Forum on Music and Christian Scholarship

From Armed Man to Forerunner: Johannine Symbolism in Obrecht’s Missa de Sancto Johanne Baptista
Michael Alan Anderson, Eastman School of Music

Scholars of late medieval and Renaissance music have steadily demonstrated that some sacred polyphonic compositions became platforms for theological or biblical ideas, whether through emblematic cantus firmi, proportional qualities, numerical symbolism, or other cryptic means. The range of findings has generally focused on works for Christ and the Virgin Mary, the two central figures of Christendom. Little has been said, however, about how other holy persons may be cleverly symbolized in compositions of this period. In the Missa de Sancto Johanne Baptista, recently attributed to Jacob Obrecht, we catch a glimpse of how a composer might embed other figures in Christian history using symbolic compositional devices. In light of Obrecht’s ecclesiastical training and known penchant for imbuing abstract theological ideas in his works, this mass for John the Baptist may now be freshly examined for its exegetical potential.

Obrecht’s St. John Mass is known for being modeled after Busnoys’ L’Homme armé mass (ca. 1460). Not only did the composer borrow the mensural scheme in all voices from Busnoys’ Armed Man mass, but he also replicated the precise rhythms of the L’Homme armé tune, though not the melody itself, substituting eight new cantus firmi proper to the precursor saint. The preservation of two peculiar elements from Busnoys’ model—the unusually proportionate section lengths and the descent of the cantus firmus to the bass voice in the Agnus Dei—reveal subtle ways of reflecting Jesus’ forerunner, John the Baptist. By maintaining these conspicuous structural elements, Obrecht not only established a heightened level of intertextuality between these masses but also allowed the masses to expose possible theological elements of design that have heretofore gone unnoticed. Only when these elements are viewed through a “Johannine” lens does one see more clearly a compositional dialogue between Busnoys’ Missa L’Homme armé and Obrecht’s Missa de Sancto Johanne Baptista.

Doctrine and Teleology in Schubert’s Mass in E flat
Eftychia Papanikolaou, Bowling Green State University

Unlike other genres of his output, Franz Schubert’s six masses have received minimal attention. A number of studies have dismissed them as substandard works, while others have ignored their sacred aura in favor of his oratorio-like compositions. If the first four masses constituted, more or less, “necessary” exercises in the genre (all written before Schubert had even reached his twentieth birthday, and in a style still much indebted to Haydn’s masses), the masses of his later years bear witness to an entirely personal consideration of the genre.

This presentation will consider the last of Schubert’s Masses, No. 6 in E flat (D. 950)—a work he finished shortly before his death in November 1828–and will focus on the Credo movement. The omission of the phrase “Credo in unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam” in all of Schubert’s masses has raised speculations about the composer’s reception of church doctrine. In my view, however, it is the exclusion of the phrase “et expecto resurrectionem” (present only in the first Mass in F) that proves to be even more conspicuous. Schubert’s apprehension toward the theme of Resurrection (as evidenced also in his unfinished oratorio Lazarus) may provide the key to unlocking the movement’s idiosyncratic formal structure and doctrinal implications of the musical setting. Schubert was increasingly preoccupied with metaphysical considerations during the last years of his life, and the last Mass, in particular, encapsulates a non-teleological thrust that comes in sharp contrast to the doctrinal telos of Resurrection.

The Fractal Shape of the Liturgy
Amy Lewkowicz, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music

The form or shape of the Roman liturgy, and hence its liturgical music, is usually described one of three ways: linearly (first this happens, next that…) historically (first this was added, then that…), or by contrasting the ordinary and propers. A fourth shape for understanding the form of the liturgy is the fractal, a mathematical geometry that describes similar patterns existing simultaneously at different scales/levels of magnification.

This geometry is present in much religious art of the Middle Ages, including architecture, painting and sculpture, and is present in the typological exegesis of Scripture. It is also present in the neo-Platonic worldview that obtained prior to the introduction of Aristotle into Christian thought. Through a structural analysis of liturgical texts, this nested character can be found in liturgical music.

Three basic topical patterns (Trinitarian, Paschal, and economic) are found to be repeated at different levels of organization. The economic pattern, for example, is the movement of creation from the Trinity (creation), to the cross (redemption), and back to the Trinity (consummation). This pattern occurs on the level of the Liturgical Year and the Eucharistic Prayer, and forms the shape of the Creed. Thus at the “magnification level” of the liturgical year, the pattern is completely present on all levels, whereas at the level of a single Mass, the pattern is completely present in some texts (e.g. the Creed) but only partially present in others (the propers). The Mass is seen to be a microcosm of the entire history of salvation.

While a number of twentieth-century commentators caution against viewing the liturgical year as a mapping of salvation history onto a yearly cycle, fractal geometry allows such a mapping without requiring a point-for-point match. The use of Newman’s “development of doctrine” approach allows for a reading of organic growth that avoids both false primitivism and anachronism. The fractal shape illuminates theological presuppositions and typological connections in the liturgy and raises the liturgical year to a status that it presently does not enjoy in pedagogical materials.