Album insights
Achieving perfection is not about reaching a point where nothing more can be added, but where nothing more can be taken away. The integration of the triple Kyrie in the sound at the beginning of Bach's Mass in B minor could be seen almost as a physical act, one in which each of us, listener or performer, is individually or collectively engaged. These four dense, action-packed bars are presented as an impressive sequence of imploring gestures—equally graphic in their own way as an altarpiece by Titian or Rubens. As the powerful B minor chord fades and its painful aftermath lingers, we are left in eager anticipation. At the end of these bars, a vast, solemn fugue with a measured, prayer-like undertone emerges. We are at the beginning of one of the most epic musical journeys ever, a setting of the Mass Ordinarium that is unmatched in scope, grandeur, and sobriety.
Experiencing these powerful opening bars now makes it difficult for us to hear them as anything other than harbingers of his complete Mass. This strong impression of relentless unfolding suggests that the composer planned and executed it in one continuous flow from start to finish. However, facts as well as details gleaned from the various stages of shaping this great Mass indicate otherwise. Music scholars now generally agree that Bach completed it in the last two years of his life, but its very first beginnings date back around forty years, in those exploratory years he spent at the ducal court in Weimar. An early version of one of its movements, the Crucifixus, was indeed composed there, Bach's earliest music that found its way into his Mass: the opening chorus of the cantata BWV12, Weinen, Klagen from 1714.
In his middle years, Bach turned to setting Latin texts to music. What prompted him to consider setting the entire Mass, with its unchanging Catholic text in Latin, remains unclear. It was an unusual form that a Lutheran composer of the 18th century had to tackle, though Luther, who valued completeness and general comprehensibility, had sanctioned the continued use of the Missa brevis in liturgical worship—alongside the robust vernacular versions of the Greek and Latin original texts he left to his followers. Thus, the two movements, the Greek Kyrie and the subsequent Latin Gloria, were preserved and formed, along with their new equivalents in the German language, the short Mass as it was called in Lutheran liturgical practice.
Bach's first attempt in this shorter genre came about in 1733. At that time, in his forty-ninth year, his professional situation in Leipzig had worsened; the new mayor, Jacob Born, who had tried to persuade Bach to take his teaching duties more seriously, reported to the council that he showed "little inclination for work" and attempted to remove him from his office. Now, a thought occurred to him on how he could improve his situation or even escape it altogether. Three years earlier, in a memorandum titled "A Short, but Most Necessary Draft of a Well-Regulated Church Music," he had recommended to the Leipzig councilors to look to the Dresden court to learn how music could and should be organized. It was not so much a case of sour grapes as it was an admission that in the Saxon capital, music and its performers were valued far more highly than in Leipzig. There, the splendid array of musical talents offered a composer with Bach's professional skills and ambitions the opportunity to become active and flourish—or so he believed. It was at this precise moment that a position became available at the Sophienkirche in Dresden, where Bach had previously given acclaimed organ concerts, and this position was targeted by Bach—not for himself, but for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. Thanks to Bach's eager (albeit clandestine) support, Friedemann was offered the position and warmly supported by the Dresden Court Chapel. Bach now had a legitimate reason to travel to Dresden. Shortly after his arrival, he presented Friedrich August II, the new Saxon Elector, with a petition requesting a "predicate from your court chapel"—and added in beautiful calligraphy a set of voices from his new Missa brevis featuring the Kyrie and Gloria.
It is quite plausible that Bach considered the Missa from this presentation as a standalone work: Many years would pass before he considered incorporating the Dresden Missa's two opening movements into the complete Mass with which we are familiar. Such ambiguity in function and intent is characteristic of the piecemeal beginnings of the work we call the B minor Mass and which, to the chagrin of its 19th-century admirers, did not emerge fully formed and complete from the imagination of its creator. Many years of maturation and assimilation were required, and Bach likely never had the satisfaction of witnessing the work performed live as a dedicated summation of his compositional abilities.
For almost all nine movements of the Gloria, it can be shown that they had their origins in earlier compositions, some of which are lost. So, when Bach traveled to Dresden in June 1733, the basic framework of the Mass was likely already formed in his mind, and he had considered which of his earlier compositions would be best suited for inclusion. It would still require phenomenal skills to adapt them to the prescribed structure of the Ordinarium before the new Mass could be completed, and the voices copied. The obvious and desirable result would have been a performance of this short, two-movement Mass, ideally in the presence of its dedicatee, the Elector. It was equally suitable liturgically for the Lutheran Sophienkirche and the Catholic Court Church, where the Court Chapel regularly performed on formal occasions. In Bach's score, there are enough elements and similarities to the extensive Mass settings in the Neapolitan style that were in vogue in Dresden at that time, suggesting that the work was composed with this specific ensemble in mind: arias for the individual vocal soloists recruited from Italy in 1730 and various instrumental virtuosos within the chapel. Likewise, Bach's orchestration provided many opportunities to showcase the stylistic diversity and virtuosity he admired in the Court Orchestra and had praised in his "Draft." As tempting as it may be to imagine Bach directing a premiere featuring a star-studded performance of his embryonic B minor Mass in the congenial and well-prepared company of his Dresden friends (including the Bohemian composer Jan Dismas Zelenka, the violinist Johann Georg Pisendel, and now his son Friedemann), all evidence is lacking.
Over the following twelve years, traces of the Mass and its potential dissemination become lost. Had Bach shelved it in the crowded recesses of his memory, waiting for a series of new circumstances to resurface it and undergo a reassessment? If this were true, then the trigger necessary to set his creative energy in motion likely occurred around Christmas 1745. The Second Silesian War had just ended. For the first time in his life, Bach experienced the terrors and sufferings of war firsthand, as Prussian troops occupied Leipzig in the late autumn of 1745, devastating the surroundings. Three years later, he still recalled that time, "when we, alas! Had the Prussian invasion." A special thanksgiving service to celebrate the Peace of Dresden was held on Christmas Day in the University Church. This was one of those rare occasions where members of both of Bach's excellent church choirs could perform together. This provided the Leipzig audience with the opportunity to hear his unique five-part Latin cantata BWV191 Gloria in excelsis Deo—in which he hastily reassembled three of the Dresden Gloria movements into a new triptych. His six-part Christmas Sanctus, which had been heard for the first time on Christmas Day 1724, was almost certainly revived for this service too. In this way, five of the ultimately twenty-seven movements of the B minor Mass may have been performed together for the first time. Was he once again impressed by the quality of his music with Latin text? Perhaps he suddenly saw a new use for it—a chance to incorporate it into a much more ambitious framework that motivated him to create a definitive statement of faith comparable in scope and size to his Passion settings.
At some point, maybe immediately after the festive peace celebrations, certainly not waiting another two years, the significant decision was made, starting from the 1733 Dresden Mass, to complete his "Great Catholic Mass," as it was listed in the inventory compiled by C.P.E. Bach in 1790. The arrangement of existing music and newly composed sections for practical use did not affect his potential double goal: to provide an encyclopedic overview of all the styles he particularly valued in his own music and in the compositions of earlier times within a single work, and to achieve perfection in executing this work.
His preparations were meticulous. Initially, considerations involved fundamental structure, logistics, and style. The choice of the 1733 Mass as a starting point meant that some aspects were already clarified: the five-part vocal setting and full orchestration (with an expanded instrumentation in the Sanctus: triple trumpets, oboes, and high strings, now joined by a double set of lines), the mosaic of soloistic and choral movements, and the blending of styles—concertato movements in Italian fashion on one hand, and contrasting archaic polyphony on the other. The techniques of the stile antico, with which Bach had intensely engaged some years earlier, afforded Palestrina and Pergolesi a place of honor and served as a guide and starting point for his increasing interest in setting the Credo polyphonically. Especially six Mass settings by Giovanni Battista Bassani caught his attention. He transcribed all of them and, based on the Creed of the fifth