“I had to work hard,” said Johann Sebastian Bach. “Anyone who works as hard will get just as far.” The hard-laboring, long-suffering, incomparably talented German composer was born in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany, into a family that had produced church and town-band musicians for over 150 years. Orphaned at ten, he was raised by an older brother who was an organist, and who taught young Sebastian music. The boy was endlessly curious about every aspect of the art. Bach began his professional career at 18, when he was appointed organist at a church in Arnstadt. At 23, he became court organist and chamber musician to the Duke of Weimar. During his nine years in this post (1708-1717), he gained fame as an organ virtuoso and composer. From 1717 to 1723, Bach served the Prince of Anhalt-Cöthen, producing suites, concertos, sonatas for various instruments, a great amount of keyboard music, and the six Brandenburg Concertos. Not long after the death in 1720 of his wife, Maria Barbara, the mother of his seven children, the composer married Anna Magdalena, a young singer who proved to be a loyal and understanding wife; she also provided her mate with thirteen more children.
When he was 38, Bach took the position of Cantor of St. Thomas’s in Leipzig, one of the most important musical posts in Germany. He taught at the choir school, which trained the choristers of the city’s chief churches (he had to teach non-musical subjects as well); he also served as music director, composer, choirmaster, and organist of St. Thomas’ Church. In this post, Bach produced monumental musical masterworks, though he was occupied by the cares of his large family and circle of friends, and the tasks of a very busy professional life. He also suffered ongoing struggles with the officials of town, school, and church, who never recognized that they were dealing with perhaps the greatest musical genius ever born. The composer described himself as living “amidst continual vexation, envy, and persecution . . .,” but he remained in Leipzig for 27 years. At last, his eyesight failed, and he suffered a stroke followed by a raging fever. He died July 28, 1750, leaving a small worldly estate, but bequeathing an incalculable wealth of musical treasures to succeeding generations.
Even before his death, Bach’s music was considered outmoded and unfashionable, even by his own talented sons, who helped to shape the new music of their own generation. During some seven decades, Bach’s music was all but forgotten, and it took musicians to rediscover this musical master. Mozart apparently heard Bach’s motet, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, with a shock: “What is this? Now there is something we can learn from!” he said, and it was Beethoven’s brilliant playing of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” that first gained him a reputation as a virtuoso performer in Vienna. But it was under Felix Mendelssohn in 1829 that the great St. Matthew Passion was performed for the first time since its composer’s death, and thereafter, interest in and publication, study, and performance of Bach’s works began to flourish worldwide.
Bach lived in a world where musicians were servant-craftsmen, and he wrote music for his masters in the churches, palaces, and town councils of 18th-century Germany. He dedicated much of his music, however, to “the glory of God alone;” and indeed, the glory of his music, some of the greatest of all time, brings us joy in the performing and in the hearing.
In his later years, Bach appears to have planned a number of musical collections as summations for posterity of his compositional skills and his artistic development over some 30 years. Indeed, he produced superlative retrospective collections of keyboard works in various forms containing considerable quantities of earlier material carefully reworked with the wisdom of age and experience, including the Klavierübung, Dritter Teil, a collection of organ works to be played in conjunction with the German text of the Mass. Was the mighty Mass in b minor, whose movements constitute a veritable encyclopedia of styles, techniques, forms, and treatments, also intended as such a musical legacy, but for choral forces singing the Latin text of the Mass? Bach compiled the Mass from two main sources: a 1724 Sanctus, and a Missa (consisting of Kyrie and Gloria) first performed in April 1733 for the new ruler, Friedrich Augustus III, on his visit to Leipzig to accept the town's oath of allegiance (Bach had submitted the Missa with a petition asking that he be appointed court composer, but he was initially denied). He also adapted many other sections of the work from his other cantatas' arias and choruses. Only a few movements seem to have been written specifically for the Mass when Bach assembled it sometime between 1745 and 1750. There is no evidence that Bach intended this elaborate and complex work for performance on any specific occasion. A complete setting of the Latin text of the Mass had a place in the liturgy of Bach's Lutheran church, since St. Thomas' Church was the "official chapel" of the local university (whose scholars routinely worked in Latin). However, a setting that was so long and that required such large and well-trained musical forces would have had little prospect of performance, though such a grand work might conceivably have been performed on some highly significant occasion, such as the beginning of a university term. In any case, there is no evidence that the Mass in b minor was ever performed in its entirety in any context, sacred or secular, during Bach's lifetime. Although various portions of the Mass were performed over the next sixty years, it was not until 1859 (more than a century after Bach’s death) that the entire Mass was heard in a single performance (in Leipzig, under the direction of Felix Mendelssohn). Bach seems to have viewed the mass as the most historically enduring of musical forms, and thus it may well have been that he invested so much care and energy in this great work in order to leave it as part of his “last musical will and testament” for his family, for the glory of his Maker, and for the edification of future generations.
Bach structured this masterpiece in such a way that both its anthologized nature and its sense of unity are evident. The original manuscript shows that Bach divided the work into 4 major sections, the first entitled Missa (the Kyrie and Gloria), the second called Symbolum Nicenum (the Credo), the third being the Sanctus, and the fourth entitled Osanna, Benedictus, Agnus Dei et Dona nobis pacem. Each section is further divided to produce 26 independent movements. Of the 17 choruses in this Mass, ten are set for five voices (SSATB) in the Italian Baroque choral tradition, five are set for four voices (SATB), one is written for 6 voices (SSAATB), and one is for two antiphonal four-voice choirs.
The forceful Kyrie I, a five-part fugue reminiscent of a funeral march, is followed by a contrasting Christe (a lovely soprano duet). The Kyrie II is a four-part fugal chorus in the “old style” of polyphony. One can hear anguished pleas for God’s mercy in the fugue’s tortured, chromatic subject and its syncopated entrances.
The contrasting Gloria is a joyous hymn of thanksgiving and praise. Its opening section (“Gloria”) is a reworking of a lost instrumental concerto to which Bach later added the chorus parts. The “Et in terra pax” is a new composition joined seamlessly to the “Gloria;” its gently rocking eighth-notes set a mood of peace and comfort. In the “Laudamus te,” the solo violin and solo soprano voice compete in soaring, seraphic praise. The glowing “Gratias agimus,” somber “Qui tollis,” and exuberant “Cum Sancto spiritu” are all adaptations of pieces from cantatas which, like all the reworkings in the Mass, have been chosen and rewritten with such care and skill that in most cases the new work surpasses the original. The two jubilant choruses, the opening “Gloria” and the closing “Cum Sancto spiritu,” both resplendent with clarino trumpets and timpani, frame the entire nine-section movement.
Like the Gloria, the Credo (or Symbolum Nicenum) has a self-contained musical architecture. Its nine sections are arranged in a symmetrical structure, with the Crucifixus at the core, and the other pieces framing it on either side corresponding to one another in form and weight in the following pattern: A (“Credo” and “Patrem”) – B (“Et in unum”) – C (“Et incarnatus est,” “Crucifixus, and “Et resurrexit”) – B (“Et in spiritum sanctum”) – A (“Confiteor” and “Et expecto”).
In the “Credo,” the five-part chorus and the two violin parts develop the Gregorian chant melody associated with the text in the Roman Catholic liturgy. The “Patrem” is an adaptation of a chorus from Cantata 171. The soprano-alto duet “Et in unum Dominum” is followed by the choral “Et incarnatus est,” which features a descending line illustrating the concept of Christ’s coming down from heaven to become human. The “Crucifixus,” a heart-rending lament constructed from another cantata chorus, is cast in the form of a passacaglia, a slow dance in triple meter that consists of variations over a repeated, chromatically-descending bass line. This piece, in e minor, takes an unexpected harmonic turn six measures before the end, and the final cadence in G major allows the piece to end in hopeful expectation. The exultant chorus, “Et resurrexit,” proclaims the triumph of the resurrection with trumpets and tympani, and features a virtuosic solo line for the basses of the chorus. In the aria, “Et in spiritum sanctum Dominum,” the oboes d’amore join the bass voice as equal musical partners. The five-part choral “Confiteor” takes the form of a chorale fantasia; the slow, meditative music that accompanies the appearance of the text “Et expecto” features highly unusual harmonies that shift kaleidoscopically as the listener ponders what the confession of faith in the Creed might lead one to expect. This transitional passage leads directly into the closing outburst of choral and instrumental jubilation, “Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum,” a reshaping of another cantata chorus in concerto form. Bach uses a trinity of musical motifs contrapuntally to express the excitement of anticipation, rejoicing, and resurrection to everlasting life.
The transcendent six-part Sanctus, festooned with trumpets, drums, and winds, features a swaying triplet rhythm; one can picture the saints joining the heavenly hosts in procession to the throne of the Heavenly King. The form of this movement is modeled on that of the church sonata, with its grand and stately opening section followed by a spirited and festive fugue (“Pleni sunt coeli et terra”) as heaven and earth are filled with God’s glorious splendor.
The Osanna, repeated after the Benedictus to build a tripartite structure, is the only double chorus movement of the Mass, and is a reshaping of the opening chorus of Cantata 215. The solo instrument that accompanies the solo tenor in the Benedictus is not specified, but a flute works well. The Agnus Dei is an alto solo whose model is an aria from the Ascension Oratorio. The music of the final chorus, Dona nobis pacem, is identical with that of the “Gratias agimus” in the Gloria. The reappearance of this music suggests that this prayer for peace becomes Bach’s own prayer of thanksgiving for the serenity he has found after a lifetime of writing music for God’s glory in very trying circumstances. It forms a most fitting conclusion for this work, the ultimate example of Bach’s genius (called “the perfect synthesis of music and theology” and the “greatest musical composition of all times and peoples”), and Bach’s supreme statement of his profound Christian faith.