The few years he spent in Italy during his youth had a lasting impact on Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s sensibility. In Rome around 1665, one could hear music that was expressive, colorful, and profound. For over a century, Italian musicians had been successfully cultivating the art of polychorality: multiple choirs, singers, and/or instruments engaged in a dialogue with one another, typically spread across several spaces. In France, examples of polychoral music are very rare. Charpentier thus adds to this French exception by composing a sixteen-part Mass in which he makes use of all the possible combinations offered by this ensemble. Was it ever performed during his lifetime? If so, we do not know today under what exceptional circumstances this Mass might have been performed.

Among the numerous autograph manuscripts is another Mass—this time Italian—by a certain Francesco Beretta, also composed for sixteen voices. For a long time, it was mistakenly believed that Charpentier had copied this work during his stay in Rome to use it as a model upon his return to France. It would seem today that this work came into his possession well after his trip, and after he had composed his own mass. Charpentier adds astonishing remarks in his notebooks and offers a critique of Berretta’s mass that reveals the breadth of his knowledge and his sensitivity. He adds a small diagram, sketched at the beginning of his Mass, regarding the spatial arrangement of the choirs, with two possible solutions. Instructions of this kind are extremely rare, making this particular piece of music all the more valuable. As for Berretta’s Mass, it has never been performed again since the 17th century (has it ever been performed in France?).

Upon his return to Paris in 1669, after having immersed himself for several years in Italian music in all its diversity, one can imagine Charpentier drawing inspiration from the splendor and grandeur of the music of Bologna, Venice, and Rome to compose his own four-choir mass.