Bauldeweyn: Masses

Featuring

Beauty Farm
Noel Bauldeweyn

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Compositional Technique

The Missa sine nomine is one of the earliest six-part masses and is unique among Bauldeweyn's works on this album for not being based on a pre-existing model.

Compositional Technique

Bauldeweyn's Missa En douleur en tristesse uses a five-part version of the chanson "En douleur en tristesse" as a model, resembling a parody or imitation mass.

Compositional Technique

A procedure typical of Bauldeweyn's music is the use of clear, self-contained, and repeated phrases that emerge from dense part-writing, often with entire voice groups repeated in various registers.

Compositional Technique

The Missa Inviolata is Bauldeweyn's only mass entirely based on a traditional cantus firmus, the "Inviolata, integra et casta es, Maria" sequence, which he uses in its unusual full twelve-verse form.

Historical Context

Unlike most of his contemporaries, Bauldeweyn was active only north of the Alps, which meant he remained outside the catchment area of music publishers, as music printing was primarily in Italian hands during his lifetime.

Composer's Artistic Vision

The Missa sine nomine is guided by a mysterious symbolism, with the six voices in its earliest source labeled as stages of human life: PUERICIA, INFANCIA, ADOLESCENCIA, VIRILIS ÆTAS, SENECTUS, and DECREPITUS.