Mass in B Minor

Bach didn’t so much compose the Mass in B Minor as compile it. He based the work on three separate mass movements he’d already written: a Sanctus from 1724, and a Kyrie and Gloria composed for Dresden in 1733. He took most of the rest of the music from his church cantatas, leaving only a handful of sections to be specially written when he assembled the Mass during the final years of his life. Bach selected this music to produce a compendium of all the styles he had used throughout his career: a sequence of highlights from his German cantatas which he now wanted to preserve by associating them with the timeless words of the Latin mass. Each section of the Mass is constructed on a magnificent scale, mixing choral and solo movements, supported by a ceremonial orchestra which, in addition to strings, includes flutes, oboes, horn and trumpets. There is no record of this, Bach’s most ambitious work, ever being performed in its entirety during his lifetime. A complete setting of the mass had no place in the services of his own Lutheran church, and was far too long for a Catholic service. Why did Bach go to all this trouble? The most likely explanation is that he planned the Mass in B Minor as a final summing-up of his art—a grand musical Last Will and Testament.