THE polyphonic mass of the Renaissance—especially the cyclic variety in which a single melodic or multi-voice “theme” cuts across and thus unifies all five liturgical “movements” : Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei —presents a paradox in terms of its reception. While the conventional musicological wisdom of our own day (beginning in the mid nineteenth century with August Wilhelm Ambros and developed in such landmark studies as those by Peter Wagner and Manfred Bukofzer) has generally granted the cyclic mass “masterwork” status on the grounds of its organically unified structure, the few fifteenth- and sixteenth-century writers who addressed the matter viewed it in a different light. Thus Johannes Tinctoris and Paolo Cortese praised the mass for its social-religious function, calling it “cantus magnus” and “propitiary song,” respectively, while the Nuremberg publisher Hans Ott emphasized the opportunity that the cylic mass afforded for the display of compositional varietas, as composers constantly dressed the recurring cantus firmus—or even an entire multi-voice fabric— in new polyphonic garb, and so avoided the potential “boredom” (fastidium) of the repeated material. Ott, then, expressed the sixteenth-century point of view in the clearest of terms : it was the Aristotelian concept of variety within unity—not merely the sense of unity alone—that distinguished the cyclic mass.

Yet despite the different vantage points—both within the Renaissance itself and between that period and ours—it seems clear that, with the development of the cyclic mass at the hands of the English circa 1430, the polyphonic mass in general and the cyclic variety in particular did acquire a position of prestige, one that grew steadily during the fifteenth century and then—except where buffeted by religion and politics—continued to hold its own throughout the sixteenth. Only around 1600, under the pressure of sweeping changes that affected virtually every aspect of elite (and thus church) music—from the stylistic/aesthetic to the strategies of marketing both music and musicians—did the mass begin to relinquish its central position as a “masterwork” (again, our term) and adopt a more functional role.