Missa Familiae Sanctae: A project report

Abstract

This paper deals with the compositional process of writing my Mass, Missa Familiae Sanctae, and covers the influences I most keenly felt in that process. Two great masterpieces of this form of liturgical music from the Twentieth Century are carefully analyzed: Stravinsky's Mass (1948) and Leonard Bernstein's Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers (1971). This paper draws connections to the techniques used by my illustrious predecessors and my own, and talks about the centrality of the text of the Ordinary of the Mass in all three works.

This paper is composed of two parts. The first part deals with the influence of these two Masses on the composition of Missa Familiae Sanctae. Here, I discuss the features of both my predecessors' Masses that proved most salient to my processes--the most crucial feature being treatment of the text. The second part of this paper is devoted to the methods of composition I employed in the creation of Missa Familiae Sanctae. I will illustrate both connections to past practices in my processes (put in context in the foregoing part of the paper), as well as the features of my Mass I believe to be unique.

An analytical methodology was best suited to a discussion of the compositional practices applied to the pieces discussed here. For the purposes of the composition of Missa Familiae Sanctae, it had the added benefit of aiding in my effort to inform myself of past practices and, thus, enabled me to determine my own methods of composing my Mass. For the purposes of this paper, this focus on analysis was most helpful in describing the musical language of each Mass, and allowed for some meaningful comparisons between my predecessors' Masses and my own. From these analyses, I identify commonalities in harmony, derivation of melodic material, treatment of text and orchestration, as well as investigate differences between Stravinsky and Bernstein's settings of the Mass and my own as a means of explaining my unique voice as a composer.