Questions about Mass in 19th c. France

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Hello,

I’m currently writing a novel set in Paris just before the Revolution of 1848, and I have some questions about the Mass, specifically the sort of Mass that would have been held on a weekday at noon. Naturally, I’ve looked at Wikipedia and a few other Internet resources, but I’m having trouble distinguishing present practice from past.

As best I can make out, Parisians of that era would have been partaking of the Tridentine Mass, which would have included the Kyrie and the Gloria. Would the Gloria have been performed in its entirety, or would it have been just the first line? (Wikipedia is grammatically ambiguous on this point.) Would it likely have been chanted or sung? (I’m thinking of a fairly large church in central Paris.)

If anyone can answer these questions (or point me in the direction of some quick-and-easy resources) I’d be much obliged!

Thank you.
 
this might not be of too much help, but are you familiar with the writings of Joris Karl Huysmans? he was french and wrote in the second half of the nineteenth century so close to the time you are talking about. his writings feature heavy and thick descriptions of Church services as he was concerned about their aesthetic qualities. Specifically the novel En route by him contains some detailed descriptions of masses from very close to the time and place you are talking about. These are complete with what the liturgy consisted of and descriptions of how they sounded etc. sorry if this doesn’t help but it is worth checking out probably.
 
Prior to the 1950s, it would have been all but unheard for Mass to be offered at noon. It would also have been unusual for a weekday Mass to be sung in most churches. (It still is.) There were some exceptions to that last, mainly cathedral churches with a Chapter of Canons and religious houses where sung Conventual Mass was the rule, but some other cases as well (including Requiem Masses). In any case, the text and rubrics of the Mass would have been as in the Missale Romanum, meaning that if the Gloria were called for on a particular day, it would have been done in its entirety.
 
rasbat: Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve read A Rebours and La-Bas, but will have to check out En Route.

malphono: Thank you. It’s remarkable how much basic information you can miss when you don’t know exactly what you’re searching for! I assume that there would have been morning and evening masses during the week–or am I off there too? You’ll have to forgive my ignorance; my main source of information is Balzac novels.
 
Just to clarify, prior to the 1950s it would have been almost unheard of for Mass (on any day of the week) to be offered other than in the morning.
 
malphono said:
Just to clarify, prior to the 1950s it would have been almost unheard of for Mass (on any day of the week) to be offered other than in the morning.
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Was this due to fasting requirements, or something else?
 
As has already been mentioned Mass would never have been celebrated at 'noon. Ven. Pope Pius XII was the pope that etended permission for Masses in the evening/afternoon. Furthermore the Mass would never have been sung during the weekday unless it was a Holy Day of Obligation or a very important feast day for the parish, diocese or country. This is a truly sad state of affairs, of course. The liturgy should always be sung. But the practise came into being after the Reformation made sung Masses quite impractical (and was assisted by the Jesuits!).

The liturgy in 19th century France was a mess. It was a hodge-podge mixture of different useages. Every diocese had its own tradition, it could even change from parish to parish. The Roman Rite wasn’t imposed on France until the Liturgical Movement of Dom Guéranger of Solesmes Abbey. So Paris would have used the Parisian use. The Parisian missal of 1766 can be seenhere. It wasn’t really all that different from the Roman Rite in the ordinary of the Mass, so there wouldn’t have been monumental differences. In fact most people wouldn’t notice any diference at all.

But when it was a sung Mass, the Parisians would have had their own style. There would have been no chant, for one.
 
O_Sapientia said:
As has already been mentioned Mass would never have been celebrated at 'noon. Ven. Pope Pius XII was the pope that etended permission for Masses in the evening/afternoon. Furthermore the Mass would never have been sung during the weekday unless it was a Holy Day of Obligation or a very important feast day for the parish, diocese or country. This is a truly sad state of affairs, of course. The liturgy should always be sung. But the practise came into being after the Reformation made sung Masses quite impractical (and was assisted by the Jesuits!).

The liturgy in 19th century France was a mess. It was a hodge-podge mixture of different useages. Every diocese had its own tradition, it could even change from parish to parish. The Roman Rite wasn’t imposed on France until the Liturgical Movement of Dom Guéranger of Solesmes Abbey. So Paris would have used the Parisian use. The Parisian missal of 1766 can be seenhere. It wasn’t really all that different from the Roman Rite in the ordinary of the Mass, so there wouldn’t have been monumental differences. In fact most people wouldn’t notice any diference at all.

But when it was a sung Mass, the Parisians would have had their own style. There would have been no chant, for one.
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Correct. In fact many folks may not be aware but Gregorian chant as we now know it really only dates to the very late 19th Century, through the work of Solesmes as you note above. It culminated with publication of the Vatican Edition of the Graduale Romanum in 1908 which standardized both the chants and the means of representing them on paper. Of course the Graduale was the culmination of many years of study of ancient manuscripts, most largely written in neumes (note: not square note notation, which aren’t “neumes”; neumes for the most part have no staff and appear very free-form). Two important sources were the manuscripts of Laon and St-Gall.

Before this time, as noted there were quite many usages and moreover “Gregorian” chant had been thoroughly denatured. While it’s hard to call the Roman Gradual “traditional” since it only dates really to 1908, it dipped back into ancient tradition to try to reproduce what Gregorian chant was meant to be. But it’s important to note that with no recordings, what we call “Gregorian chant” is not what it really sounded like, but what we imagine it sounded like based on scholarly research. Even now there are many arguments and chants get re-written often enough, particularly for the Divine Office in recent years.

It has, however, now become the standard for chant at least in the Roman Rite (other rites still have their own usage, for example the Carthusians); the usage of the Benedictines is nearly identical to the Roman Rite, at least for Mass. There is now however a simpler Roman usage, the Graduale Simplex that is much simpler for churches without an experienced choir. It draws its style largely from the Divine Office, with antiphons and modal psalmody on the simple tones of the Divine Office and not the solemn ones of the Graduale.

FWIW, the abbey I’m associated with sings (chants) the Mass every day. On ordinary weekdays, the Propers and Ordinary are still used with the Ordinary settings for weekday Mass from the Graduale. The readings are still sung, and the preface and EP are sung too but on simpler tones. The only thing recited on weekdays are the intercessions. On Sundays, the homily is not sung but the intercessions are. Our abbey is of the Solesmes Congregation, hence the care given to the liturgy in particular the high quality of the chanting. Our choirmaster was for several years choirmaster at Solesmes (“coals to Newcastle”)
 
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