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On the Sunday following Corpus Christi (May 25 this year) it is the custom at Good Shepherd for the choir to sing a Latin mass from what may be called the Viennese tradition. In the past, works by Mozart and Haydn have predominated, but this year our offering will be the Mass in G (D.167) by Franz Schubert (1797-1828). It seems almost impertinent to refer to “early” and “late” works by a composer who died at the age of 31, but the Mass in G comes quite early in Schubert’s short life. He wrote it in less than a week early in March of 1815, when he was 18 years old. It is the shortest and simplest of his Latin masses, probably written for the choirmaster of his home parish of Lichtental.
Schubert had a keen sense of religious devotion, but it could not be described as a conventionally orthodox piety. He attended mass regularly as a child and at other times in his life, but his spiritual outlook was influenced by romanticism and the conviction that the emotional and affective life undergirds the rational. Schubert himself wrote that he composed sacred music only when he was overcome by an involuntary feeling of devotion. This surprised many of his acquaintances. He felt no strong attachment to the institutional Church, and sometimes took a free approach in setting liturgical texts. In none of his masses, for example, does he include the text from the Creed “Et in unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam”, but this may have been primarily for aesthetic reasons. There are no secure grounds to attach any doctrinal significance to the omission, and as we never sing choral settings of the Creed at Good Shepherd, it is not an issue for us.
The other Schubert mass setting we use is the so-called German Mass (Deutsche Messe, D.872). The full title of this work is “Gesänge zur Feier des heiligen Opfers der Messe” (Songs for the celebration of the holy sacrifice of the mass), which I have condensed to “Songs for the Holy Eucharist”. This work was intended for use at celebrations of the liturgy in the vernacular. The texts are German paraphrases of the Ordinary by Johann Philipp Neumann. In 1985 Richard Proulx adapted Schubert’s music to the ICET (Rite II) English texts. More recently, and taking Proulx as my point of departure, I have adapted the music to the traditional texts from the Book of Common Prayer. It is now one of our regular congregational mass settings. In contrast with the early Mass in G, the Deutsche Messe dates from the late summer of 1827, near the end of Schubert’s life.
--WJG
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