The (Mass ''Grant us peace'') is a setting of the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

Order of Mass Order of Mass is an outline of a Mass celebration, describing how and in what order liturgical texts and rituals are employed to constitute a Mass. The expression Order of Mass is particularly tied to the Roman Rite where the sections under that ...

by the

Lutheran Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

composer

Ernst Pepping Ernst Pepping (12 September 1901 – 1 February 1981) was a German composer of classical music and academic teacher. He is regarded as an important composer of Protestant sacred music in the 20th century. Pepping taught at the and the . His mus ...

for unaccompanied choir (). The voices are divided from four-part choir

SATB In music, SATB is a scoring of compositions for choirs or consorts of instruments consisting of four voice types: soprano, alto, tenor and bass. Choral music Four-part harmony using soprano, alto, tenor and bass is a common scoring in classic ...

to two four-part choirs. Composed in 1948, the work was published by

Bärenreiter Bärenreiter (Bärenreiter-Verlag) is a German classical music publishing house based in Kassel. The firm was founded by Karl Vötterle (1903–1975) in Augsburg in 1923, and moved to Kassel in 1927, where it still has its headquarters; it ...

in 1949.

Background

Pepping was a composer who relied on

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

models but first wrote severe works with "uncompromising dissonance". An able teacher with ties to the

Confessing Church The Confessing Church (, ) was a movement within German Protestantism in Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all of the Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German Evangelical Church. See dro ...

in the 1930s he wrote more compromising music and was "left alone" by the Nazis. He composed a in 1931, setting not the Order of Mass, but a series of chorales related to the functions in the liturgy of the mass, and thus comparable to Schubert's . In 1938, after a 1937 Church Music Festival in which he participated, he composed a German mass, (''German Mass: Kyrie God Father in Eternity'') for a six-part mixed choir, which stressed German, following the party line. Pepping composed no more church music until 1948, when he wrote the , possibly as a "personal plea". The musicologist Sven Hiemke who analyzed the work in a book on Pepping's mass compositions notes that the work can be understood as (confessional music) even if the composer would disagree.

Structure and music

The mass is structured in five sections of different allocations of the soprano, alto, tenor and bass voices (

): In the following table of the movements, the markings and

time signature A time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, and measure signature) is an indication in music notation that specifies how many note values of a particular type fit into each measure ( bar). The time signature indicates th ...

s are taken from the score. Pepping uses

polyphony Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chord ...

and a modal tonality to achieve a characteristic colourful sound (""). A reviewer of a recording notes that the first reactions saw a relation of the disturbing ("") setting of the text to the time of its creation – full of uncertainty and dread of the future – while Pepping refused to acknowledge a relation between his music and his life. The mass shows brittle, jagged sections ("") in complex formality and composition technique, especially in the

fugue In classical music, a fugue (, from Latin ''fuga'', meaning "flight" or "escape""Fugue, ''n''." ''The Concise Oxford English Dictionary'', eleventh edition, revised, ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (Oxford and New York: Oxford Universit ...

s. Other sections show a rather meditative sound of only four parts.

Publication and performances

The premiere was planned for 31 October 1948 as part of the (Berlin Days of Church Music). Instead, the work was first performed in Berlin on 17 November 1948 by the Spandauer Kantorei, conducted by

Gottfried Grote Gottfried Grote (15 May 1903 – July 1976) was a German church musician. Born in Oberfrohna, Grote was from 1926 to 1935 organist and choir director of the Bach-Verein (Bach association) in Wuppertal, which later was named ''Wupperfelder Kantorei ...

, then the director of the

Spandauer Kirchenmusikschule The (Spandau school of church music) was a music academy in Spandau, Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1929, it was housed in the in Spandau and was closed in 1998. The schools choir appeared and recorded as the Spandauer Kantorei. It was located in ...

. The 24 page manuscript, including corrections and sketches, is kept in Berlin. The first edition was by

in 1948. The editor

Richard Baum Richard Dennis Baum (; July 8, 1940 – December 14, 2012) was an American China watcher, professor emeritus of political science at UCLA, and former director emeritus of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, noted for his many academic works on C ...

wrote on 18 September 1948: "" (We are happy to publish this extraordinary work. ..One will be spellbound and impressed by the contrapuntal precision work as well as by the colourful harmonies and the strong rhythm of the work.) Further editions followed in 1962 and 1996. The review of a performance in the Marktkirche Wiesbaden in October 1980 by the of the Neustädter Kirche, conducted by Pepping's pupil

Erhard Egidi Erhard Egidi (23 April 1929 – 8 September 2014) was a German cantor, organist and composer of sacred music. He was ''Kantor'' at the Neustädter Kirche, Hannover, from 1972 to 1991, where he focused on music in church services, but also conduct ...

was titled (Intense profession), confirming the character of the music as a personal statement.

Selected recordings

* Missa Dona nobis pacem, Ein jegliches hat seine Zeit, Choralsätze (Vol. 10 of the Pepping Collection), Kreuzberger Kantorei, Volkher Häusler * , with the motets , ''Ein jegliches hat seine Zeit'', ''Uns ist ein Kind geboren'', , Berliner Vokalensemble, ''Cantate'', 2006

References

External links

Der Nachlass von Ernst Pepping
Staatsbibliothek Berlin * Matthew Troy Tresler
Ernst Pepping's "Missa Dona Nobis Pacem": A Conductor's Analysis for Performance

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private university, private research university in Coral Gables, Florida, United States. , the university enrolled 19,852 students in two colleges and ten schools across over ...

2008
Ernst Pepping / 12 September 1901 – 1 February 1981
Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 2012
Pepping, Ernst (1901–1981) / Missa 'Dona nobis pacem' (1948)
bodensee-musikversand.de
Die Messkompositionen von Ernst Pepping
abebooks.de
Dona nobis pacem Chorwerke = Works for choir / Ernst Pepping
catalog.lib.uchicago.edu {{DISPLAYTITLE:Missa ''Dona nobis pacem'' Masses (music) 1948 compositions