Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

 composed his Mass between 1944 and 1948. This 19-minute setting of the Roman Catholic Mass

Mass (music)

The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music...

 exhibits the austere, Neoclassic

Neoclassicism (music)

Neoclassicism in music was a twentieth-century trend, particularly current in the period between the two World Wars, in which composers sought to return to aesthetic precepts associated with the broadly defined concept of "classicism", namely order, balance, clarity, economy, and emotional restraint...

, anti-Romantic aesthetic that characterizes his work from about 1923 to 1951. The Mass also represents one of only a handful of extant pieces by Stravinsky that was not commissioned. As such, part of the motivation behind its composition has been cited by Robert Craft

Robert Craft

Robert Lawson Craft is an American conductor and writer. He is best known for his intimate working friendship with Igor Stravinsky, a relationship which resulted in a number of recordings and books.-Life:...

 and others as the product of a spiritual necessity.

History

Stravinsky completed the Gloria on December 20, 1944 and finished the Kyrie at about the same time. His work on the Mass was then interrupted for several years in which his wrote his Symphony, Ebony Concerto, Concerto in D, and the ballet Orpheus

Orpheus (ballet)

Orpheus is a ballet made by George Balanchine on Ballet Society, which he founded together with Lincoln Kirstein and of which he was ballet master, to eponymous music from 1947 by Igor Stravinsky, his frequent collaborator, with sets and costumes by Isamu Noguchi.The premiere took place on April...

. He resumed work on it in the fall of 1947 and completed it March 15, 1948.

On February 26, 1947, Irving Fine

Irving Fine

Irving Gifford Fine was an American composer. Fine's work assimilated neo-classical, romantic and, later, serial elements...

 conducted the Kyrie and Gloria, accompanied by two pianos. The first complete performance occurred on October 27, 1948 in Milan. Ernest Ansermet

Ernest Ansermet

Ernest Alexandre Ansermet was a Swiss conductor.- Biography :Ansermet was born in Vevey, Switzerland. Although he was a contemporary of Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer, Ansermet represents in most ways a very different tradition and approach from those two musicians. Originally he was a...

 conducted members of the chorus and orchestra of La Scala.

Orchestration

The work is scored for mixed chorus

Choir

A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...

 and an ensemble of wind instruments comprising two oboes, English horn (Cor anglais

Cor anglais

The cor anglais , or English horn , is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family....

), two bassoons, two trumpets, and three trombones). There is also some minor solo material (often sung by members of the choir) in the second and fourth (Gloria and Sanctus) movements

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

. Stravinsky specifies in the score that "children's voices should be employed" for both the soprano

Soprano

A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

 and alto

Alto

Alto is a musical term, derived from the Latin word altus, meaning "high" in Italian, that has several possible interpretations.When designating instruments, "alto" frequently refers to a member of an instrumental family that has the second highest range, below that of the treble or soprano. Hence,...

 parts, but, as with Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms

Symphony of Psalms

The Symphony of Psalms by Igor Stravinsky was written in 1930 and was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This piece is a three-movement choral symphony and was composed during Stravinsky's neoclassical period. The symphony derives...

, concert performances of the Mass usually employ adult singers.

Structure

Like his 1955 work Canticum Sacrum

Canticum Sacrum

Canticum Sacrum ad Honorem Sancti Marci Nominis is a 17-minute choral-orchestral piece composed in 1955 by Igor Stravinsky in tribute "To the City of Venice, in praise of its Patron Saint, the Blessed Mark, Apostle." The piece is compact and stylistically varied, ranging from established...

, the Mass forms a symmetrical plan on a large-scale. The outer movements (the Kyrie and the Agnus Dei) contain homophonic choral statements with instrumental interludes, and share a tonal vocabulary including octatonic, diatonic, and modal

Musical mode

In the theory of Western music since the ninth century, mode generally refers to a type of scale. This usage, still the most common in recent years, reflects a tradition dating to the middle ages, itself inspired by the theory of ancient Greek music.The word encompasses several additional...

 scales. By contrast, movements 2 and 4 (the Gloria and the Sanctus) feature florid solo lines which alternate with the choral statements, and the harmony is more recognizably and consistently diatonic.
The central movement, the Credo, is the longest. It features static, syllabic, and declamatory text-setting with a limited harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary. Long stretches of text often repeat a single chord, evoking the reciting tone

Reciting tone

In chant, a reciting tone is a repeated musical pitch around which the other pitches of the chant gravitate, or by extension, the entire melodic formula that centers on one or two such pitches. In Gregorian chant, reciting tones are used for a number of contexts, including the chanting of psalm...

 of Gregorian chant

Gregorian chant

Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...

 or the Orthodox

Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...

 liturgical chant

Chant

Chant is the rhythmic speaking or singing of words or sounds, often primarily on one or two pitches called reciting tones. Chants may range from a simple melody involving a limited set of notes to highly complex musical structures Chant (from French chanter) is the rhythmic speaking or singing...

 that Stravinsky would have known from his childhood in Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

. Clear setting of the text is favored over an expressive interpretation of its meaning. The music features examples of polyvalency.

Faith

Stravinsky chose to compose this Roman Catholic Mass despite his own Orthodox faith. He stated that this was because:

“I wanted my Mass to be used liturgically, an outright impossibility as far as the Russian Church was concerned, as Orthodox tradition proscribes musical instruments in its services- and as I can endure unaccompanied singing in only the most harmonically primitive music.”

Stravinsky also said of the Credo:

“One composes a march to facilitate marching men, so with my Credo I hope to provide an aid to the text. The Credo is the longest movement. There is much to believe.”