ABSTRACT
Owing to the efforts of the Cecilian Society and advocates for the restoration of plainsong in the nineteenth century, it was those who wished music to be the handmaiden of the liturgy, an accoutrement that unobtrusively aided in prayer and worship, who would find favour in the newly installed Pope Pius X, and not those who supported the dramatic symphonic masses that had been proliferating in churches and concert halls. Had the Church reclaimed the concert mass in the 1960s, by regularly encouraging commissions of large-scale masses in contemporary Western art or popular music styles, even if only for festive occasions, it is possible that the genre would not have gained such favour among non-Catholic composers as it did, because there would have been many more masses of a liturgical cast that utilised modern musical styles but did not go beyond the boundaries of Christian doctrine.
