Mass in B Minor, BWV 232

Johann Sebastian Bach completed the h-Moll-Messe, an extended version of the Mass ordinary, in 1749, the year before his death. As usual for its 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. 
 
The background to this composition began on 1 February 1733, when 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. 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. 
 
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 in B minor was likely never performed in its entirety during Bach's lifetime. Its earliest documented complete performance took place in 1859. 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 Register, a project to protect and preserve culturally significant documents and manuscripts.
 
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." However, 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"). 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). It soon fell from common usage, but the prepositional phrase "in B Minor" survives.
 
The Mass in B minor is widely regarded as one of the supreme achievements of classical music. Alberto Basso summarizes the work as follows: “The Mass in B minor is the consecration of a whole life: started in 1733 for "diplomatic" reasons, it was finished in the very last years of Bach's life, when he had already gone blind. This monumental work is a synthesis of every stylistic and technical contribution the Cantor of Leipzig made to music. But it is also the most astounding spiritual encounter between the worlds of Catholic glorification and the Lutheran cult of the cross.” Scholars have suggested that the Mass in B minor belongs in the same category as The Art of Fugue, as a summation of Bach's deep lifelong involvement with musical tradition—in this case, with choral settings and theology. Bach scholar Christoph Wolff describes the work as representing "a summary of his writing for voice, not only in its variety of styles, compositional devices, and range of sonorities, but also in its high level of technical polish ... Bach's mighty setting preserved the musical and artistic creed of its creator for posterity." It was described in the 19th century by the editor Hans Georg Nägeli as "The Announcement of the Greatest Musical Work of All Times and All People" ("Ankündigung des größten musikalischen Kunstwerkes aller Zeiten und Völker").Despite being seldom performed, the Mass was appreciated by some of Bach's greatest successors: by the beginning of the 19th century Forkel and Haydn possessed copies.
 
The piece is orchestrated for two flutes, two oboes d'amore (doubling on oboes), two bassoons, one natural horn (in D), three natural trumpets (in D), timpani, violins I and II, violas and basso continuo (cellos, basses, bassoons, organ and harpsichord). A third oboe is required for the Sanctus.
 
The work consists of 27 sections. Tempo and metrical information and parodied cantata sources come from Christoph Wolff's 1997 critical urtext edition, and from George Stauffer’s Bach: The Mass in B Minor. Details of the parodied movements and their sources are given here:

Kyrie and Gloria ("Missa")

1. Kyrie eleison
2. Christe eleison
3. Kyrie eleison
4. Gloria in excelsis
5. Et in terra pax
6. Laudamus te
7. Gratias agimus tibi
8. Domine Deus
9. Qui tollis peccata mundi
10. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris
11. Quoniam tu solus sanctus
12. Cum Santo Spiritu

 
Credo (“Symbolum Nicenum”)

1. Credo in unum Deum
2. Patrem omnipotentem
3. Et in unum Dominum
4. Et incamatus est
5. Crucifixus
6. Et resurrexit
7. Et in Spiritum Sanctum
8. Confiteor
9. Et expect

 
Sanctus

1. Sanctus

 
Osanna, Benedictus, Agnus Dei and Dona Nobis Pacem

1. Osanna
2. Benedictus
3. Osanna (da capo)
4. Agnus Dei
5. Dona nobis pacem

 
Here are four albums:
 
Bach J.S.: Mass in B minor, BWV232. Masaaki Suzuki with Carolyn Sampson (soprano I), Rachel Nicholls (soprano II), Robin Blaze (alto), Gerd Türk (tenor) & Peter Kooij (bass), and Bach Collegium Japan. Release Date: 29 Oct 2007. Label: BIS. Catalogue No: BISSACD170102. Hi-Res FLAC (Lossless, 44.1 kHz, 24 bit).

Awards:
Diapason d’Or de l’Annee, 2008.
Gramophone Awards, 2008, Finalist – Baroque Vocal.
Presto Recording of the Week, 20 October 2007.
 
Bach J.S.: Mass in B minor, BWV232. John Eliot Gardiner with Hannah Morrison (soprano), Esther Brazil (mezzo), Meg Bragle (alto), Kate Symonds-Joy (alto), Peter Davoren (tenor), Nick Pritchard (tenor), Alex Ashworth (bass), David Shipley (bass), and Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists. Release Date: 30 Oct 2015. Label: SDG. Catalogue No: SDG722. Hi-Res FLAC (Lossless, 96 kHz, 24 bit).
 
Awards:
Gramophone Awards, 2016, Shortlisted – Baroque Vocal.
Gramophone Magazine, Editor’s Choice.
Presto Recordings of the Year, Finalist 2015.
 
Bach J.S.: Mass in B minor, BWV232. Peter Dijkstra with Christina Landshamer (soprano), Anke Vondung (mezzo-soprano), Kenneth Tarver (tenor) & Andreas Wolf (bass-baritone), and Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks & Concerto Köln. Release Date: 27 Jan 2017. Label: BR Klassik. Catalogue No: 900910. Hi-Res FLAC (Lossless, 48 kHz, 24 bit). 
 
Award:
International Classical Music Awards, 2022, Nominated – Symphonic Music.
 
 
Bach J.S.: Mass in B minor, BWV232. John Butt (director) with Susan Hamilton (soprano), Cecilia Osmond (soprano), Margot Oitzinger (alto), Thomas Hobbs (tenor) & Matthew Brook (bass), and Dunedin Consort & Players. Label: Linn. Catalogue No: CKD354. Hi-Res FLAC (Lossless, 88.2 kHz, 24 bit).
 
Award:
Gramophone Magazine, August 2010, Editor’s Choice.

​Reference:
Mass in B minor. (2024, October 21). In Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_in_B_minor