important as being the opening prayer ”

“ Whatever its origin, the word Mass had by the time of the Reformation been long applied only to the Eucharist; and, though in itself a perfectly colourless term, and used as such during the earlier stages of the 16th century controversies concerning the Eucharist, it soon became identified with that sacrificial aspect of the sacrament of the altar which it was the chief object of the Reformers to overthrow. ”

“ Now the texts of the Gloria and Credo were more voluminous than any others which 16th-century composers attempted to handle in a continuous scheme. The practical limits of the church service made it impossible to break them up by setting each clause to a separate movement, a method by which 16th-century music composers contrived to set psalms and other long texts to compositions lasting an hour or longer. ”

“ The 16th-century methods were specially fitted for highly developed music when words were few and embodied ideas of such important emotional significance or finality that they could be constantly repeated without losing force. ”