Mass is the main ceremony of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. In this celebration, believers evoke the memorial of the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is also called the Holy Eucharist or the Lord's Supper. The word "mass" comes from the Latin missa, which means 'sending'.
Musical compositions deliberately made to accompany the liturgy also receive the name of mass.
The mass is a community meeting space and a school of prayer. For Catholics, it is compulsory to attend Mass on Sundays (meaning 'Lord's day), but Mass is celebrated daily in all Catholic churches around the world.
Much of the structure of the Mass is founded on the traditions of Judaism but is adapted to the body of beliefs of Christians.
The Mass is structured in several sections, each of which evokes a specific meaning in accordance with the Gospel accounts and invites an equivalent spiritual attitude, which is expressed in words or bodily attitudes (standing prayer, kneeling prayer, listening position, etc.).
The mass is divided into several parts, which in turn break down into smaller ones. Let's see:
Before starting the Holy Mass properly, a series of ritual symbols are carried out that generate or express a spiritual disposition to participate. These are:
The liturgy of the word, as its name indicates, is about the proclamation of the word of God contained in the Bible and its reflection. It is structured in several parts or stages:
After the liturgy of the Word, follows the culminating moment of the Catholic celebration: the liturgy of the Eucharist, in which the memorial of the Lord's Supper is repeated, according to the instructions that Jesus Christ left to His apostles. This part is divided into three main sections. Namely:
At the end of communion, the priest offers a prayer of thanks and blesses the community of faithful who have attended, exhorting them to bear witness to the Lord's resurrection.
In the field of musical arts, there is a form called Mass, which is aimed precisely at the musical accompaniment of the liturgy or Lord's Supper.
Musical masses were promoted by the Catholic Church, especially since the 6th century of the Middle Ages, when Pope Gregory the Great ordered the unification of the musical style. Hence, the type of chant that was practiced was called Gregorian chant.
In the Middle Ages, masses were sung strictly a cappella and in the form of Gregorian chant, in which there was only a single melodic line.
Towards the Renaissance, polyphonic liturgical chant appeared. Along with the development of polyphony, the organ made its entrance as an accompanying instrument, which was used to replace the missing harmonic voices in the choir. From the Baroque period, the art of counterpoint and fugue developed, and instrumentation became increasingly complex.
A musical mass is made up of the following sections: Kyrie Eleison, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. There are many musically famous masses such as Mozart's Coronation Mass, the Funeral Mass for Queen Mary composed by Henry Purcell, the Messa da Capella for four voices by Claudio Monteverdi, etc.
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