Mass in B minor

A Latin setting of the Mass by Johann Sebastian Bach, assembled from music written at different times and completed around 1749. Its scale and stylistic range make it a major synthesis of Bach’s sacred vocal music.

Ordinary of the Mass: The set of Mass texts whose wording remains largely constant across the Catholic liturgical year. The work sets the Ordinary’s five main sections, though not every movement served ordinary worship.
Parody mass: A Mass whose music adapts or reuses material from pre-existing compositions. Bach refashioned earlier sacred and secular pieces for several movements.
Johann Sebastian Bach: A German composer and organist of the Baroque period, born in 1685 and died in 1750. Bach compiled and revised the work over decades, completing its final form near the end of his life.
Et incarnatus est: The Credo movement setting the words about Christ becoming incarnate and being made human. Bach added this movement late in the work’s assembly, refining the Credo’s sequence.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: A German composer and keyboard player, the second surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach. He inherited the score and directed an early performance of parts of the work after his father’s death.
Kyrie: The opening section of the Mass Ordinary, traditionally pleading for mercy in Greek. Bach begins with a five-part Kyrie that establishes the work’s monumental scale.
Contrafactum: A vocal work in which new words are fitted to an existing melody or composition. Several movements received Latin liturgical texts fitted to music Bach had composed for other purposes.
Dresden: The capital of Saxony and a major center of European music and court culture. Bach prepared the Kyrie and Gloria in 1733 for presentation to the Saxon court in Dresden.
Crucifixus: The Credo movement setting the words about Christ’s crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. Its lamenting chaconne bass grounds one of the Mass’s most concentrated expressive passages.
First complete performance of the Mass in B minor: The first documented performance of Bach’s complete Mass in B minor, given in 1859 in Leipzig. The work’s full public performance came more than a century after Bach completed its compilation.

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Mass (music)Broader topic: Its concert-scale design became one of the genre’s most celebrated examples.