St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh

To say the text of the Catholic Mass goes back centuries would be putting it mildly. Its first musical iterations were in the form of Gregorian chant, sung in monasteries and nunneries, with more elaborate settings following in the 14th century. These established half-a-dozen movements which, to this day, form the standard choral Mass: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei, all named after their opening words.

With the context for these movements remaining purely liturgical, new settings would be required to include all six as a matter of course. By and large, any departure from the standard text (especially in the case of single movements written independently of the other five) would suggest their use in a different part of the Mass. If the words of the movement in question are unchanged, however, it may be a case of the rest being lost, unless the Mass was set aside incomplete; research is sometimes hindered by the lack of documentation to serve as proof in either direction.

Either way, there appear to be no instances of the Kyrie being set to music outwith the wider context of the Mass, and the only free-standing Agnus Dei of any renown is Samuel Barber’s choral arrangement of his Adagio for Strings (itself a rewriting of the slow movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11). The Sanctus and Benedictus tend to come as a pair – in the context of the liturgy, one leads straight into the other, and they both conclude with the same acclamation (“Hosanna in excelsis”) – but only ever in a complete Mass setting. (It’s perhaps worth mentioning, however, that Enigma used the text of the Sanctus among the lyrics of their song Prism of Life in 1996, just as Simon & Garfunkel had written a Benedictus in 1964, but these are of course far removed from the classical sphere.)

As far as the Credo is concerned, many of its free-standing versions are be in the form of the Apostles’ Creed. Substantially different from the officially-sanctioned Nicene Creed – not least in terms of its comparative brevity – its earliest musical settings date from the 16th century, and there have been very few composed since.

This leaves us with the Gloria, by some distance the most popular section of the Mass to set as a separate entity – our concerts on 9-10 October are in fact built around two (very different) takes on this text, by Vivaldi and Poulenc. The reasons for this popularity are unclear, though it could just be down to the text: it's sufficiently extensive to take in a wide variety of moods, and although it covers much of the same ground as the Credo, its more celebratory guise makes for a surer crowd-pleaser than as part of a summation of faith.

With free-standing Glorias by composers going as far back as Monteverdi and Charpentier, they also cover an impressive stylistic variety, despite the lack of any from the Classical period. (Not that we can be absolutely certain about this: with a setting for soprano and strings by Handel coming to light as recently as 2001, who knows what others may be awaiting discovery?) Following a rare example from the Romantic era courtesy of Saint-Saëns, Glorias designed for the concert hall really took off in the increasingly secular 20th century, when fewer people batted an eyelid at religious music being performed in secular buildings.

Typically for a composer equally at home in the sacred and profane, Poulenc’s 1961 setting combines the fervent and sensual to winning effect. Featuring a prominent solo soprano part, this is coincidentally the only solo voice left out of Walton’s. Written the same year, the latter may lack the mystery of Poulenc’s, but makes up for it with sheer exuberance, not least in its writing for brass.

It is worth noting, by way of conclusion, that three movements of the Mass performed at the coronation of our Patron, His Majesty the King, were written specifically for the occasion by Paul Mealor, Roxanna Panufnik and Tarik O’Regan, effectively adding to the small number of individual movements of the Mass. Omitting the Credo – possibly to reflect the monarch’s stated intention to be leader of the (multiple) faiths – the one pre-existing movement was the Gloria, taken from Byrd’s 4-part Mass. Whether intentionally or not, this may be deemed to have taken a small step towards redressing the balance: if nothing else, there is finally a free-standing Kyrie in the repertoire!