The Mass in B minor (), BWV 232, is an extended setting of the Mass ordinary by Johann Sebastian Bach. The composition was completed in 1749, the year before Bach's death, and was to a large extent based on earlier work, such as a Sanctus Bach had composed in 1724. Sections that were specifically composed to complete the Mass in the late 1740s include the "Et incarnatus est" part of the Credo. It is structured in four major sections and scored for five soloists, a choir that is five-part in many sections and divided in the "Osanna", and a Baroque ensemble including brass and wind instruments.
In the legacy of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, it appears as the "Great Catholic Mass" (),Bach, J. S. (1984). Hans-Joachim Schulze, ed. Dokumente zum Nachwirken Johann Sebastian Bachs 1750 - 1800. Bach-Dokumente Vol. 3 N.º 957. Bärenreiter. . referring to the fact that all parts of the Catholic mass are set to music.
Typically for the time, the composition is formatted as a Neapolitan mass, consisting of a succession of choral movements with a broad orchestral accompaniment, and sections in which a more limited group of instrumentalists accompanies one or more vocal soloists. Among the more unusual characteristics of the composition is its scale: a total performance time of around two hours,Johann Sebastian Bach: Mass in B minor, BWV 232 at ArkivMusic website. and a scoring consisting of two groups of SATB singers and an orchestra featuring an extended winds section, strings and continuo. Its key, B minor, is rather exceptional for a composition featuring natural trumpets in D, although far more of the work is in this key than B minor.
Even more exceptional, for a Lutheran composer such as Bach, is that the composition is a Missa tota. In Bach's day, Masses composed for Lutheran services usually consisted only of a Kyrie and Gloria. Bach had composed five such Kyrie–Gloria Masses before he completed his Mass in B minor: the four Kyrie–Gloria Masses, BWV 233–236, in the late 1730s, and the Mass for the Dresden court, which would become Part I of his only Missa tota, in 1733. The Mass was likely never performed in its entirety during Bach's lifetime. Its earliest documented complete performance took place in 1859. However, today, with frequent performances and many dozens of recordings available, it is among Bach's most popular vocal works.
In 2015, Bach's personal handwritten manuscript of the mass held by the Berlin State Library was included in the UNESCO's Memory of the World International Register a project to protect and preserve culturally significant documents and manuscripts.
Background and context On 1 February 1733, Augustus II the Strong, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania and Elector of Saxony, died. Five months of mourning followed, during which all public music-making was suspended. Bach used the opportunity to work on the composition of a Missa, a portion of the liturgy sung in Latin and common to both the Lutheran and Roman Catholic rites. His aim was to dedicate the work to the new sovereign Augustus III, a convert to Catholicism, with the hope of obtaining the title "Electoral Saxon Court Composer". Upon its completion, Bach visited Augustus III in Dresden and presented him with a copy of the Kyrie–Gloria Mass BWV 232 I (early version), together with a petition to be given a court title, dated July 27, 1733; in the accompanying inscription on the wrapper of the Mass he complains that he had "innocently suffered one injury or another" in Leipzig.An English translation of the letter is given in Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, The Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents, W. W. Norton & Company, 1945, p. 128. (Also in The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents revised by Christoph Wolff, W.W. Norton & Co Inc, 1998, , p. 158.) The petition did not meet with immediate success, but Bach eventually got his title: he was made court composer to Augustus III in 1736.Markus Rathey. 2016. Bach's Major Vocal Works. Music, Drama, Liturgy, Yale University Press
In the last years of his life, Bach expanded the Missa into a complete setting of the Latin Ordinary. It is not known what prompted this creative effort. Wolfgang Osthoff and other scholars have suggested that Bach intended the completed Mass in B minor for performance at the dedication of the new Hofkirche in Dresden, a Catholic cathedral dedicated to the Holy Trinity, which was begun in 1738 and was nearing completion by the late 1740s. However, the building was not completed until 1751 and Bach's death in July 1750 prevented his Mass from being submitted for use at the dedication. Instead, Johann Adolph Hasse's Mass in D minor was performed, a work with many similarities to Bach's Mass (the Credo movements in both works feature chant over a walking bass line, for example).Stauffer, pp. 258–59. In 2013, Michael Maul published research suggesting the possibility that instead, Bach compiled it for performance in Vienna at St. Stephen's Cathedral (which was Roman Catholic) on St. Cecilia's Day in 1749, as a result of his association with Count Johann Adam von Questenberg.Michael Maul, "'The Great Catholic Mass': Bach, Count Questenberg and the Musicalische Congregation in Vienna," In Yo Tomita, Robin A. Leaver and Jan Smaczny, Exploring Bach's B-minor Mass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), Other explanations are less event-specific, involving Bach's interest in 'encyclopedic' projects (like The Art of Fugue) that display a wide range of styles, and Bach's desire to preserve some of his best vocal music in a format with wider potential future use than the church cantatas they originated in (see "Movements and their sources" below).
Chronology
The chronology of the Mass in B minor has attracted extensive scholarly attention. Recent literature suggests:
In 1724, Bach composed a Sanctus for six vocal parts for use in the Christmas service. Bach revised it when he reused it in the Mass, changing its initial meter from to , and its vocal scoring from SSSATB to SSAATB.Christoph Wolff, Bach: The Learned Musician, W.W. Norton, 2000, p. 265, As noted above, in 1733 Bach composed the Missa (Kyrie and Gloria) during the five-month period of mourning following the February 1st death of Elector Augustus II and before July 27, when Bach presented the successor, Augustus III of Poland, with the Missa as a set of instrumental and vocal parts. It is possible that the Kyrie was meant as mourning music for Augustus II, and the Gloria as celebratory of the accession of Augustus III. In the mid-1740s (c. 1743–46).Peter Williams, J.S. Bach: A Life in Music, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 259, Bach re-used all three movements from the Gloria in a cantata for Christmas Day (Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191) with minor changes of notes as well as the texts. Gregory Butler argues that at the same service (which he dates to Christmas 1745, to celebrate the Peace of Dresden), Bach also used the 1724 Sanctus,Gregory Butler, "Johann Sebastian Bachs Gloria in excelsis Deo BWV 191: Musik für ein Leipziger Dankfest", Bach Jahrbuch 78 (1992), pp. 65–71 and that this revisiting of the 1733 Missa suggested further development to the composer. In the "last three years or so" of his life, Bach wrote/assembled the Symbolum Nicenum and the remainder of the work; many scholars, including Christoph Wolff, believe he did so in 1748–49. This dating in part reflects the scholarship of Yoshitake Kobayashi, who dates the Symbolum Nicenum section to August–October 1748 based on Bach's increasingly stiff and labored handwriting.Yoshitake Kobayashi, "Zur Chronologie der Spätwerke Johann Sebastian Bachs, Kompositions- und Aufführungstätigket vom 1736 bis 1750" Bach-Jahrbuch 74 (1988): 7–72 Wolff among others argues that the "Et incarnatus est" movement was Bach's last significant composition.Christoph Wolff, Bach: Essays on his Life and Music, Harvard University Press,, 1991: p. 332 The words had been included in the preceding duet, but then Bach decided to treat them as a separate movement for the choir, giving the words extra weight and improving the symmetry of the Credo.Christoph Wolff, h-Moll-Messe, Berlin Philharmonic 12 October 2006 John Butt argues that a definite final date of August 25, 1749, can be given, in that on this date C. P. E. Bach completed a setting of the Magnificat with an "Amen" chorus that "shows distinct similarities" to the 'Gratias' from the Missa and the 'Et expecto' from the Symbolum Nicenum."John Butt, Bach: Mass in B Minor (Cambridge Music Handbooks), Cambridge University Press, 1991, , pp. 20–21. C. P. E. Bach later reported that he performed this Magnificat (Wq 215) in 1749 in Leipzig "at a Marian festival ... during the lifetime of his now-deceased father"."an einem Marienfeste ... noch zu den Lebzeiten des nunmehro seligen Herrn Vaters." Bach-Dokumente III, 703.
Title Bach did not give the Mass in B minor a title. Instead, he organized the 1748–49 manuscript into four folders, each with a different title. That containing the Kyrie and Gloria he called "1. Missa"; that containing the Credo he titled "2. Symbolum Nicenum"; the third folder, containing the Sanctus, he called "3. Sanctus"; and the remainder, in a fourth folder he titled "4. Osanna | Benedictus | Agnus Dei et | Dona nobis pacem". John Butt writes, "The format seems purposely designed so that each of the four sections could be used separately."John Butt, "Mass in B Minor", in Oxford Composer Companions: J. S. Bach, ed. Malcolm Boyd and John Butt, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 284 On the other hand, the parts in the manuscript are numbered from 1 to 4, and Bach's usual closing formula (S.D.G = Soli Deo Gloria) is only found at the end of the Dona Nobis Pacem. Further, Butt writes, "What is most remarkable about the overall shape of the Mass in B Minor is that Bach managed to shape a coherent sequence of movements from diverse material."John Butt, "Mass in B Minor", in Oxford Composer Companions: J. S. Bach, ed. Malcolm Boyd and John Butt, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 286 ButtJohn Butt, Bach: Mass in B Minor, Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 92–101 and George StaufferGeorge B. Stauffer, Bach: The Mass in B Minor, Schirmer Books, 1997, pp. 250–55 detail the ways in which Bach gave overall musical unity to the work.
The first overall title given to the work was in the 1790 estate of the recently deceased C.P.E. Bach, who inherited the score. There, it is called "Die Grosse Catholische Messe" (the "Great Catholic Mass"). It is called that as well in the estate of his last heir in 1805, suggesting to Stauffer that "the epithet reflects an oral tradition within the Bach family".George Stauffer, Bach: The Mass in B Minor, p. 180 The first publication of the Kyrie and Gloria, in 1833 by the Swiss collector Hans Georg Nägeli with Simrock, refers to it as "Messe" Finally, Nageli and Simrock produced the first publication in 1845, calling it the "High Mass in B Minor" (Hohe Messe in h-moll). The adjective "high", Butt argues, was "strongly influenced by the monumental impact of Beethoven's Missa solemnis." It soon fell from common usage, but the prepositional phrase "in B Minor" survives, even though it is in some ways misleading: only five of the work's 27 movements are in B minor, while twelve, including the final ones of each of the four major sections, are in D major (the relative major of B minor). The opening Kyrie, however, is in B minor, with the Christe Eleison in D major, and the second Kyrie in F-sharp minor; as Butt points out, these tonalities outline a B minor chord.John Butt, "Mass in B Minor", in Oxford Composer Companions: J. S. Bach, ed. Malcolm Boyd and John Butt, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 287
Orchestration