Mass in B Minor BWV
232 - J.S Bach (1685-1750)
Bach’s career
frustrations
Most of us will recognise that demoralising feeling where,
at certain times in a career, good work is left unrecognised by those who
should know better. Bach’s duties in his
new appointment as Thomaskantor at
Leipzig from 1723 had instigated a concentrated and exceptionally productive
period of composition which had yielded several Passion settings, including the
famous St Matthew Passion, and no
fewer than five annual cycles of church cantatas. Such activity wasn’t unusual – other
composers of the day, such as the preferred choice of the Leipzig authorities,
Telemann, had written many more. Retrospectively,
of course, we have come to acknowledge the superb craftsmanship underlying Bach’s
output. Evidently, his employers
remained unmoved and so when, towards the end of the 1720s, his industry came
to rather an abrupt halt, we can only imagine the state of his mind.
Other mitigating circumstances must have included his sense
of unease for the financial security of his growing family which, itself,
frequently featured unspeakable personal tragedy in the form of the untimely death
of his first wife and, prematurely, of more than half of his children from both
marriages. Moreover, he may well have
been simply rather fed up with the monotony of his existence. Perhaps he had reached that point where fresh
challenges were needed. By and by, of
course, these presented themselves.
In 1729 he took on
the directorship of Leipzig’s prestigious Collegium Musicum and additionally
accepted the title of honorary Kapellmeister to Duke Christian of Saxe Weissenfels. Such appointments served not only to
reinforce his standing within the region, providing welcome familial security,
but also to broaden the general scope of his creativity beyond the limitations
of the Lutheran Church and its liturgy.
In 1733, following the death of the Elector of Saxony and
King of Poland, August the Strong, a five month period of mourning resulted in the
banning of all musical performances.
Bach, seemingly continuing his quest for wider recognition, seized upon
this unexpected freedom to write a piece of liturgical music for the Catholic
court at Dresden in the hope of procuring a court title from the new
Elector. The result was the Kyrie and Gloria from the B Minor Mass.
In the accompanying letter, he wrote:
For some years and up to the present moment I have held the Directorium of the Music in the
two principal churches in Leipzig, but have innocently had to suffer one injury
or another, and on occasion also a diminution of the fees accruing to me in
this office; but these injuries would disappear altogether if Your Royal
Highness would grant me the favour of conferring upon me a title of Your
Highness’s Court Capella, and would let Your High Command for the issuing of
such a document go forth to the proper place.
Ultimately, Bach’s career plan was successful although,
despite evidence that his music was performed in Dresden, it wasn’t until 1736
that the title of ‘Hofkapellmeister’ to the Elector of Saxony and King of
Poland was conferred upon him.
Bach’s developing
Mass
The Lutheran church had little need for Mass settings and,
on the few major church feasts when such music was required, Bach would
invariably resort to settings by other composers such as Palestrina, whose
six-voice Missa Sine Nomine he was
known to have copied out and subsequently performed with added trumpets, trombones
and continuo. Moreover, the Lutheran
missa was a brief affair, consisting only of shortened settings of the Kyrie and Gloria, and omitting all of the remaining sections.
The two parts of Bach’s Dresden mass were, by contrast,
exceptionally broad in scope, very much in keeping with customary practice at
this court, which was to allocate separate movements to each new line of words. Nevertheless it is clear that he wanted to
impress, placing great value in the use of contrasting compositional styles and
the opulence of the scoring – five part choir, orchestra including timpani,
three trumpets, horn, oboes, flutes and bassoons alongside strings and
continuo. In the reflective Kyrie, an
operatic-style duet in the Christe Eleison is framed by an immense opening Kyrie
I, featuring an extensive 5-part fugue with obbligato orchestra, and a more
retrospective Kyrie II in which the orchestra merely doubles the vocal
counterpoint.
By contrast, the opening movement of the Gloria is an
effervescent affirmation of faith with trumpets and timpani added to the
ensemble. Throughout the whole of the Gloria, virtuosic
demands made on chorus and orchestra in four extensive choral movements are matched
by highly characterful solo movements which respectively throw the spotlight on
solo violin, flute, oboe d’amore and horn whilst giving all five choral
soloists a thorough vocal workout.
Bach’s completed mass
Whether Bach had always intended these movements to form the
opening of a completed Grand Solemn Mass is debatable. Indeed, no further evidence of work exists
until the final few years of his life by which time his compositional motives
were much changed. By 1748, we find an
aging Bach very much preoccupied with his legacy - putting together groups of
compositions to represent the summation of a life’s work. Alongside other works from this time - the Goldberg Variations for keyboard, The Musical Offering and the famously
unfinished Art of Fugue for chamber
ensembles, ‘Vom Himmel hoch’ Variations
for organ - he seemed to be looking for another project which would represent
the very best of his choral output. In
such a context, the Symbolum Nicenum, Sanctus, Osanna, Benedictus, Agnus Dei
and Dona nobis pacem came into existence, completing his magnificent B Minor
Mass.
Interestingly, few of these additional movements were newly
composed, most being ‘parodies’ of former works – where old music was recycled
and presented in a new context. Such
techniques were perfectly commonplace and often resulted in the parody being
more effective than the original. It
also presented the reflective Bach with opportunities to look through what must
have been a vast library of personal manuscripts for material which might be
fit for purpose. For example, the ‘Crucifixus’
came from his cantata no 12 of 1714, the original words ‘Weinen, Klagen,
Sorgen, Zagen’ (Weeping, lamenting, worrying, fearing) neatly fitting the
measure of ‘Crucifixus, crucifixus…’ and the music possessing an apposite
sharpness of dissonance perhaps to represent the crown of thorns and the nails
on the cross.
By means of unification with the existing 1733 music, Bach
went further than ever before to present every conceivable compositional device
in the most consummate, artistic manner.
In particular, the liturgical canon of the Credo aptly receives musical,
canonical treatment with the original latin plainchant turned into a complex
canon for five voices. Later, in the ‘Confiteor’
he returns to plainchant, employing the old fashioned device of cantus firmus
and, hence, nodding to the great Renaissance composers of the sixteenth century. The dona nobis pacem forms a musical reprise
of the Gloria’s ‘gratias agimus tibi’.
Bach’s musical legacy
Bach wasn’t the only one thinking about wrapping-up his
life’s work. In 1749, we find his ever
callous and insensitive employers busy interviewing candidates to replace him
at Leipzig in the expectation of his
eventual death. Around this time,
apparently an afterthought, he extracted the words ‘Et incarnatus est’ from the
end of the duet ‘Et in unum Dominum,’ thus creating a separate movement which
was apparently his final choral setting[1]. Bach
died in July 1750, his demise apparently hastened by the services of a maverick
English eye surgeon, whose botched series of operations left him blind and in
much distress and pain.
Bach would never hear his completed mass performed. It seems that no serious steps were taken
during his remaining lifetime so to do.
This has led to some commentators suggesting that, alongside works such
as the aforementioned Art of Fugue, it
was never intended for performance so much as legacy and academic study. Though
such a perspective seems rather silly, it is borne from certain inescapable
truths not least of which is the shear difficulty of the notes. We know, in the later eighteenth century,
that Bach had become the musical cognoscenti’s best kept secret – exceptionally highly respected, though rather unfashionable with only his keyboard
works widely shared. Mozart famously
declared, on hearing his motet Singet dem
Herrn ein neues Lied, “What is this?
Now there is something one can learn from!” Haydn, in his old age, took the trouble to
acquire a manuscript of the B minor mass.
Beethoven was acutely aware both of its existence and by the challenge posed
through its sheer scale when contemplating his own Missa Solemnis in the 1820s.
However, it was well over a hundred years after Bach’s death before the first
complete performance.
That Romantic view of a great composer left forgotten with
manuscripts gathering dust or, worse still, frittered away is misleading to say
the least. His library was mainly
divided between his two eldest surviving sons: Wilhelm Friedman and Carl Philip
Emmanuel and it is certainly true that the former was rather profligate – we will
never come to know the many important works lost through his reckless deeds. Thankfully, by far the most comprehensive
collection of works derives from CPE Bach’s careful curatorship including the
complete manuscript of the B minor Mass.
The choice of B minor as a key is strangely misleading, since the
predominant key is D major – handy for the tuning of trumpets at the time. The seriousness of the initial minor key,
used in 5 of the 27 movements, gives way to the optimism of D major in 13
others, including the very end where, for the first and only time in the whole
piece, Bach signs off his work, as indeed was the case with all of his
liturgical works, S.D.G - ‘Soli Deo Gloria’ – for glory to God alone.
[1] There
is evidence that, in his final week of life in July 1750, a completely blind Bach
was, by dictation, tinkering with the harmony of his chorale setting, “Wenn wir
in höchsten Nöten sein” (When we are in greatest distress), and changing its
text to the original sixteenth century version: “Vor deinen Thron tret ich
hiermit” (Before your throne I now appear).
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