Gloria From Pope Marcellus Mass Essay

Gloria from Pope Marcellus Mass was composed by Palestrina as a sacred choral work performed purely in 6-part choirs including a soprano, an alto, two tenors, and a bass. Its texture is mixed mostly by homorhythmic and particular parts of polyphony. Compared to that of Cantata No.140 of Bach, its pure a cappella medium provides audience a deeper sense of holiness than 4-part choir with orchestra in the former. Beginning solely by an tenor singing in Latin with haunting echoes from the open space in the first line[Palestrina, Gloria, from Pope Marcellus Mass, 0:00-0:08], Palestrina brought the picture of a christ chanting in a heavenly church in monophonic.

Palestrina gave high priority to the overall clarity of the work. In order to make the music clearly and attractive enough to grab ears, he artfully changed the number of performers in different voice part, and chose using syllabic text setting with homorhythmic texture[Palestrina, Gloria, from Pope Marcellus Mass, 0:09-0:45]. Thus the music’s plumpness varies with phrases, thickening its climax and thinning less important sentences. For instance, the text phrase “Jesu Christe. Cum sancto

Setting movement one a choral fantasia, movement four a Unison chorale, Bach used 4-part choir together with orchestra represented by violin, bassoon, piccolo, horn, organ and double reeds, creating its vivid timbre while not losing sacred sense. The heart of the orchestra, violin, leads a different melody from SATB, introducing main fluctuations of the music and displaying an overall emotional style. Other instruments, for example, the bassoon performs correspondingly with the choir in the similar melody and speed, setting lower extent of steady harmony [Bach, Wachet auf, movt. 1, 0:57-1:17], The organ plucks major chords ornamentally, picturing an angel touching the church wall and flourishing the music in triple meter [Bach, Wachet auf, movt. 1,