Tournai Mass

The Tournai Mass is a polyphonic setting of the mass from 14th-century France. It is preserved in a manuscript from the library of the Tournai Cathedral.

Before the 15th century, most musical settings of the Ordinary of the Mass were grouped according to movement. For instance, the Ivrea Codex and Apt Codex both contain mass movements, and these movements are grouped so that all of the Kyries are together, all of the Glorias are together, and so on. A priest selecting the music for the service would choose one from each group to be sung, and so any setting of a movement could be used in combination with any other. The Tournai Mass is the first known mass to have been written in a manuscript as if it were a single unified setting of the entire Ordinary. Three other similarly compiled masses from the 13th and early 14th century survive: the Toulouse Mass, Barcelona Mass, and Sorbonne Mass (also known as the Besançon Mass). All of these masses are anonymous, and musicological scholarship indicates that all of them are compilations of the works of several composers.

The Tournai Mass comprises six movements, each of which is for three voices.

Because of the wide disparities in style and notation, and because no underlying musical structure (such as a common cantus firmus or parody procedure) has been noted between the mass movements, the Tournai Mass is believed to have been composed independently by several musicians over a period of fifty or more years, and was later compiled by a scribe to be performed as a whole. The first known mass to have been conceived of and composed as a single unified work is the Messe de Nostre Dame by Guillaume de Machaut, who probably knew the Tournai Mass and may have used it as a model.

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