Martin Baker on Corpus Christi from Buckfast Abbey

Mid-June saw the feast of Corpus Christi - a Christian celebration of the Eucharist in which the faithful commemorate the Last Supper. In the Catholic tradition the feast is particularly associated with the doctrine of Christ being physically present in the bread and wine, and thus has a uniquely personal and direct significance.

It is a day that has inspired musical responses down the centuries - from plainchant dating back almost a thousand years, to Renaissance motets, through stirring early-twentieth-century hymnody, and right up to the present day. 

A new album on the Ad Fontes label captures something of the atmosphere of Corpus Christi at Buckfast Abbey in the far southwest of England - combining all those strands of musical tradition and more, interwoven with a newly-commissioned Mass (entitled Missa O sacrum convivium) for the occasion from Martin Baker, formerly Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral. I spoke to Martin to find out more about his Mass and the musical heritage it draws on. 

The plainsong basis and French harmonic richness of the Missa O sacrum convivium immediately brought Duruflé’s Requiem and Messe cum jubilo to mind - is the work intended to continue that tradition?

Not consciously, although I suppose any music with a strong chant reference and an organ accompaniment which provides harmonic colour would fit into that broad category.

Was that close relationship to plainsong melodies part of the specification when the work was commissioned, or was it a compositional decision you made yourself?

I can’t remember if it was specified but definitely it was something I wanted to do - the chant for Corpus Christi is some of the most opulent in the repertoire, especially the mode vii alleluia, Caro mea, which was my starting point: I wrote the Gloria first. Perhaps subconsciously, I felt I was writing for a specific service rather than a recording or for the wider public, and wanted to create something which felt grounded in the liturgy rather than “making a statement.”

One thing you’re particularly known for is your improvisation - did that play any role in the creation process for the Mass?

Perhaps yes. A good liturgical improviser is something of a shape-shifter - finding the right mood for the moment perhaps, rather than imposing. Immediately after this I wrote an organ piece, Ecce ego Ioannes, for St John’s College, Cambridge, the mood of which, I think it’s fair to say, would not align well with Corpus Christi.

As you’ll surely know, there’s a constant argument about whether accompanying plainsong is stylistically appropriate or not. Some of the other tracks on the album are accompanied by the organ, some not, and some only partly. How would you make that call yourself?

I like to say that the only rule on accompanying plainsong is that it should never be accompanied! So if you break that rule (as I frequently did) you have huge freedom. A disc like this is not a treatise on Gregorian chant but more an insight into how it forms part of the liturgical life of an abbey - it’s authentic to itself rather than to any external academic theory.

The chant that’s used for Pange lingua here is almost, but not quite, the one I’m used to. I’ve noticed this occasionally before with plainsong - tiny little variations in well-known chants that have been sung for many centuries - and I find it odd that over all that time, one version hasn’t emerged as dominant or canonical. Where do these discrepancies come from? Whose version, dare I say it, is ‘right’?

There are different strands of chant: Monastic, Roman, Dominican, Carthusian etc., and of course Sarum. They represent the richness of the church’s heritage and are all correct in their own environments. Yes, sometimes it can be difficult - if I were to become a Benedictine I’d find their version of the solemn Salve Regina difficult to digest - but overall these variations are examples of the polyvalency of the church’s liturgy, something which I believe it’s desirable to preserve.