Mass in g minor

Composer: VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, Ralph
  • Vaughan Williams wrote his Mass in g minor for four soloists and double choir between 1920-21. The mass was groundbreaking in its revival of England’s acapella tradition.
  • Vaughan Williams wrote the piece in response to the revival of Byrd, Tallis, and the English polyphonic school at Westminster Cathedral.1 From a musical analysis standpoint, the piece both harks back to 16th-century polyphony as well as engages in 20th Century harmonic vocabulary.2
  • Like his Pastoral Symphony, Mass in g minor was created shortly after the composer’s return from the battlefields of WWI and perhaps reflects the composer’s post-war search for consolation.
    • Further linking the two works, the oscillations heard at the beginning of the “Sanctus” movement recall the Pastoral Symphony’s opening.3
  • Vaughan Williams dedicated his mass to “Gustav Holst and the Whitsuntide Singers.”4

Sources

  1. Hugh Ottaway and Alain Frogley, “Vaughan Williams, Ralph,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed September 15, 2022, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000042507.
  2. Michael Kennedy, Essay in accompanying booklet, Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 4 / Mass in G Minor /Six Choral Songs performed by the London Symphony Chorus conducted by Richard Hickox, CHAN 9984, 2022, compact disc.
  3. Ceri Owen, Essay in accompanying booklet, Vaughan Williams – Mass in G Minor performed by the Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge conducted by Andrew Nethsingha, Signum Classics 541, 2018, compact disc.
  4. Ralph Vaughan Williams, Mass in G Minor (London: J. Curwen & Sons Ltd, 1922), 1.

Cut IDs

10626 10844