Music about Music – Imitation in the Early Modern Mass

The DFG project, which began in November 2023, is dedicated to the extensive and influential corpus of imitation masses from the 15th and 16th centuries. Although the first examples can be found as early as in the 14th century, it was not until the 15th century that increasingly sophisticated techniques began to emerge, going far beyond the usual cantus firmus treatments of secular or sacred origin: paraphrases, quotations, motivic treatments or the complete adoption of polyphonic complexes. In the 16th century, composers then often dispensed with a cantus firmus as a structuring element and instead based their Ordinary on the entire polyphonic structure of a sacred or secular model. This prototype of a parody mass not only experienced a boom as the century progressed but also surpassed all other types of mass in terms of quantity.

Based on this observation, some fascinating questions can be posed regarding the repertoire: one might, for example, ask what criteria might have influenced a composer in his choice of source material: Were the text and music the primary deciding factors, or might extra-musical factors – ranging from practical considerations regarding the efficiency of the work, through their placement within lines of tradition, the deliberate use of popular contemporary ‘hits’, to moments of identity-building – also have played a role? With regard to compositional technique, textual interpretation or sonic design, are there further strategies beyond already known practices of imitation that composers used to integrate musical material from their source works into their masses? Did the increasing mobility of musicians, the rapidly changing confessional and institutional landscape, and the circulation of the repertoire in the 16th century play a particular role in the growing interest in the genre, and if so, what role?