The so-called Mass of Tournai, which has for a long time been regarded as the first cyclic Mass, cannot strictly be regarded as a Mass cycle. The first suggestions of the cyclic Mass are to be found in the fourteenth century. It is for this reason that in medieval music only individual movements were set to music just as they were used in the liturgy. Even if there were unity it would be made immaterial by the intervening prayers and chants. From the liturgical point of view there was no need to unify the unchangeable items of the Ordinary, because they are not sung in direct succession during the celebration of the Mass, except for the Kyrie and Gloria. The idea of combining the five parts of the Ordinary of the Mass into one cycle is not as old as generally believed. It held as dominating and prominent a place in the hierarchy of musical values as the symphony did in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is no exaggeration to assert that the cycle of the Ordinary of the Mass was the focal point on which all the artistic aspirations and technical achievements of the composer converged.
Very little would be left of the chapters on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in his Geschichte der Musik if the sections on the Mass were omitted. Not without justification have early historians like Ambros molded their conception of the period after this form. The cyclic Mass holds a central place in the music of the period because it embodies the most representative and extended form of Renaissance music. Since the early days of musical research Mass cycles of the fifteenth century have attracted special attention of scholars and musicians alike for reasons that are still valid today. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (1950). Manfred Bukofzer discusses the origins of the cyclic Mass in this extract from Chapter VII of
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