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Mass in B Minor (Bach)

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The Mass in B Minor (BWV 232) is a musical setting of the Latin Mass by Johann Sebastian Bach. Although parts of the Mass in B Minor date to 1724, the whole was assembled in its present form in 1749, just before the composer's death in 1750.

Background and context of the mass in B minor

Interestingly, Bach did not give the work a title; instead, in the score the four parts of the Latin Mass are each given their own title page--Kyrie, Gloria, Symbolum Nicenum (otherwise known as the Credo), and Sanctus, Hosanna, Benedictus, Agnus Dei — and simply bundled together. Indeed, the different sections call for different numbers and arrangements of performers, giving rise to the theory that Bach did not ever expect the work to be performed in its entirety. On the other hand, the parts in the manuscript are numbered from 1 to 4, and Bach's usual closing formula (S.D.G = Sola Deo Gloria) is only found at the end of the Dona Nobis Pacem. In any case, the Mass presents a powerful and unified musical experience. Due to its length — nearly two hours of music — it was never performed as part of a church liturgy. The first performance seems to have been after Bach's death, when his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach performed the Gloria section (but not the entire Mass) in Berlin. Large-scale performances of the entire Mass in B Minor were not staged until the 19th century, the first of which was in 1859.

Some have questioned why Bach, a Lutheran, would put such effort into creating a Latin Mass of this magnitude. After all, the Latin Mass is part of the traditional liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, and the historical record does not point to any commissioner of the work, leaving us to believe that Bach wrote this Mass for personal reasons -- an unusual thing for Bach to do, given his general practice of composing religious works only with specific performance purposes in mind. However, the 18th century Lutherans often used the Latin Mass as part of their liturgy, especially the Kyrie and Gloria sections, which the entire congregation probably sang and the Latin Mass was almost universal as a form of church music.

Bach composed what would become the Gloria of the B Minor Mass for Christmas Day, 1724, and added, in 1731, a Kyrie so that he could present an abbreviated Mass (Kyrie plus Gloria, BWV 232a) to the Saxon Elector Fredrich Augustus II as part of a request to add the title, "Electoral Saxon Court Composer," to his name, a political move he hoped would bolster his standing in Leipzig, where he was having minor political skirmishes with the town council. The score sat on Bach's, and the Elector's, shelves, unperformed, until 1737, when Bach revisited it. He began making small revisions to the Kyrie and Gloria and added the Credo and Sanctus over the next two years.

In the 1730s, when he may have been toying with the idea of expanding the initial Kyrie-Gloria Mass, Bach studied and performed Palestrina's Missa sine nomine, which he then copied with revisions, and Antonio Lotti's Misse sapientiae. Other works with direct bearing on the Mass in B Minor include an unnamed Mass in F major by Giovanni Battista Bassani, to which Bach added a setting of Credo in unum Deum (BWV 1081) and Antonio Caldara's Magnificat, the Suscepit Israel portion of which forms the basis for Bach's contrapuntal study BWV 1082. Notably, Bach's only other five-part choral work is his D major setting of the Magnificat.

Much of the music in the Mass is reused from earlier cantatas, or was itself later reused. The only music known to have been composed specifically for the Mass is the Confiteor section of the Credo. Details of the parodied movements and their sources are listed in the movement listing.

Structure of the work

Recordings

 

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