DESCRIPTION:
Missa Sicut lilium inter spinas, for 5 voices (1590)

I. Kyrie
II. Gloria
III. Credo
IV. Sanctus
V. Benedictus
VI. Agnus Dei

The Tudor Consort
Michael Stewart

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina set the colorful Sicut lilium inter spinas text twice, the first of these two sacred Latin motets appearing in 1569, the second in 1584. It was on the earlier work that he based the five-voice Missa sicut lilium inter spinas, published in Rome in 1590 as part of the Missarum liber quintus (Masses, Volume 5) collection. The Mass is an example of the so-called "parody mass" genre, taking pre- existing sections of polyphony (in this case from the aforementioned motet) and reworking them into the five basic sections of the Mass Ordinary to create a kind of cyclic bond.

Palestrina opens the tripartite Kyrie (Kyrie I-Christe-Kyrie II) with the same basic imitative structure that also begins the Sicut lilium motet-this material, in one guise or another, will also serve as the starting points for the Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, while the internal subsections of those movements take off on polyphonic material drawn from elsewhere in the motet.

Already at the beginning of the Gloria we are treated to a refinement of the basic thematic material, as the altus presents the same version of the melody that it originally gave in the third measure of Kyrie I (then an imitation of the cantus line) against a purely homophonic background. As is the composer's normal practice, the Gloria text is divided down the middle (at the text "qui tollis peccata mundi) to create two musical sections of almost equal length.

The lengthy credo text is divided into three sections (the first and last of which employ the full five-voice ensemble, the middle just four voices), beginning with a contrapuntally-enhanced restatement-meaning that the imitation is made denser--of the polyphonic model as given at the beginning of the Kyrie. ;Again Palestrina makes striking use of homophony, particularly during the final bars of the first section (giving the text "et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine: et homo factus est") and also throughout the middle of the third and final portion.

The three basic elements of the Sanctus text-Sanctus, Benedictus, and Hosanna--are cast as three individual movements. A new treatment of the melodic cell that Palestrina has been playing with all along is to be found at the beginning of the four-voice Benedictus, as the altus turns the characteristic semitone upper-neighbor upside down to avoid the tritone B-flat/E that would otherwise occur in the second bar. The Hosanna is appropriately filled with ebullient eighth-note flourishes.

Just one Agnus Dei is present (the second half of the Agnus Dei text, "lamb of god, who takes away the sins of the world: give us peace", is omitted). This final movement of the Missa sicut lilium is a real showcase for Palestrina's much-lauded contrapuntal skills. At the opening, the bassus and second tenor give a new spin to the basic imitative unit that by now we know so well (the second tenor enters, a fifth above the bassus, at the distance of one-and-a-half bars), immediately echoed an octave higher by the cantus and altus. The first tenor acts as a kind of mediator between these two opposing pairs of voices; its entry in bar nine, though tentatively imitated by the bassus two bars later, actually sets in motion a new melodic subject that soon comes to fruition in rich five-voice imitation. A third melodic idea, clearly related to the one that began Kyrie II, arrives to bring the music to a round plagal cadence in A. [allmusic.com]

Art by Sandro Botticelli