In the early fifteenth century, composers’ interest in Ordinary movements (except for Ite) continued to grow and such interest therefore contributed to the desire to unite the movements by musical means. At the time the use of cantus firmus in Mass movements could be strict, and the movements could also freely paraphrase Ordinary chants in the uppermost voice or the tenor. The Ordinary movements with unifying musical elements thus formed cyclic Masses. The first cyclic Masses were written by English composers with three voices, and the cantus firmus was usually in the tenor with long note-values and/or isorhythmic treatment.
The first important composer of cyclic Masses on the continent is Dufay. His Missa se la face ay pale from ca. 1450 was based on his own secular chanson of the same name and included one more voice, bass, under the tenor. His Missa se la face ay pale and Missa l’homme armé used strict cantus firmus procedure. On the other hand, the second Agnus from his Missa Ave regina quoted more than one voice from his own polyphonic motet of the same name. Dufay made cyclic Masses an important genre and outlet for composers’ serious thoughts; moreover, his cyclic Masses also contributed to the popular use of French chansons as the tenor for Masses.
Josquin composed more than 20 cyclic Masses; he not only used all the techniques of composing works of this genre but also introduced new techniques. He applied both strict and free cantus firmus procedures, and secular tenors can also be seen in his Masses. Moreover, his Missa la sol fa re mi used solmization syllables as the basis of the Mass. Such an idea was also applied in his Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae, which used the vowels of the duke’s name as the cantus firmus (the technique is called Soggetto cavato). In his Missa Pange lingua, he freely paraphrased the cantus firmus imitatively from voice to voice.
After the 1500s, imitative-homophonic Masses became popular and therefore gave rise to a new kind of cyclic Mass, parody Mass. Out of Palestrina’s 104 Masses—which later became the hallmark of classical polyphony—more than 50 was parody Mass, among which many were modeled on his own motets. (Palestrina tended to choose sacred models, as opposed to Lassus’s use of chansons or madrigals for Masses.) Palestrina also applied various techniques, including strict cantus firmus procedure, imitative paraphrase technique, solmization syllables, canonic settings, and freely composed Masses. The most well-known Mass by Palestrina is probably Missa Papae Marcelli, which largely contributed to his posthumous reputation. A legend gave this Mass the credit for saving polyphony from the Council of Trent, because it was not based on a profane or secular source and the text-setting in Gloria and Credo made the words intelligible.
