Bach's B Minor Mass

(programme note written for a performance in May 2005)

In my youth there was one record in my Father's collection which held particular appeal for me: a work which was at once definitive and experimental, containing stylistic multiplicity whilst possessing a remarkable sense of continuity and symmetry, which is considered by many to be the pinnacle of a career in music.

I refer, of course, to the Beatles' 1969 album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Another work which might fit that description, Bach's Mass in B Minor, also sat in the paternal record collection and fascinated me to some extent, residing as it did in a big, black, intimidating-looking record box. But my Father explained to me that the Mass in B Minor doesn't really hold together, being a hotchpotch of music from different stages of Bach's career that was never composed as a single work. He also hinted that it was rather long and unwieldy. As a result, I stuck to exploring the delights of Sergeant Pepper, which in any case had an even more exciting record cover (though my Father maintained that it was an inferior album to the Beatles' previous opus Revolver, another of his views which I entirely disagree with).

To give my Father his due, the basic facts behind his dismissal of the greatest choral work ever written (I'm talking about the Bach, by the way) are essentially true; the Mass in B Minor is indeed constructed from a mixture of music ranging from the early years of Bach's career to the last years of his life, incorporating material spanning from 1714 to 1749. It is equally true that, in some respects, it is unwieldy - it is hardly suited to liturgical use, not just because of the resources it requires but also due to its sheer length. In any case, a full-blown setting of the Catholic mass was hardly ideal for use in the Lutheran church by which Bach was employed, and given the fact that he certainly never heard the Mass performed in its entirety we might ask whether he ever intended it to be treated as a single work. For all practical purposes in the eighteenth century, it made far more sense to use just the appropriate sections - the Credo, for example, was performed in 1786 by C. P. E. Bach, whilst the Kyrie and Gloria were originally used on their own, forming the Missa written by Bach for the Dresden Court in 1733.

Bach's late decision to expand the Missa with a mixture of newly-composed and reworked earlier material suggests an intention to encompass a diverse range of styles and his finest choral work in a single publication. As such, it has a lot in common with a earlier choral masterpiece, Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610; these combined the stile antico contrapuntal techniques of the Renaissance with the developing seconda prattica techniques the would define the Baroque era, and were published to showcase the ambitious composer's skill and diversity at a time when he was searching for employment as a church musician in Rome. The Mass in B Minor has a similar combination of old and new styles, but was assembled by Bach in 1748-49, right at the end of his career - rather than a showcase aimed at self-promotion, he was creating a monument designed for self-preservation. Perhaps the first composer to systematically ensure that his music would survive him, Bach spent the final years of his life compiling and organising everything he had written - the Mass in B Minor was the ultimate chronicle of his choral output, using the words of the Catholic mass to compile it in a perfect format for publication.

If the Mass in B Minor was nothing more than this - a collection of "greatest hits" conveniently organised in publishable form - then it could well be described as an unwieldy hotchpotch of unrelated (albeit brilliant) music. But it is clear that Bach's conception of the Mass goes far beyond that of a mere compilation. The inner logic of the movements which made up the 1733 Missa make Part I a flawless example of his tonal organisation, and the material which forms Parts III and IV, though largely parodied from earlier compositions, is heavily revised to give it a similar structural integrity. Although published separately, the fact that Part IV begins with the Osanna and Benedictus, which liturgically make no sense without the Sanctus, indicates that Part III and IV are intended to form a single section. This gives the Mass a distinctive chiastic structure, its central point being the Credo, composed during Bach's final years. As a single section it is a perfect example of Bach's symmetrical layout, with the Crucifixus at its centre.

Going back to my earlier comparison, the Mass in B Minor has none of the dilemmas posed in performance by Monteverdi's Vespers - what order should the movements be performed in? Where, liturgically, do the two Magnificat settings fit within the Vespers? How practically does one perform a series of movements which have been written for different groups and forces? Although many different solutions have been found to these problems, the considerable variation in performances of the Vespers is a visible indication of their original purpose as a showcase rather than a coherent single work. Bach's Mass in B Minor suffers from no such problem: within its range of styles and techniques it has balance and continuity, underpinned by the structure of the liturgy of the mass. Unwieldy it may be - but Bach was already experienced in writing large-scale works for occasional liturgical use; the narrative behind the St John and the St Matthew Passions perhaps gives them a more obvious dramatic structure to a modern audience, but Bach treats the mass with the same dramatic intensity and paces it with as much feel for its liturgical function. Just as the Passions were composed to focus, musically and theologically, on the sermon between their two halves, Bach made the focal point of his mass the Credo - ultimately placing the Crucifixus right at the heart of his setting.

This is far more, then, than clever musical symmetry; it is a musical statement of the Bach's central doctrinal beliefs. Just as the stylistic multiplicity and technical experimentation in the Mass represent and encapsulate Bach's ideals in music, theologically it is a final, definitive statement of the themes of incarnation and atonement which run through his major religious compositions. Seen in this way, the Mass in B Minor only makes complete sense when it is evaluated in its entirety - and it is a fitting pinnacle to Bach's mature choral works and to his career as a whole.