Mass in B minor


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", 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, 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 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. With many dozens of recordings, 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, 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. The petition did not meet with immediate success, but Bach eventually got his title: he was made court composer to Augustus III in 1736.
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. In 2013, Michael Maul published research suggesting the possibility that instead, Bach compiled it for performance in Vienna at St. Stephen's Cathedral on St. Cecilia's Day in 1749, as a result of his association with Count Johann Adam von Questenberg. Other explanations are less event-specific, involving Bach's interest in 'encyclopedic' projects 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.

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.
  • As noted above, in 1733 Bach composed the Missa 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. Bach re-used all three movements from the Gloria in a cantata for Christmas Day with minor changes of notes as well as the texts. Gregory Butler argues that at the same service, Bach also used the 1724 Sanctus, 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. Wolff among others argues that the "Et incarnatus est" movement was Bach's last significant composition. 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. 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." C. P. E. Bach later reported that he performed this Magnificat in 1749 in Leipzig "at a Marian festival ... during the lifetime of his now-deceased father".

    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." On the other hand, the parts in the manuscript are numbered from 1 to 4, and Bach's usual closing formula 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." Butt and George Stauffer 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". 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". 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". 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 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.

Orchestration

The piece is orchestrated for two flutes, two oboes d'amore, two bassoons, one natural horn, three natural trumpets, timpani, violins I and II, violas and basso continuo. A third oboe is required for the Sanctus.

Performance history

In Bach's lifetime

Bach conducted the Sanctus, in its first version, at the 1724 Christmas service in Leipzig, and re-used it in Christmas services in the mid-1740s. Scholars differ on whether he ever performed the 1733 Missa. Arnold Schering asserted that it was performed in Leipzig on April 26, 1733, when Augustus III of Poland visited the town, but modern scholars reject his argument for several reasons:
  1. the proposed date fell during an official period of mourning "when concerted music was forbidden in Saxon churches";
  2. the extant parts are written on a paper found only in documents in Dresden, so were probably copied in Dresden when Bach went there in July; and
  3. the copyists were not Bach's usual ones, but Bach and immediate family members who traveled with him to Dresden: his wife Anna Magdalena, and sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel. It also appears that the Bach family employed a copyist in Dresden to assist them.
Scholars differ, however, on whether the Missa was performed in July in Dresden. Christoph Wolff argues that on July 26, 1733, at the Sophienkirche in Dresden, where Wilhelm Friedemann Bach had been organist since June, it "was definitely performed... as evidenced by the extant Dresden performing parts and by the inscription on the title wrapper" given to the king the next day. Hans-Joachim Schulze made this case by pointing to the use of the past tense in the wrapper's inscription: "To his royal majesty was shown with the enclosed Missa... the humble devotion of the author J. S. Bach." However, Joshua Rifkin rejects the argument, pointing out that the past-tense wording was typical of formal address often not related to performance. Also skeptical is Peter Williams, who notes that "there is no record of performers being assembled for such an event, and in August 1731 Friedemann reported that the Sophienkirche organ was badly out of tune." However, there is evidence of an organ recital by Bach at the Sophienkirche on 14 September 1731, and Friedemann Bach was only chosen as Organist for the institution on 23 June 1733. He would again perform a 2-hour Organ recital on 1 December 1736 at the Frauenkirche Dresden to inaugurate the new Gottfried Silbermann organ.
Scholars agree that no other public performances took place in Bach's lifetime, although Butt raises the possibility that there may have been a private performance or read-through of the Symbolum Nicenum late in Bach's life.