We’ve found plenty of lenses through which to view theology and its many treasures. But so far, none have been quite as powerful as music, especially the masses written by some incredible composers, Johannes Ockeghem’s Missa Caput and John Tavener’s Missa Wellensis. We’ll discuss these works in detail, but listening to the two distinct styles through which they represented the Eucharist in differing sides of the musical artform poses some significant opportunities for us to contemplate. How do we approach the Eucharist from each style? How in the world did we get from Ockeghem’s good old fashioned style to Tavener’s which sometimes reminds me of the movie Alien? Their respective masses are just full of gifts for us to explore.
First, the Ockeghem. Lying in a distinctly recognizable style, written by a compositional giant of the Renaissance, this one is quite comfortable to start out with. It begins with the Kyrie, introducing a slow and solemn polyphonic mold with some light, tasteful ornamentation that was actually rather common as far as styles of the Renaissance go. Anne Walters Robertson writes of his style, “Scholars today point to the English Caput Mass as archetypical of the kind of scoring that became the norm in the Low Countries throughout the remainder of the fifteenth century” (Robertson, 538). However, beyond the stylistic merits, Ockeghem uses the slow and somber mood he writes in order to bring the listener into a pensive and contemplative state, with the music acting as an audible rood screen that helps bring the listener to focus on the subject at hand. The end of the Kyrie comes with a slow fade to silence, which brings the listener to an understanding of themselves in God’s time. It is as though someone is turning down a divine volume knob, lowering the music we hear back into the eternal music from whence it came. We have only heard a passage from the eternal music of God’s time, allowing us to contextualize ourselves within his temporal scope. We continue on into the next parts, the Gloria and the Credo.
In these ‘movements,’ we find some similar stylistic tendencies, but this is a reasoned and purposeful move. Andrew Kirkman explains in The Cultural Life of the Early Polyphonic Mass, “the overriding concern in most Mass settings…seems to have been with a consistency and unity of utterance across the five component movements” (Kirkman, 204). While this may be a bummer for some people who enjoy some good ‘spicing up’ of the music as it goes along (me), it is very important to maintaining dedication to the worshipful side of the work without falling into the trap of making art for the sake of enjoying it on a less than divine level. It would bring us risk of ‘viewing’ the art in the context of libido vivendi, wherein we view the art in a way that is meant for our personal gratification. We don’t want that here in a musical dedication to the divine. The mostly unwavering style prevents the listener from being distracted by some new and exciting sound and allows us to instead focus on the text and the meaning behind it. So, there is not much stylistic change in these next few movements, but there is a greater presence of purposeful silence and some interesting repetitive lines in which the bass voice ascends. This motion may well be a reference to the divinity and ascension of Christ, as it contrasts what is to come with the descending lines of the tenor in reference to the destruction of Satan and evil in the Sanctus.
This motion comes right at the very beginning of the Sanctus, and is one of the defining characteristics of the Caput mass, which Anne Walters Robertson addresses in her work. She writes, “This caput came to signify the topos of the destruction of sin” (Robertson, 546). As we tread through a Caput Mass, then, we begin to see these elements of Satan being crushed by Jesus and goodness prevailing. We see this quite obviously in the beginning of the Sanctus, as mentioned, but also in the Agnus Dei. The descending line comes back, this time in the tenor, but more importantly, we hear a lot more major triads in this part! Happy chords! Woohoo! These go to the point that God has won out over evil, Christ has prevailed! These happy triads are a great way to keep up with this storyline of the Caput Mass, even if you aren’t all that familiar with music. In any case, Christ has won, and then the music descends back into the ‘silence’ (really just a silent version of the eternal music of God from before) from whence it came. Ockeghem has taken us on a great journey through the triumph of good.
So that’s a lot to live up to for John Tavener, who approaches it a whole different way! Instead of the slow and solemn pensivity with which Ockeghem presented the story, Tavener uses some really funky chords to build tension. He also writes in a different mass style, but these chords themselves build incredible tension in the exposition of the mass. They are not, not, just for fun because that would toe the line between icon and idol as far as this audible art goes. They are instead a tension with which Tavaner will play in order to bring us on his journey through the mass. As an aside, Jeremy Begbie informs us in Theology, Music, and Time that “The most decisive twentieth-century influence on Tavener is the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky” (Begbie, 130). This, from a purely musical standpoint, really helps to understand why he writes the way he does, but I digress. His mass takes on the order: Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. Beginning with those funky chords in the start of the Kyrie, Tavener sets an ethereal tone that itself causes the listener to listen and contemplate with wonder and awe. They approach the theology of the mass from that place instead of the somber pensivity instilled by Ockeghem’s work. Immediately, one notices the difference in voicing too, as Ockeghem used much deeper and darker voices than the bright and sharp soprano lines that cut over the top of Tavaner’s harmonies as he continues through his work. This contributes to the listener looking through the lens of the music in a much brighter and glorious, while still ethereal, way.
Tavaner also uses a considerable amount of stopping and starting in his mass, which is similar to that of Ockeghem, but different in the manner in which the silence is approached. Where Ockeghem is slow and steady in his dynamic changes, Tavaner is quite abrupt, which leads the listener to approach their worship in a more alert way. Whether or not this is a ‘better’ way than Ockeghem’s isn’t quite up to me, but it changes the way the worshiper ‘views’ God, as this abruptness contributes more to the feelings of wonder and awe, tension and suspense, that Tavaner wields so well. This, in turn, takes the listener out of arbitrary time incredibly well, more fully immersing them in the eternal time discussed before with Ockeghem. It is the same eternal time, just approached a different way. Begbie writes, “The fact that his beginnings are like processes and his endings give way relates to his belief that the music of eternity sounds inaudible ‘before’ the arrival of earthly sound and ‘after’ its cessation (Begbie, 139).
So far, we’ve analyzed the Tavener in less of a chronological way, but his techniques so interwoven and distinct in his music warrant this somewhat more broad approach to his theological lens. We’ll turn to the end of his work, his Agnus Dei, which does not end on the tonic (the home chord that makes you feel like everything has resolved). Rather, he ends on the dominant (the chord with the most tension that you really really want to resolve otherwise you feel uncomfortable). But this is purposeful. He does this, according to James MacMillan in Begbie’s work, because “You can’t have the Resurrection without the Crucifixion…the best stories are ones which have resolution of conflict, not just resolution” (Begbie, 150). The best stories are ones which have resolution of conflict. In this case, the unbearable tension is that conflict that begs for a resolution. But Tavaner does not give this to us. Instead, he lets the conflict, the Crucifixion, fade back into the eternal music discussed so frequently now. We are fully aware that we live within a much wider temporal frame full of music that we cannot hear, especially that resolution to the conflict he leaves us with. So frustrating, yet so good. I could write about this piece for pages but I would probably get obscenely off the theological topic
I suppose I should resolve the reference to the movie Alien I made in the beginning of this post. I played a piece by Howard Hanson, his Symphony №2 “Romantic,” which is actually featured in the movie Alien. The second movement of this particular symphony is the music used in the credits scene, and it too has a beautifully ethereal mood that I thought of immediately when I heard some parts of this mass by John Tavaner. Not the most theologically relevant thing, but still a fun connection. Maybe Hanson influenced Tavener? That may be a question for another blog.
