A Magnum Opus:
Bach’s B Minor Mass

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750)
Mass in B minor (BWV 232) 

The monumental heft of the Mass in B minor can not be overstated. In its overall length; the breadth of character, style, and form in its music; the period of time over which it was composed; and a circuitous path it took before ever being performed in its entirety make it something of legend. The first public performance of the Mass in whole took place 209 years after Bach’s death.

The work is a massively extended setting of the Mass ordinary, which is a subset of the Catholic liturgy comprised of texts sung by the congregation that remain the same week to week. This is distinguished from the Mass proper: seasonally appropriate texts that change week to week. The texts of the ordinary are Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Angus Dei, sung in that order.

The history of setting these texts to thematically connected music goes back to the late Middle Ages, the earliest available example being the Messe de Nostre Dame of Guillaume de Machaut from the 14th century. In that case, the music was intended as a functional part of a church service. The extreme scope of Mass in B minor suggests he did not intend it to serve a functional role in liturgy.

Bach was certainly no stranger to composing music for use in services of the church. Among his greatest achievements is the composition of some 200 church cantatas written between 1723 and 1750 expressly for use in the services of the two churches in Leipzig that employed him as music director, the Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church) and the Nikolaikirche (St. Nicholas Church). The Mass in B minor has rather different origins and supposed purposes.

In 1733, August II the Elector of Saxony died and five months of mourning followed during which no public music-making was permitted. During this time, Bach composed a setting of the only parts of the Mass held in common between the Catholic Church and Lutheran church, in which Bach was raised and a pious follower: the Kyrie and Gloria. This work, in B minor, is titled Missa, and dedicated it to the successor Augustus III, a convert to Catholicism. Bach had hoped to receive a court title from Augustus III, and with that aim he presented Augustus III with a copy of the score and a petition requesting an appointment as “Electoral Saxon Court Composer.” Missa would later serve as the first part of the Mass in B minor.

Missa is already a work of sizable scope. The Kyrie text is very short — “Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison” (Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy) — and it had traditionally been set in a tidy single movement with a three-part structure. Bach expanded this into a three-movement structure that in some recordings is about 18 minutes long in total.

The Gloria is a longer text, a celebratory text beginning with the invocation “Gloria in excelsis Deo” (Glory to God in the highest), and understandably a longer movement in most Mass settings, but the majority of Gloria settings are still quite modest compared to Bach’s treatment. He breaks the text into nine sections and each one gets a separate movement, creating a symmetrical structure based on the theological perfection of nine (three times three). Trinitarian symbolism was highly meaningful to Bach personally and in sacred music generally. The center movement, Domine Deus, is a duet for soprano and tenor featuring a flute solo. Throughout, the Gloria is punctuated by arias that pair a solo voice with a featured instrument or group: violin, oboe d’amore, horn, and bassoon. These delicate movements are counterbalanced by choruses of greater force.

In the last few years of his life, about 1748 - 1750, Bach wrote and assembled the remainder of what we now know as the Mass in B minor. With Missa already in hand, he set about creating the rest. The Credo, a recitation of the Nicene Creed (“I believe in one God…”) is the longest text in the Mass ordinary and easily lends itself to the same strategy of breaking up the text into multiple movements as Bach used for both parts of the Missa. The text is again segmented into nine parts, each part receiving a separate movement, arranged symmetrically around Crucifixus, describing the Crucifixion, and he titles the entire section Symbolum Nicenum.

Sanctus is reused from a 1724 work for six vocal parts and instrumental accompaniment. This earlier work only features the first half of the Sanctus text, omitting “Osanna in excelsis. Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Osanna in excelsis.” (Osanna in the highest. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. Osanna in the highest.). This text begins the final section written in the later period, though most performances quickly move from the end of Sanctus into Osanna in excelsis, effectively combining it all into a larger section.

The Agnus Dei text consists of three utterances, the last ending with the phrase “Dona nobis pacem” (Grant us peace). Bach give this final phrase its own movement: an ecstatic chorus to conclude an ecstatic work.

Composing and assembling a “Great Catholic Mass,” as C. P. E. Bach called it, has struck many historians as a peculiar occupation for such a staunchly Lutheran composer to undertake with no professional need to do so. It is only speculation, but consider that the Mass is a significant genre with a weight of meaning, and the oldest large-scale genre in European music. This is as true now as it was in Bach’s time. Perhaps Bach wished to leave something behind on earth that would place him in that tradition, and he did so in a manner quite typical to him: taking it to great extremes and leaving nothing undone. Consider two other large accomplishments of his: the two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier and what amounts to two years worth of weekly church cantatas.