Music 220, section 1: Song Masses and the Problem of the Secular

Why was the library of the newly formed Sistine Chapel choir full of books of masses based on love songs? As soon as composers began writing polyphonic settings of the Mass Ordinary in the 1440s, they based them not only on plainchant, but also on popular songs of an apparently secular nature. The prominent presence of secular music in the most sacred rituals of the Christian church has long troubled musicologists. But it does not seem to have troubled fifteenth-century clergymen. This seminar begins from the idea that the song mass is not a problem of genre, but one of categorization—specifically the idea of the secular. We will use the song mass to rethink the categories we use to understand music from the late middle ages. But the implications do not stop with music: by putting music in dialogue with other areas of society, we will have occasion to reconsider the category of the secular more generally. And with luck, when we turn back to the music of the period, we will be able to see it with fresh eyes.