Title of a paraphrase mass

[pierre.chepelov]

Christ lag in Todes Banden (Zachow, Friedrich Wilhelm)

When I opened the score I was surprised not to read a Lutheran chorale, a chorale prelude, or a cantata, but a mass with Latin text (well, Greek at first ).
Actually, the page was named "Missa super chorale: Christ lag in Todes Banden (Zachow, Friedrich Wilhelm)" a few weeks ago.
I'm not comfortable with the actual work page title: indeed it is not the chorale, nor a cantata on its text (like BWV 4), but another work using the chorale's melody either as a fugue subject or as a cantus firmus (both cases occur).
What are the guidelines for such a paraphrase mass?

Personally, I would prefer the original title, or something like:

Missa super 'Christ lag in Todes Banden'
Mass on 'Christ lag in Todes Banden'
'Christ lag in Todes Banden' Mass

[pml]

The page move was obviously mistaken, in my opinion, and would be worth simply reverting; this is a Lutheran missa (i.e. Kyrie & Gloria only) paraphrasing a well-known chorale, and not an actual chorale setting or organ prelude based on the German hymn. It’s also worth noting that Zachow did compose an organ prelude on the same hymn: the two pages for the mass and the prelude should not be mistaken for one another. (The page cited also casts doubt on the ascription of the mass, which is not mentioned on the IMSLP page.)

There are well established naming conventions for parody, paraphrase, tenor, plainsong and all sorts of masses. Of your three options, the first is the only one that’s really acceptable, as in English the Lutheran form of the mass usually is given preferably as “missa” and never in so unqualified a way as being a plain “mass” – although the term is obviously still somewhat ambiguous!

Cheers Philip

[Davydov]

There are a large number of older works on IMSLP where the page title is given in the form "description: title", and these are steadily being changed to remove to a format that's consistent with our manual of style, and more helpful for people browsing alphabetical lists of titles.

The page title "Missa super chorale: Christ lag in Todes Banden" appeared to be one such example (which is why I moved it), but I understand now that it was actually the full title with an extraneous colon, which caused the confusion. The Library of Congress's authority file lists the work as "Missa super Christ lag in Todesbanden" (sic), which is how it appears in western library catalogues, so I've changed it accordingly.

[pierre.chepelov]

Thanks, pml, for the explanation. I knew little about Lutheran Mass settings, and nothing about the English usage!
(In fact, yesterday, while reading something about the Marktkirche in Halle, I was wondering why, where and when Zachow would have written a Catholic Mass. But Bach did! - There was the problem of the chorale, but, after all, Christ lag still is the Vesperae paschali laudes...)
Cheers

[pierre.chepelov]

I've just seen this one - it's titled another way, as a "Missa brevis".
In the Category Walker, it's under "Masses". Why not implement a seperate category for "Lutheran Masses"?

[Davydov]

Why not implement a seperate category for "Lutheran Masses"?

Well, we follow the categories used by the Music Librarians' Association (and in this respect, the Library of Congress), where "Missa" is synonymous with "Mass". It wouldn't be accurate to assert that all Lutheran Masses are Missae, or all Missae are Lutheran Masses — not to mention that individual works entitled "Missa brevis" can have completely different contents!

So for IMSLP's categorization purposes they are all found in the category "Masses", and the reader can judge for themselves how accurately the composers' titles reflect their works' contents

[pml]

Yes. The qualification of a missa brevis isn’t itself without ambiguity: sometimes it can refer to overall duration; or the omission of the Credo, leaving just Kyrie–Gloria–Sanctus & Benedictus–Agnus Dei; or in the exceptional case of Palestrina’s Missa brevis, it refers to the thematic content containing a significant number of breves!

There is no real thing to differentiate the Lutheran variety except that it only consists of Kyrie and Gloria – as most of JS Bach’s settings of the missa do. The “Great Catholic Mass” is the singular exception in his œuvre as it grew out of the B minor missa Bach composed for Dresden, along with other large portions of the text that he assembled over a period of time (e.g., he already had used part of the text of the Sanctus for Christmas 1723).

There’s also the consideration that any Catholic mass setting could be adapted for the Lutheran rite (by simply omitting everything after the Gloria), and conversely the short Lutheran settings could be supplemented by other music e.g. plainsong, if transferred to the Catholic rite.

Cheers PML