A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Communion Service
COMMUNION SERVICE. The ancient counterpart of the English Communion Service, the Mass, has always been looked upon by those who have held music to be an important part of worship as a fit opportunity for displaying the grandest resources of musical effect. The magnificent works which have been produced by great masters for the use of the Roman church are well known to musicians, but for a variety of reasons which this is not the place to discuss, the English Communion Service has not been so fortunate, though the words available for musical purposes are almost the same. Most of those remarkable composers who wrote the music for the English services in the early days of the Reformation have been far less liberal of their attention to this than to the ordinary Morning and Evening Services, having been content to write music merely for the Creed and the Kyrie, and sometimes the Sanctus. This was evidently not the intention of the compilers of the service, nor was it the idea of Marbeck, who adapted the first music for it. In the first Prayer Book of Edward VI the Communion Service was ordered to be introduced by an 'Introit,' according to an ancient custom of the Western church, which was sung to a chant. This injunction was omitted in later editions, but the custom of singing while the priest goes up to the altar still continues, though there is no rubrical direction for it. At one time it became customary to sing a Sanctus, but that seems to be growing into disfavour at the present time.
The Offertory sentences were ordered to be said or sung, and for them also there is music in Marbeck, but none in later composers of the early period, probably because the word 'sung' was afterwards struck out of the rubric, and the sentences ordered to be read by the priest—an order which does not now prevent their being sung by the choir in many churches after the manner of an anthem. The Kyrie which follows each commandment is almost universally sung wherever there is any music in the service at all, and the settings of it are fairly innumerable. Many attempts have been made to vary the monotony of the repetitions by setting each to different music, by varying the harmonies of a common melody, or by alternating harmony and unison of the voices. The latter probably best hits the desired mean between musical effect and comprehendibility.
The Creed has invited most composers who have written for the service at all. Marbeck's setting of it with the 'Gloria in excelsia' is the freest and most musical of all his arrangement. [Creed.] With the Creed most frequently ends the musical part of the service, probably because there has been a very general prejudice against unconfirmed choir-boys being present at the celebration. Hence also there is not much music written for the latter part, though Marbeck's and Tallis's settings go throughout the service to the end. Marbeck's work embraces a good deal which is not sung now, such as the versicles with which the Post Communion used to begin, and the Lord's Prayer which used to follow them, and now begins the Post Communion, the versicles having been removed. But though the Lord's Prayer is still retained, it is not customary to sing it as used to be done in the Roman and in the early days of the English church. Marbeck's setting of it is to what is called a varied descant, and the chants for the versicles are most of them drawn from old Roman antiphonaria. The Sanctus has been more frequently set than the Gloria in Excelsis, probably because it was, as before mentioned, used out of its proper place while the choir-boys were still in church.
In the primitive church it was customary to sing a psalm while the people were communicating. It was called 'communio.' The psalm 'O taste and see' was so sung in the churches of Jerusalem and Antioch in the 4th century. In the first edition of the English Prayer Book this custom was ordered to be preserved, but the injunction was afterwards removed.