Bach: Mass in B Minor (Album 2)

Bach’s Mass in B Minor is undoubtedly his most spectacular choral work. Its combination of sizzling choruses and solo numbers covering the gamut of late-Baroque vocal expression render it one of the most joyous musical experiences in the western tradition.

Nevertheless, its identity is teased by countless contradictions: it appears to cover the entire Ordinary of the Catholic Liturgy, but in Bach’s Lutheran environment the complete Latin text was seldom sung as a whole; it seems to have the characteristics of a unified work, yet its origins are perhaps the most diverse for any of Bach’s large scale compositions; it was written in an age when composers generally prepared music for specific occasions, yet we have no firm evidence that the whole work was designed with a performance in mind.

Somehow, a mystique grew around the Mass soon after Bach’s death, and C.P.E. Bach performed the Credo section during the 1780s; but it was nearly a century before it was available in print. The first performances in the early decades of the nineteenth century were presented by institutions of which Bach could hardly have conceived – amateur choral societies with a vast number of performers. And, over the last century it has often been at the center of major disputes in the field of Bach scholarship: the question of its original function, its chronology, the legitimacy of the various manuscripts and, of course, its performance practice. Even the title ‘Mass in B Minor’ was not applied until the nineteenth century.

Bach’s autograph contains four discrete sections: the Kyrie and Gloria are together entitled Missa, these movements being the regular part of the sung Lutheran mass of Bach’s time; the second section is called Symbolum Nicenum – the Nicene Creed. Then follows the Sanctus – again an independent manuscript (a slightly modified version of a pre-existing setting); the fourth section contains the remaining texts of the Mass, ‘Benedictus’ to ‘Dona nobis pacem’. The fact that Bach gave each of these sections – John Butt

Miriam Feuersinger, Soprano I 
Hana Blažiková, Soprano II 
Carlos Mena, Countertenor 
Jakob Pilgram, Tenor 
Tobias Berndt, Bass 
La Cetra Basel
Andrea Marcon, Artistic & Musical Direction