"La Massa di Requiem per Shuggay"

This Mythos work was kick-started in the magazine “The Unspeakable Oath” and became a mainstay of the Delta Green canon. While it’s fine as far as it goes, the premise of the document seemed to ignore the traditional manner in which such works came into being. The following is my re-working of Brodighera’s musical indiscretion that takes into account existing historical evidence and the standard music-production process extant at the time. This is not meant to replace the published material of Chaosium or Pagan Publishing; in fact the essential mechanics are the same as that canon information. However, if you want a deeper awareness of the process that the publishing of such a document would have entailed, then I submit this re-work for your delectation.

*****

The circumstances surrounding this infamous production would seem to be fairly well known; however, things aren’t as straightforward as they appear at first pass. Undoubtedly, Brodighera’s contribution to the writing of this work cannot be said to be completely innocent, but a closer look at the material would seem to exonerate him somewhat, or at least open a window upon the possibly that he was assisted, or perhaps coerced in his blasphemous misdeeds. The evidence lies in the nature of the writing and composing of choral works of this type.

Despite the fact that the composer tends to get sole credit for the construction of these kinds of pieces, no choral work is normally the effort of one single person, especially back in the 1700s. Unless the musical work was an adaptation of an existing piece of literature, the process usually began with a libretto. This is a synopsis of the story, accompanied by lyrics and stage directions, often including background or historical information necessary to the plot and sometimes the notation for various musical motifs which should recur throughout the piece. Libretti were often shopped around in the Age of Reason to various court composers and other musical wunderkind (such as Mozart or Salieri) and their purchase, or acceptance as joint commissions, formed the basis of the livelihoods of the librettists. The tradition has continued through until today with the collaborations of Gilbert & Sullivan and Rodgers & Hammerstein. Obviously, Brodighera’s composition work in the “Massa” is extraordinary and strange, but did he work from an existing libretto, and was it (unusually for one so young) his own? And, if it wasn’t, who was his librettist?

Benvenuto Chieti-Brodighera (his last name is adopted, and is probably a combination of both his parent’s birth towns) was born of working-class stock in Rome in 1746. Showing incredible musical aptitude from an early age he was apprenticed to various composers and musical instructors as a copyist, many of them attached to the Vatican. He is known to have made minor contributions to various masses and operatic works from an early age, most of these with a heavy ecclesiastical tone. Records within the Vatican show that he was occasionally cautioned against wilful pride for episodes of writing which were “too complicated” and once for an outburst of “impiety” whilst in class. Once free to earn his own living as a composer, he is known to have travelled to Paris and to Vienna, where he contributed favourably with many other composers, copyists and librettists, before returning to Rome to write his infamous mass.

Unusually for the time, the Massa di Requiem per Shuggay is a pure fantasy, and reads like an ‘imaginary voyage’ (a very popular literary genre at this juncture) set to music. It tells of the demise of the land of “Shuggay”, home of a clan of people known as the “Shan”, and their efforts to flee to a new homeland. The Shan worship an ancient deity called “Azathoth” but their prayers for him to intercede against a malevolent creature called “Baoht Z’uqqa-Mogg” – “the Bringer of Pestilence” – and its followers go unheard, forcing the Shan to take to the skies in their wondrous flying craft. The story concludes with the Shan realising that their faith in their deity had dwindled to an insufficient degree, thus bringing upon them their own punishment: as they watch their homeland burn in the distance, they offer new prayers to their god with hope for a new age of co-existence with his will to guide them.

Musically, the work is complex and convoluted, baroque in the best sense and as mathematically precise as anything by Bach; however, the mathematical principles which the piece addresses are hardly suitable for the format, let alone the instruments available for its execution (notes in the original sheet music call for the radical mis-tuning and modification of many key orchestral instruments). Certain refrains repeat as motifs and form the basis of the music; however it is unlikely that Brodighera – precocious as he undoubtedly was - would have come up with this notation without some kind of assistance. Added to this, there are no ‘imaginary voyages’ published before this period which bear any resemblance to the story contained in the Massa. All of this prompts the hypothesis that the young composer was working from a libretto of some kind and probably not one of his own devising.

An examination of working librettists of the time reveals a likely candidate as a collaborator - one Louis de Cahusac. De Cahusac was born in Montauban France in 1706 and died in Paris in 1759. During his career, he worked as a librettist mainly in collaboration with the composer Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764), a composer of many strange Orientalist operas notable for their heavy Masonic influences and non-Classical mythological settings. Their collaborations include “Les fêtes de l'Hymen et de l'Amour” (1748), “Zaïs” (1748), “Naïs” (1749), “Zoroastre” (1749, a reworked version of which emerged in 1756), “La naissance d'Osiris” (1754), and “Anacréon” (1754): this last opera was the first of several by Rameau to bear this title. The presence of Egyptian, Persian and Zoroastrian myth elements in this short list alone might suggest the creation of such outlandish terms as ‘Azathoth’ and ‘Shan’ in the “Massa” libretto, but there’s more:

De Cahusac’s last libretto was for an opera entitled “Les Boréades” (probably finished for Rameau around 1763); this story was set in the mythical land of Hyperborea and involves the tensions surrounding a proposed marriage between two noble and semi-mythological houses, which almost precipitates a clan war until a solar deity intervenes to prevent bloodshed. Rameau did not begin work on the opera until after de Cahusac’s death and the staging of the piece was fraught with difficulties from the start. The music was finished and rehearsals were set to proceed in 1763 at the Paris Opéra, with funds provided by a private patronage based in Choisy. Early on, however, disputes arose because of references to “subversive material”, which managed to embroil several figures at the Royal French Court, causing factional ructions resulting in a death by duel; the musicians staged a strike because the musical notation was “too difficult”; and finally, the Paris Opéra unexpectedly burnt down.

Rameau was never to see his work performed: a heavily-rewritten version of “Les Boréades” was performed in the French township of Lille after his death. Rameau’s biographer J.J.M. Lacroix collected all of Rameau’s writings posthumously, including both versions of “Les Boréades”, for later storage in the Bibliothèque Nationale, along with all his associated documentation; but the original libretto by de Cahusac was never found.

Brodighera’s “Massa di Requiem per Shuggay” is strikingly reminiscent of “Les Boréades” in that it concerns an ancient culture disrupted by internal politics and encroaching external forces which are resolved by the sudden emergence of a fiery entity of worship. The difficulties in musical notation are a distinct hallmark and the fact that – as ascertained from investigations by metaphysical investigators – the last act of the performance is an encoded ritual which summons Azathoth to this continuum, could at least go part of the way towards explaining the previous fire at the Paris Opéra.

It begins to look likely that Brodighera may have encountered de Cahusac during his stay in Paris around 1759; that he could have begun work on his own composition for the “Les Boréades” libretto, possibly with de Cahusac’s encouragement, and completed the task, after de Cahusac’s death, in 1768. The difficulties surrounding the original operatic version in France began to be replicated once more in Rome, before Pope Clement XIII shut down the first performance of the “Massa di Requiem per Shuggay” prior to its finale; the work has been banned by the Church ever since. In 1770, Brodighera was imprisoned on charges of heresy, ironically while the first performance of Raneau’s “Les Boréades” was being performed in Lille; he was burnt at the stake as a heretic in 1771.

(Source: Scott D. Aniolowski, et.al., Unspeakable Oath #3: “Mysterious Manuscripts”)

Italian; Benvenuto Chieti Brodighera; 1768; 1d3/1d6 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +4 percentiles; 2 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: None; however, completing a full performance of the opera has the same result as casting the spell, Summon Azathoth