Gli Angeli Genève, Stephan MacLeod - Bach : h-Moll Messe, BWV 232 (2021) [Hi-Res]

The Mass in B minor holds a very special place in J.S. Bach’s output: a work of grandeur, an opus ultimum, it was not composed as such but is the result of an assembly of pieces written at different times and for different circumstances. Bach worked on it during the years 1748-1749, until his eyesight, which had gradually deteriorated, was completely lost. The idea of bringing together pieces drawn essentially from the vast corpus of cantatas was not unusual; a similar approach was taken by several of his contemporaries, such as Handel, and Bach himself had done so for the short masses he composed in the late 1730s. These were called parodies. Moving from the German text of the cantatas to the Latin text of the masses meant adapting the vocal lines, with additions and deletions, polyphonic and harmonic enrichments, and changes in instrumentation. Throughout his life, Bach never ceased to revisit his works with a view to improving them.

Imagining the production of a monumental Mass, which can be seen as a musical testament to him, Bach began by exploring the repertoire of his own music, while studying various Masses by other composers that were available to him (and among the scores he studied was Pergolesi’s Stabat mater, which he himself had adapted). He decided above all to use a mass (Missa in Lutheran language) composed in 1733 after the death on February 1 of Augustus the Strong, ruler of Lutheran Saxony, on which Leipzig and Catholic Poland depended. It consisted, as was the case with the Lutheran masses, of the Kyrie and the Gloria, the music of which was largely original (only four of the nine pieces in the Gloria come from earlier compositions). But Bach wanted to compose a Mass with the different parts of the Catholic Ordinary, with the Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei. Faced with the magnitude of the two movements of the Missa, each as impressive as the other, Bach was compelled to write a large Credo.