Mass E minor

Although Bruckner died twelve years before Messiaen was born and although they were brought up in very different musical traditions, the two composers had much in common. Above all, they were both devout Catholics. “I have the good fortune to be a Catholic; I was born a believer,” Messiaen once remarked. Bruckner could well have said the same, even if he might not have added, as Messiaen did, that “this is the most important aspect of my music… perhaps the only one I shall not be ashamed of in the hour of death.” Once he was embarked on his great series of symphonies, Bruckner completed only two major works of religious music, the Te Deum and a setting of Psalm 150. But he did continue to write shorter pieces for the Church, while his unfailing faith remained a potent source of inspiration for his work for the concert hall.

Another thing Bruckner and Messiaen had in common was their supreme skill as organists and their lasting devotion to the instrument. Messiaen was organist of La Trinité in Paris for more than sixty years. As for Bruckner, although he gave up his post as organist at Linz Cathedral when he moved to Vienna in 1868, he played regularly at the Hofkapelle, travelled abroad as a virtuoso and continued to delight his admirers with his organ improvisations until shortly before his death. While long hours spent in the organ loft of a great church or cathedral do not guarantee a composer’s innocence, both Bruckner and Messiaen retained a kind of naïveté which - though a source of amusement or even derision among some of their more worldly colleagues - sustained them in their lofty ideals and in their pursuit of their transcendental creative ambitions.

Bruckner: Mass No.2 in E minor

Bruckner’s three mature Masses - excluding, that is, three early examples and a Requiem not published in the composer’s lifetime - were all conceived during his period as organist at Linz Cathedral. The second in E minor differs from the other two in that, far from being a large-scale symphonic Mass in the tradition inherited from Haydn and Mozart, it is comparatively short and scored for double chorus without soloists and for an ensemble of fifteen woodwind and brass without strings and percussion. Written in 1866 and dedicated to Franz Josef Rudigier, Bishop of Linz, it reflects his employer’s taste for Palestrina and his interest in the principles of the Cecilian movement - a pressure group dedicated to purging Church music of all traces of operatic display and romantic sentiment in favour of Gregorian modes and Renaissance polyphony, preferably unaccompanied. It was first performed during the consecration of the Votive Chapel of the new Linz Cathedral (an ambitious building project initiated by Bishop Rudigier) in 1869. The success of the occasion, directed by the composer himself, no doubt reflects the suitability of the wind-band scoring to the open-air situation in which the performance had to be given.

Like so many other works by Bruckner, the Mass in E minor underwent several revisions. The final version was first performed in the old Linz Cathedral in 1885, the composer not conducting this time but “standing near the organ with his eyes uplifted ecstatically to the vaulted roof, his lips moving in silent prayer.”

Messiaen: L’ Ascension (Quatre Méditations symphoniques)

The four “symphonic meditations” on the Ascension were written in 1933, only three years after Messiaen had left the composition class of Paul Dukas at the Paris Conservatoire and two years after he had taken up his life-long appointment as organist of La Trinité. Even so, and although several characteristics of his mature style were still to develop - not least his obsessive interest in birdsong - the composer of such monumental works as Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum and La Transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ is instantly recognisable in the religious inspiration of the piece and its use of the modal system he had devised for himself even at this early stage in his career. Scored for large orchestra (without voices), L’Ascension was first performed in Paris under the direction of Robert Siohan in 1934.

It is highly unlikely that the orthodox-minded Bruckner would have understood Messiaen’s mystical and very personal form of Catholicism, still less - in spite of their common interest in modality - the music by which he gave it expression. The following presentation of the Mass in E minor and L’Ascension, with the four movements of the latter work interleaved between the six movements of the other, is designed to explore the deeper spiritual links between them.

Mass in E minor: Kyrie

The economy of Bruckner’s approach to writing a Mass to suit the taste of Bishop Rudigier is evident from the start as the chorus enters without introduction in bravely unaccompanied four-part harmony on “Kyrie eleison” - sopranos and altos first and then tenors and basses. It is only on “Christe eleison” that the choral texture expands into counterpoint, gradually proliferating into eight distinct parts, while horns and trombones are used only to heighten the structural profile of each episode.

L’Ascension: Majesté du Christ demandant sa gloire à son Père

The most important technical element in L’Ascension, as in all Messiaen’s music up to the Turangalîla-Symphonie, is melody. In the first movement (“Majesty of Christ asking glory from his Father”) - reflecting the beginning of the Sacerdotal Prayer “Father, the hour is come: glorify your Son, so that you Son may glorify You” - the chorale-like melodic line is carried throughout by trumpets accompanied by the rest of the brass and less prominent woodwind. The characteristic harmonies are derived from Messiaen’s personal modal system.

Mass in E minor: Gloria

Woodwind instruments make their first entry in the Gloria, which is a rather less severe inspiration than the opening Kyrie. Basically a ternary construction with coda, it has a radiantly scored opening section, a slower and expressive middle section on “Qui tollis peccata mundi” and a powerfully compacted double fugue on the closing “Amen.”

L’Ascension: Alléluias sereins d’une âme qui désire le ciel

The second movement of L’Ascension (“Serene Hallelujahs of a Soul desiring Heaven”) - a comment on a prayer from the Ascension Mass, “O God, we believe that your only Son has gone to heaven… let us live there in spirit” - features mainly woodwind. It is based on two main themes, an unharmonised refrain played by all the woodwind instruments in unison and an expressive cor anglais melody decorated by flute arabesques. As the two kinds of material alternate, each one attracts more and more support from strings and brass.

Mass in E minor: Credo

The construction of the Credo is not unlike that of the Gloria except that, after the affirmative opening section, the middle section is divided into two parts - an Adagio beginning tenderly on “Et incarnatus est”and dying away in sorrow on “et sepultus est” to be suddenly revitalised by a contrastingly jubilant Allegro on “Et resurrexit.” The music of the opening section is recalled at “Et in Spiritum sanctum,” the movement ending with a firmly harmonised rather than contrapuntal “Amen.”

L’Ascension: Alléluia sur la trompette, alléluias sur la cymbale

The other Alléluia movement of L’Ascension (“Hallelujah on the Trumpet, Hallelujah on the Cymbal”) is an animated celebration based on the prophecy of the Ascension in Psalm 46: “The Lord has risen to the sound of the trumpet… Nations, all clap your hands; celebrate God with cries of gladness!” Again trumpets are prominent in introducing the dancing main theme of what is basically a scherzo with, at its very centre, a majestic and much slowed-down version of the trumpet theme played fff by the whole orchestra. The original tempo is resumed for what Messiaen has described as “a sort of dance before the Ark.”

Mass in E minor: Sanctus and Benedictus

The Sanctus begins with an allusion to the equivalent movement of Palestrina’s Miss brevis, which would surely have pleased Bishop Rudigier. Appropriately, the whole of this opening section is in Renaissance-style eight-part counterpoint, increasingly elaborate in texture and unaccompanied up to the fortissimo entry of the brass at “Dominus Deus Sabaoth!” The assertive sound of massed woodwind and brass in the second part of the Sanctus most effectively offsets the very much more expressive writing for wind in the Benedictus - paticularly the chromatic horn melody that opens the movement and echoes more or less throughout.

L’Ascension: Prière du Christ montant vers son Père

One of Messiaen’s very special characteristics as a composer, in evidence from the beginning to the end of his career, is his ability to extend a constantly developing melodic line at a tempo slower than most other composers would dare sustain for more than a few bars at a time. The last movement of L’Ascension (“Christ’s prayer rising to his Father”) is an inspired example emulating Christ’s aspirations in the Sacerdotal Prayer: “Father, I have revealed your name to mankind… Now I am no longer in the world; but they are in the world, and I come to you.” Scored for strings alone, it is based, as Messiaen describes it, “on a serene phrase that rises, floats ever higher and remains suspended on a simple chord that seems to have no end.”

Mass in E minor: Agnus Dei

The Agnus Dei opens with the eight choral parts in unison - a simple technique which is all the more effective for having been held in reserve until this point. Bruckner uses it and the melodic material that goes with it as a recurring reassurance between the pleas of “misere nobis” before, as the trombones offer a reminder of the chromatic horn phrase from the Benedictus, he turns his attention to the closing sentiment of the Mass, “Donns nobis pacem,” and its beautifully contrived ending.

programme notes on Bruckner and Messiaen by Gerald Larner ©2004