Mass in B Minor, Bwv232

Last year, the esteemed conductor Marc Minkowski joined Naïve for a long-term collaboration during which period he will be recording the music of Bach, Handel, Haydn and Mozart, among others. The first in this series of recordings featured the works of Georges Bizet performed on instruments of the period. It was a major international success, and was picked as an Editor's Choice in the Gramophone and a Music Choice in the BBC Music Magazine. Early in 1733 Augustus II, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, died. Five months of mourning followed, during which all public music-making was temporarily suspended. Bach used the opportunity to work on the composition of a Missa, a portion of the liturgy sung in Latin and common to both the Lutheran and Roman Catholic rites. His aim was to dedicate the work to the new sovereign Augustus III, a Catholic, and by doing so to hope to improve his own standing. The Missa was first performed in 1733 during the festival of the Oath of Allegiance to Augustus III. It consisted of settings of the Kyrie and Gloria that now comprise the first part of the Mass in B Minor. At what point Bach decided to expand the Missa into a full-blown setting of the Catholic Mass is not known. Some researchers believe that the Symbolum Nicenum (or the Credo) was composed between 1742 and 1745, but others think it predates the Missa and was first heard in 1732. The remaining parts (Sanctus, Osanna, Benedictus and Agnus Dei et Dona nobis pacem) were all added in the late 1740s. The Mass in B Minor did not assume its final form until Bach's last years, perhaps by 1748. It may be that Bach wished the Mass in B Minor to be regarded as a monument of his skill, for it is a work based much upon his earlier music, which he adapted and refined to meet a sacred purpose.