In addition to these two motets, it seems likely that Nicolas Gombert was also called upon to compose a work for the event, and indeed a five-voice mass published by the Scotto firm of Venice in 1542 is entitled “Missa a la incoronacion.” Gombert was in Charles’s employ at the time of the coronation, and the mass in question is securely attributed to Gombert in two printed sources. The assertion that this mass was at least composed for Charles’s imperial coronation is therefore widely accepted.
A mass is a much larger undertaking than a motet. There is no question that Gombert’s mass is an impressive work, one fairly typical of the composer’s style. All voice parts move continuously, contain few rests, and are linked by imitation in which one voice repeats, recognizably if not literally, a portion of melody previously heard in another voice. This produces a style marked by grandezza and achieves a marvelous effect. It is likely that, despite the fact that Thiebault was senior to Gombert in the emperor’s musical hierarchy, Charles held his maître des enfants in higher regard than his choirmaster.
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The surviving accounts of the event mention a stretch of “prayers” after the singing of the gradual. A report by Hironimo Bontempo makes a specific reference to singers reciting the prayers: “His majesty having had all these [insignia], a number of prayers were sung by the singers while the emperor was kneeling, and he was that way for more than a quarter hour.” This is when the Laudes Regiæ were to be sung, and it seems plausible that the two motets and an abbreviated form of the Laudes could have been sung during this fifteen-minute period.
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The mass may strike modern listeners as an odd choice for a coronation. A subsequent print of the work identifies it not as a mass for coronation, but as the Missa Sur tous regretz, the title referring to the fact that Sur tous regretz, a chanson by Jean Richafort, served as the mass’s model. The song is a decidedly sad one. Its text translates: “Above all regrets, I cry most piteously for my own, heaving sighs piercing my weary heart. Since I have lost my amiable liqueur, I complain and will complain for a long time.” The tone of the four-voice chanson, which is cast in the Dorian mode, matches the regret of the text, with a pervading imitative texture that Gombert thickens in his mass through the use of an additional voice and the continuous movement that Bartoli describes. Though much depends on the interpretation of the work in performance, its overall effect is unmistakably solemn and at least a little sad.
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