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During the Age of Enlightenment, the Catholic Church continued its support of liturgical music in many locations. However, this support steadily declined and few composers or performers were able to support themselves working exclusively for the Church. Toward the end of the 18th century, few important composers such as Haydn and Mozart wrote extensively for the church and their music for worship represented only a small part of their total output. Their major contributions were Masses. It is a sad fact that composers of significantly lower stature wrote the majority of the liturgical music composed during most of the Romantic 19th century. During the 19th century, England suffered from a lack of native talent in both concert hall and church. The work of composers like Sir Edward Elgar, Sir C. H. H. Parry, and Sir Charles Villiers Stanford didn’t appear until the end of the century. They composed music for both church and concert hall and helped reestablish a significant British musical tradition.
In many respects Parry and Stanford were considered to be fathers of the modern English anthem. This musical form essentially was unknown in other traditions. The "anthem," a word understood to mean a choral piece performed within the service without specific relation to any prescribed liturgical text, became one of the best known Anglican contributions to the general practice of church music. Church choirs of nearly every denomination now sing anthems every Sunday. Large religious or otherwise "spiritual" works intended for performance outside the liturgy were another significant innovation in the history of sacred music during the late 18th and 19th centuries. Since the mid-18th century composers expanded the dimensions of their festive settings of the Mass. As public concerts were established around 1800, large-scale settings–like the orchestral Mass settings of Mozart and Haydn–became a staple of the repertoire. Composers who represented nearly every nationality and religious tradition wrote extended concert works for chorus, soloists, and orchestra on religious or secular texts. Among the many famous examples were:
These works developed from those of G. F. Handel and were called "oratorios." They provided an important artistic vehicle for 19th-century composers. During the late 18th and19th centuries, musicians within the Church of England developed a choral style of chanting liturgical music they believed was especially suited to the English language. These so-called Anglican chants were sung in parts and relied on large portions of each text line to be sung on a single reciting note (chord). In general, melody was less important than harmony. Thousands of these chants were written. When Lutheranism began to shift from its original Scandinavian and German language liturgies, it adopted the Anglican chant tradition wholesale. Although they borrowed the form from English churches, they generally did not copy its use. The American Lutherans used Anglican chant as congregational music, but it was not as satisfactory a musical form for this purpose, since it had been designed for choirs. This form of chant dominated Lutheran liturgical music from the late 19th to the late 20th centuries. Conservative composers attempted to preserve the old forms. Johannes Brahms and Anton Bruckner continued to write passacaglias, fugues, and sonata movements as part of generically titled works. Instead of colorfully titled tone poems and operas, they wrote numbered symphonies, sonatas, and similar forms. Romantic composers also explored national and ethnic heritages. In particular, composers of the Lutheran tradition examined the musical heritage of the Reformation and J. S. Bach and his contemporaries. They wrote motets based on Reformation chorales but these usually were intended for concert use rather than for church services. Released from church patronage and support, they composed for other venues. Even the organ was now a concert, not only a liturgical, instrument. Because most serious music was performed outside of the church, composers also wrote large-scale oratorios–often based on religious themes. Composers, particularly those of lesser ability, wrote short choral works that became the predecessors of anthems, which ultimately became a major component of modern church choir repertoire.
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