B Minor Mass

J.S. Bach, Miss in B Minor, BWV 232 
    With Nola Richardson, soprano
      Kristen Hahn, soprano
      Reginald Mobley, countertenor
      Steven Soph, tenor
      Steven Eddy, bass

Johann Sebastian Bach’s B Minor Mass is one of the most celebrated choral works ever written but it was neither published nor performed during Bach’s lifetime.  Nor is it mentioned by name in any of Bach’s surviving letters or other contemporaneous documents.  But when Bach died in 1750, his second son, C. P. E. Bach, inherited many of his father’s manuscripts.  Among them were four folders, grouped together, without an all-encompassing title but with scores inside, each at least partly in Bach’s own handwriting.  Together, once published, they became known as the B Minor Mass.

Some scholars have debated whether Bach ever intended the scores of all four to be performed as a single work.  They suggest he may simply have been attempting to document all the different forms of choral music then in existence, much as he  did for counterpoint in his unfinished work The Art of the Fuge.  The most persuasive argument that he did consider all four to be a single work is Bach’s habit of writing “Fine D[eus] S[oli] G[loria]” (which translates as “End—to the glory of God alone”) on the last page of every manuscript.  With respect to the four folders, that ascription appears only on the last page of the fourth part.

Scholars have long noted that the Mass follows neither Protestant nor Catholic standards but seamlessly combines the two.  Most believe that was Bach’s attempt to increase mutual understanding among Christians by reconciling them.  Fine Deus Soli Gloria!