Saturday, March 29, 2025 • 7:30 p.m.
First Free Methodist Church (3200 3rd Ave W, Seattle)
Harmonia Orchestra & Chorus
William White, conductor
Clarice Alfonso, soprano
Arwen Myers, soprano
Sarah Larkworthy, mezzo-soprano
Brendan Tuohy, tenor
Zachary Lenox, baritone
Program
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
Mass in B minor, BWV 232
About the Concert
In his final completed work, Bach left not only a masterpiece but also a mystery: to this day, nobody knows for certain why this most devout Lutheran composer composed a gargantuan setting of the Roman Catholic mass as his dying statement. Whatever the reason, Bach’s B-minor mass now stands as one of the uncontested peaks of the oratorio repertoire, a masterpiece that must be experienced live to be fully appreciated.
Program Notes
Johann Sebastian Bach
Mass in B Minor, BWV 232
Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany, on March 21, 1685, and died in Leipzig on July 28, 1750. This work calls for 2 flutes, 3 oboes (2 doubling oboe d’amore), 2 bassoons, horn, 3 trumpets, timpani, strings and continuo, plus vocal soloists and chorus.
During his later years, Bach appears to have planned various musical collections as summations for posterity of his compositional skills and his artistic development over some 30 years. Indeed, he produced superlative retrospectives of keyboard works in various forms containing considerable quantities of earlier material carefully reworked with the wisdom of age and experience, including the Klavierübung, Dritter Teil, a collection of organ works to be played in conjunction with the German text of the mass. The monumental Mass in B Minor (called “The Great Catholic Mass” by C.P.E. Bach), whose movements constitute a veritable encyclopedia of the musical styles, techniques, forms and treatments from Bach’s day and preceding generations, was also intended as such a musical legacy, but for choral forces singing the Latin text of the mass.
Bach compiled BWV 232 from two principal sources: a Sanctus composed for use at Christmas 1724 and a Missa (consisting of a Kyrie and Gloria) probably written in 1733. He adapted other sections from arias and choruses of his numerous cantatas (only a few movements seem to have been newly composed). Bach assembled the Mass late in life (between 1745 and 1750) and no evidence survives that it was ever performed in its entirety in any context (sacred or secular) during his lifetime. A complete setting of the Latin text of the mass had a place in the liturgy of Bach’s Lutheran church (St. Thomas’ Church was the “official chapel” of the local university, whose scholars worked in Latin), yet a lengthy setting requiring large and well-trained musical forces would have had little prospect of performance, even though such a grand work might conceivably have been performed on some highly significant occasion, such as the beginning of a university term.
Although portions of the Mass did receive performances during the ensuing decades, it was not until 1859 (more than a century after Bach’s death) that the entire work was heard in a single performance (in Leipzig, with Karl Riedel conducting). Bach seems to have viewed the mass as the most historically enduring of musical forms, which may explain why he invested so much care and energy in order to leave this great work as part of his “last musical will and testament” for his family, for the glory of his maker, and for the edification of future generations.
Bach structured this masterpiece in such a way that both its anthologized nature and its sense of unity are evident. His manuscript splits it into four major groupings: Missa (the Kyrie and Gloria); Symbolum Nicenum (the Credo); Sanctus; and Osanna, Benedictus, Agnus Dei et Dona nobis pacem. Each group is further divided to produce 26 independent sections (not counting the repetition of the Osanna). Three stunningly powerful outcries, calling on God for help, open this mighty work, followed by an introspective instrumental interlude that sets in motion a forceful five-part fugal Kyrie, reminiscent of a funeral march. A warm and personal Christe, a love-duet accompanied by decorative violin, leads to a second Kyrie, a four-part fugal chorus in the “old style” of polyphony—one can hear anguished pleas for God’s mercy in the fugue’s tortured, chromatic subject and syncopated entrances.
The contrasting Gloria presents a joyous paean of praise and thanksgiving. After a rollicking “Gloria in excelsis,” gently rocking eighth notes set a mood of peace and comfort in the “Et in terra pax.” In the “Laudamus te,” solo violin and solo soprano compete in seraphic praise, followed by a soprano–tenor duet (“Domine Deus”) featuring solo flute and softened strings. In the pensive “Qui sedes,” solo mezzo-soprano and oboe d’amore (an “alto oboe”) ask for Christ’s mercy, while solo horn and two bassoons accompany the baritone in “Quoniam tu solus sanctus.” Bach adapted the glowing “Gratias agimus,” somber four-part “Qui tollis” and exuberant “Cum Sancto Spiritu” from cantatas that—like all the reworkings in the Mass—he selected and rewrote with such care and skill that in most cases the new work surpasses the original. Two jubilant choruses, the dancing “Gloria” and the effervescent “Cum Sancto Spiritu,” both resplendent with clarino trumpets and timpani, frame the nine-section movement.
Like the Gloria, the Credo (or Symbolum Nicenum) exhibits a self-contained musical architecture, its nine sections arranged symmetrically with the “Crucifixus” at the core. In the “Credo,” five-part chorus and two violin parts develop the first phrase of a Gregorian chant melody, introduced in sustained notes by the tenors and then sung in similar fashion by the other voices. The imitative choral “Patrem” leads to a gentle soprano–alto duet (“Et in unum Dominum”), in which the accompanying oboes d’amore echo and follow one another through the lovely world the Lord created. Then comes the weepingly beautiful “Et incarnatus est” (perhaps the last major musical movement Bach completed), its descending lines illustrating Christ coming down from the heavenly realms to become human. The “Crucifixus,” a heart-rending lament reworked from a 1714 cantata chorus, is cast in the form of a passacaglia, a slow dance in triple meter that consists of variations over a repeated, chromatically descending bass line. The explosively exultant chorus “Et resurrexit” proclaims the triumph of the resurrection with trumpets and timpani, featuring a virtuosic line for the basses of the chorus. In the aria “Et in Spiritum,” oboes d’amore join the bass voice as equal musical partners. The “Confiteor” takes the form of a five-part chorale fantasia in which the slow, meditative music that accompanies the appearance of the text “Et expecto,” with its unsettling, kaleidoscopically shifting harmonies, leads listeners to ponder what the confession of faith in the Creed might indeed lead one to expect. This uncertain transitional passage leads directly into the closing outburst of choral and instrumental jubilation, “Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum.” Bach employs a trinity of musical motives contrapuntally to express the excitement of anticipation, rejoicing and resurrection to everlasting life.
In the transcendent six-part Sanctus, festooned with trumpets, drums and winds, saints join the heavenly hosts in procession to the throne of the Heavenly King as bass voices—like great chiming bells—proclaim the holiness of the Lord of Hosts. The form of this movement is modeled on that of the church sonata, with its grand and stately opening section followed by a spirited and festive fugue (“Pleni sunt coeli et terra”) as Heaven and Earth are filled with God’s glorious splendor.
The Osanna, repeated after the Benedictus to build a tripartite structure, is the only double-chorus movement. Bach does not specify the instrument that accompanies the tenor in the Benedictus, but a flute usually takes the solo part (as it does this evening). In the pensive Agnus Dei, violins hesitate and sigh as they contemplate, with the alto soloist, the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. The final chorus, Dona nobis pacem, repeats the music of the “Gratias agimus” in the Gloria, suggesting that this prayer for peace becomes Bach’s own prayer of thanksgiving for the serenity he has found after a lifetime of writing music for God’s glory under very trying circumstances. It forms a most fitting conclusion for this work, the ultimate example of Bach’s genius (called “the perfect synthesis of music and theology” and the “greatest musical composition of all times and peoples”) and Bach’s supreme statement of his profound Christian faith.
— Lorelette Knowles