Journey’s End JS Bach’s Mass in B minor

JS Bach’s life was bookended by two great journeys that framed the relative stability of his career: in his youth, an eyewatering walk of 280 miles to Lübeck to see Buxtehude playing the organ in 1706; and in 1747 a gruelling trip from Leipzig to Frederick the Great’s court at Potsdam for a meeting that would result in the magnificent Musical Offering. Both events are illustrative of Bach’s character, and of how it evolved over time, so that by the end of his life he was able to create the Mass in B minor – some of it from much earlier material – as a sort of compendium of his achievements.

Bach’s son CPE Bach wrote of the Lübeck journey in his father’s obituary: ‘At a certain moment here in Arnstadt he had so strong an urge to hear as many good organists as he could that he set out for Lübeck, on foot, in order to hear the famous organist of St Mary’s, Dietrich Buxtehude.’ The journey was retraced and beautifully described by Horatio Clare in his radio broadcast and book, Something of His Art – Walking to Lübeck with JS Bach. Clare writes of features that seem virtually unchanged: ‘In the distance are villages with onion-domed churches; we hear bells at midday from Catholic spires, while the Protestant churches are quiet; in both, the architecture of the ages of faith are perfectly maintained’. The two Churches would find common ground in Bach’s B minor Mass, but at the time he would have been preoccupied by more immediate concerns. Clare wonders: ‘Did he fall into conversation, or hold himself apart? He must have been asked where he was going – on any foot journey someone is bound to enquire. To Lübeck, he surely said, but did he ever say why? Perhaps only another musician would have understood… His youth, purpose and ambition would have given him containment and confidence that did not need conversation to bolster it, but towards the end of the days and at his night stops he would have been ready for some human exchange. No one walks so far in silence.’

Skip to the 1747 journey to Potsdam, and Bach cuts a rather different figure. In contrast with the flamboyant Frederick, who employed CPE Bach at his court, the 62-year-old JS Bach by now represented the old order: sacred music, Germanic precision, learned counterpoint drawing upon recondite traditions. After being buffeted about on his trip from Leipzig, he was announced with the solemn declaration: ‘Gentlemen, old Bach is here.’ The meeting between this rather stubborn composer and the achingly fashionable king was politically charged, too; JS Bach’s patron, the Elector of Saxony, was Frederick’s opponent. Bach was behind enemy lines. Frederick liked to tease his guests and made the mistake of trying to humiliate Bach by setting him an apparently impossible task: to improvise a fugue based on a theme contrived to be unworkable, its intervals too awkward to weave into contrapuntal layers. Bach improvised a three-part fugue on the theme – ‘all those present were seized with astonishment’ – so Frederick pushed further by demanding a six-part fugue, something Bach had never composed let alone improvised. This piqued Bach into going away and writing his unprecedented six-part Ricercar, and the Musical Offering’s feats did not end there: in the canon per tonos the music modulates almost imperceptibly up a tone each time, creating what Douglas Hofstadter, in Gödel, Escher, Bach, called an ‘Endlessly Rising Canon’ or a ‘Strange Loop’, ending up where it started.

In between these two significant journeys, Bach’s life was fairly neatly divided into long-term positions. In 1708 he was made court organist at Weimar, remaining there for nine years. In 1717, the musical Prince Leopold of Cöthen invited Bach to become his Kappellmeister, and then in 1722 the cantor at St Thomas’s School in Leipzig died; after conducting his St John Passion there, Bach was appointed to the position. He remained in Leipzig for the rest of his life. How could such a man summarise such a career? What could do justice to a figure so determined that he ran his feet ragged seeking musical inspiration from a mentor, or tore-up the rule book to prove a king wrong? Perhaps a great Mass was the only solution. Bach was a Lutheran, for whom a mass usually consisted of just a ‘Kyrie’ and a ‘Gloria’. He had written five Lutheran masses, but needed something grander as a final statement of his prowess in this field. Perhaps the rebellious spirit that defied Frederick’s goading also enjoyed the idea of beating Catholics at their own game. The work was not written to fulfil a patron’s commission, nor for any specific occasion; it is a reflection of Bach’s devout Christian faith, but is also a portfolio compiled at the end of his life to showcase his range as a composer.

The earliest of Bach’s Lutheran masses, the Missa dating from 1733, forms the basis of the Mass in B minor, which includes the more intricate sections of the Catholic liturgy. Following a troubled time in Leipzig, Bach had dedicated the 1733 Missa to Augustus III or Elector Friedrich August II of Saxony – a recent convert to Catholicism – hoping for patronage at the Dresden court. He referred to the Missa as an ‘insignificant example of my musical skill’, but clearly held the music in high esteem: he hung on to the score, sending only the parts to the Elector, and later reworked elements of the Missa’s ‘Gloria’ into his Christmas cantata, Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191. Then, towards the end of the 1740s, Bach returned to the 1733 Missa, augmenting the original with further movements to create the Mass in B minor. This title was never used by Bach, however. Some time after his death it became known as a ‘Missa Catholica’; CPE Bach archived the work as the Great Catholic Mass; and the title of Mass in B minor became established in the 19th Century. The work was almost certainly not performed in its entirety in Bach’s lifetime, and it was first published in 1845. Curiously, Bach organised the manuscript of his Mass into four folders; ever-practical, he may have thought it wise to divide this vast work into manageable portions suitable for separate performances. Part 1, ‘Missa’, comprises the ‘Kyrie’ and ‘Gloria’; Part 2, ‘Symbolum Nicenum’, contains the ‘Credo’; Part 3, ‘Sanctus’, is devoted to just that movement; and the remaining movements are in a folder called ‘Osanna – Benedictus –Agnus Dei et – Dona nobis pacem’.

The Mass begins with a powerful fourbar declaration, followed by a fugal ‘Kyrie eleison’ scored for five-part chorus, pairs of flutes and oboes d’amore, bassoon and strings. This imposing opening is contrasted with a graceful ‘Christe eleison’ for soprano duet and strings, before we hear the second ‘Kyrie’, again in an intricately layered fugal texture and in keeping with the austere ‘stile antico’ (when Baroque composers emulated the purity of Renaissance music).

The largest section of the work, the ‘Gloria’, is structured symmetrically. It opens with a five-part chorus for which the woodwinds, strings and continuo are joined by trumpets and drums. This concise opening is contrasted with the rich and stately ‘Et in terra pax’, after which comes a soprano aria, ‘Laudamus te’, decorated by an ornate violin line. The ‘Gratias agimus tibi’ is another ‘stile antico’ four-part chorus, the music of which may date back to Bach’s cantata Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir (BWV 29, 1731). The central point of the ‘Gloria’ is occupied by the ‘Domine Deus’, a duet for soprano and tenor, with muted violins and violas and a flute melody interlaced with the vocal lines. For the exquisite ‘Qui tollis peccata mundi’ Bach adapted music from his cantata Schauet doch und sehet, ob irgendein Schmerz sei (BWV 46, 1723). The beautiful aria ‘Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris’ is for mezzo-soprano and oboe d’amore, and a bass solo follows at ‘Quoniam’, with colourful orchestration including independent writing for bassoons and solo horn. This leads seamlessly into the exultant chorus, ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu, in Gloria Dei Patris, Amen’, scored for the same forces as the opening chorus of the ‘Gloria’ in order to unify this section of the Mass.

Two of the choruses in the ‘Credo’ include quotes from Gregorian chant, the first appearing in the tenor line before being developed into a brilliant five-part choral texture. The perky four-part chorus ‘Patrem omnipotentem’ derives from Bach’s cantata Gott, wie dein Name, BWV 171 (1729). It is followed by an intricate duet for soprano and alto (countertenor), ‘Et in unum Dominum’, in which the pair of oboes d’amore add colour, preceding the sombre, long-breathed ‘Et incarnus est’. Another early cantata, Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (BWV 12, 1714), forms the basis of the poignant four-part ‘Crucifixus’, its mournful tone accentuated by the addition of flutes. There may have been a (now lost) instrumental precedent for the heavily instrumental ‘Et resurrexit’, its triumphant five-part chorus reinforced by a powerful ensemble including oboes, flutes, trumpets and drums. The oboe d’amores are again to the fore in the bass aria ‘Et in Spiritum Sanctum’, intertwining with the solo part. The majestic ‘Confiteor’ is a tour de force of ‘stile antico’ writing in five-part counterpoint, in which Bach again quotes plainchant. This section culminates dramatically in the final chorus of the ‘Credo’, ‘Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorem’, which includes material from Bach’s cantata, Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille, BWV 120, written before 1730.

The music of the ‘Sanctus’ dates back as far as Christmas 1724, and is generously scored for six-part chorus with three trumpets, three oboes, drums, strings and continuo. The ‘Osanna’ includes music from Bach’s cantata Preise dein Glücke (BWV 215, 1734), and is the only section in the whole Mass for which Bach employs a double choir. This passage is articulated twice, sandwiching a lyrical ‘Benedictus’ for solo tenor introduced by an elaborate flute solo (sometimes played on the violin).

The ‘Agnus Dei’ represents one of the pinnacles of the Mass, its haunting alto (countertenor) solo based on an aria from Bach’s Ascension Oratorio, BWV 11 of 1735. The Mass culminates in the joyful four-part ‘Dona nobis pacem’, which echoes music used in the ‘Gratias agimus tibi’ section of the ‘Gloria’ – a repetition that creates a sense of wholeness and resolution at the end of the work. Bach was blind by the time he finished his Mass and his travelling days were behind him, but his mind’s extraordinary capacity for seeking out musical pathways that connected past and present, Catholic and Protestant, remained unmatched.