![]() Drawing on music analysis and communications with the composer, this article explores Paul Chihara’s reconciliation of the opposing realms of the profane and the sacred in *Missa Carminum*. Once an exclusively liturgical musical form, it was appropriated by composers who created religious music explicitly for secular venues from as early as the mid-nineteenth century. In proposing a broad application of religion to encompass all of everyday life, yet remaining Christian in its caste, Missa Carminum is situated in the later stages of the metamorphosis of the mass. For Chihara, *Missa Carminum* “is primaily a love song: it is more Eros than Agape!” (Chihara 2011). Animated by his love for popularised folk music and informed by his Roman Catholic education, Chihara’s admixture is also the first mass to explicitly parallel physical human love with love of the divine. Whereas secular culture and religious ritual clash in Bernstein’s *Mass*, Chihara strives for an empathetic blend of the two in *Missa Carminum: “Folk Song Mass”* (1975). 1938) was prompted to compose a non-liturgical mass also, but to question religious practice more passively. Inspired by the idea of Leonard Bernstein’s (1918-1990) controversial theatre piece, *Mass* (1972), Paul Chihara (b. ![]()
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