Printable
Version of Summa 1: Bach's
Mass in B Minor
To print from Netscape just click "Print Summa 1." To print from Internet Explorer just go to the File menu, then choose "Print." When you are finished printing, click "Close This Window" to return to Summa 1.
|
|||
Musical Works | |||
Bach's
B Minor Mass |
|||
Text for Bach's B Minor Mass | |||
Kyrie | |||
1. Coro |
1. Chorus |
||
Kyrie eleison. |
Lord have mercy. |
||
2. Duetto (Soprano/Mezzosoprano) |
2. Duet (Soprano/Mezzo-soprano) |
||
Christe eleison. |
Christ have mercy. |
||
3. Coro |
3. Chorus |
||
Kyrie eleison. |
Lord have mercy. |
Gloria
4. Coro |
4. Chorus |
Gloria in excelsis
Deo. |
Glory be to God on
high. |
5. Coro |
5. Chorus |
Et in terra pax hominibus
bonae voluntatis. |
And on earth, peace
to men of good will. |
6. Aria (Soprano) |
6. Aria (Soprano) |
Laudamus te, benedicimus
te, adoramus te, glorificamus te. |
We praise you; we
bless you; we adore you; we glorify you. |
7. Coro |
7. Chorus |
Gratias agimus tibi
propter magnam gloriam tuam. |
We give you thanks
for your great glory. |
8. Duetto (Soprano/Tenor) |
8. Duet (Soprano/Tenor) |
Domine Deus, rex
coelestis, Deus Pater omnipotens. Domine Fili unigenite, Jesu Christe,
altissime. Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris. |
Lord God, heavenly
King, God the almighty Father. O Lord, the only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ,
Most High Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father. |
9. Coro |
9. Chorus |
Qui tollis peccata
mundi, miserere nobis. Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem
nostram. |
You who take away
the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. You who take away the sins
of the world, receive our prayer. |
10. Aria (Alto) |
10. Aria (Alto) |
Qui sedes ad dextram
Patris, miserere nobis. |
You who sit at the
right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us. |
11. Aria (Basso) |
11. Aria (Bass) |
Quoniam tu solus
Sanctus, tu solus Dominus, tu solus Altissimus, Jesu Christe. |
For you alone are
the Holy One. You alone are the Lord. You, Jesus Christ, alone are the
Most High. |
12. Coro |
12. Chorus |
Cum Sancto Spiritu
in gloria Dei Patris. Amen. |
With the Holy Ghost
in the glory of God the Father. Amen. |
Credo
13. Coro |
13. Chorus |
Credo in unum Deum. |
I believe in one
God. |
14. Coro |
14. Chorus |
Credo in unum Deum,
Patrem omnipotentem, factorum coeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium. |
I believe in one
God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things
visible and invisible. |
15. Duetto (Soprano/Mezzosoprano) |
15. Duet (Soprano/Mezzosoprano) |
Et in unum Dominum,
Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula.
Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum do Deo vero, genitum, non factum,
consubstantialem Patri, per quem omnia facta sunt. Qui propter nos homines
et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis. |
And in one Lord Jesus
Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all
worlds. God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not
made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were
made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven. |
16. Coro |
16. Chorus |
Et incarnatus est
de Spiritu Sanctu ex Maria virgine et homo factus est. |
And was incarnate
by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made man. |
17. Coro |
17. Chorus |
Crucifixus etiam
pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est. |
And was crucified
also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. |
18. Coro |
18. Chorus |
Et resurrexit tertia
die secundum scripturas. Et ascendit in coelum, sedet ad dexteram Dei
Patris, et iterum venturus est cum gloria judicare vivos et mortuos, cujus
regni non erit finis. |
And on the third
day he rose again according to the scriptures. And ascended into heaven.
And sits at the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with
glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have
no end. |
19. Aria (Basso) |
19. Aria (Bass) |
Et in Spiritum Sanctum,
Dominum et vivificantem, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit; qui cum Patre
et Filioque procedit; qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur;
qui locutus est per Prophetas. Et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam
ecclesiam. |
And I believe in
the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father
and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and
glorified, who spake by the Prophets. And I believe in one Catholic and
Apostolic Church. |
20. Coro |
20. Chorus |
Confiteor unum baptisma
in remissionem peccatorum. |
i acknowledge one
Baptism for the remission of sins. |
21. Coro |
21. Chorus |
Et exspecto resurrectionem
mortuorum et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen. |
And I await the resurrection
of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen. |
22. Coro |
22. Chorus |
Sanctus, Sanctus,
Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria ejus. |
Holy, Holy, Holy
Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. |
OSANNA, BENEDICTUS, AGNUS DEI
ET DONA NOBIS PACEM
23. Coro |
23. Chorus |
Osanna in excelsis. |
Hosanna in the highest. |
Aria (Tenore) |
Aria (Tenor) |
Benedictus, qui venit
in nomine Domini. |
Blessed be he that
comes in the name of the Lord. |
25. Coro |
25. Chorus |
Osanna in excelsis. |
Hosanna in the highest. |
Agnus Dei
26. Aria (Alto) |
26. Aria (Alto) |
Agnus Dei, qui tollis
peccata mundi, miserere nobis. |
Lamb of God, who
takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. |
27. Coro |
27. Chorus |
Dona nobis pacem. |
Give us peace. |
Readings |
|
2. George Stauffer - "The
Universality of the B Minor Mass" Although we may not be able to pinpoint BachÍs specific reason for writing a Missa tota, we can be reasonably sure that in turning to the Latin Ordinary for his last large-scale project, he wished to devote his final energies to music that would transcend the parochialism of his German-texted vocal pieces. As Bach must have realized toward the end of his life, his German-texted vocal works were local fare, based on libretti by town poets and aimed at are rites and celebrations. Removed from their original contexts, the pieces lost much of their meaning. In 1753 Caspar Ruetz, Kantor of the Marienkirche in Luebeck, described how a huge pile of church music he had inherited from his predecessors has been diminished by half from its use for stove fires and scrap paper. "Who would give anything for it," he lamented, "other than someone who needs scrap paper, since nothing is more useless than old music." Surely Bach was aware that vast quantities of music suffered this fate, especially vocal works with circumscribed utilty. One can imagine him sitting in his study in the late 1740s, sullenly scrutinizing the 350 or so German-texted vocal pieces he had labored so diligently to produce and realizing that the entire lot might be consigned to flames or the scrap paper pile after his death. The Latin Ordinary offered an alternative. Its text was universal, unbound by day, event, or location. It was a public, not private, proclamation, with Biblical citations removed from their incident-specific contexts and transported to a more generalized realm. The opening lines of the Gloria, connected with ChristÍs birth in the Book of Luke, are transformed into an ecstatic hymn of praise in the Ordinary. The words of the Sanctus, spoken by Isaiah in the Old Testament, become a broad, congregational affirmation. Writing a Mass gave Bach the opportunity to transfer his endeavors from the Lutheran Proper to the Catholic Ordinary, from the specific to the universal. In the half-century following his death, it was the B Minor Mass that traveled to Vienna and London, not his German-texted cantatas. "The Great Catholic Mass" presented the possibility of geographical and historical transcendence. The project also allowed Bach to survey his own vocal composition, from the first mature cantatas of Weimar (the "Crucifixus," from Cantata 12), to the five Leipzig church cycles of the 1720s (the "Qui tollis," from Cantata 46 or the "Patrem Omnipotentem," from Cantata 171), to the galant Collegium pieces of the 1730s (the "Osanna," from BWV Anh. 11), and finally to the Latin-texted studies of the final years (the "Credo"). It also gave him the opportunity to draw on music written for church (Cantatas 46, 171), for bureaucratic rituals (Cantatas 29, 120), and for ceremonial events (Cantatas BWV Anh. 9, BWV Anh. 11, and the wedding serenade Auf! suessentzuckende Gewalt). Whether or not it was the goal of the work, the Mass does represent a Bach "specimen book," as Wolff put it, a highly select sampling of vocal music culled from four decades of sacred and secular composition. Then, too, the parody procedure gave Bach a final chance to rework and refine his earlier scores. BachÍs first biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, expressed delight in the composerÍs ability to make "little by little, the faulty good, the good better, and the better perfect." In the B Minor Mass, we find the type of perfection that appears in the skillful parody revisions of the 1730s and 1740s. But there is something else. During the revisional process Bach normally expanded preexisting material, embellishing lines, thickening textures, adding measures, composing new sections. His indefatigable inventiveness seemed to propel him in that direction. The opening movement of the Concerto in A Minor, BWV 1044 (fity-one measures longer than its harpsichord prelude original), Contrapunctus 10 from the Art of Fugue (twenty-two measures longer than its original), or the parody movement "Sicut erat in principio" from the Gloria in excelsis Deo (six mesures longer than its "Cum Sancto Spiritu" original) are typical examples of his tendency to enlarge. In the B Minor Mass, Bach moved in the opposite direction, toward concision. The "Osanna in excelsis" is thirty-three measures shorter than its model (the "A" section of the chorus "Es lebe der Koenig"), the "Agnus Dei" thirty measures shorter than its model (the aria "Entfernet euch, ihr kalten Herzen"), the "Qui tollis" fifteen measures shorter than its model (the chorus "Schauet doch und sehe, ob irgend ein Schmerz sei"). In many cases, the succinct character of the Latin text and the sectional nature of a Mass setting called for torsos rather than full movements. No matter what the motivation, however, in making abridgments Bach not only rescued some of his best "old music": he also distilled it. The B Minor Mass is more than a cross-section of BachÍs art. It is his art in highly concentrated form. The synthesis of styles also contributes to the universality of the B Minor Mass. At the outset of the Baroque Era, Monteverdi effectively demonstrated the potential of stylistic pluralism Ü the idea that composers should use both the a capella [without instruments] writing of the sixteenth century and the filled [with instrumental backup]
writing of the seventeenth Ü in the Vespers Collection of 1610. The Vespers
Collection is just that, however: a collection of independent liturgical
pieces illustrating the various stylistic possibilities of the time. The
B Minor Mass, which might be viewed as BachÍs answer to the Vespers of
1610, goes beyond MonteverdiÍs principles. It is a true "reunion des gouts"
(to play on Francois CouperinÍs term of 1724), a true joining of tastes,
in which ancient and modern; Italian, French, and German; vocal and instrumental
are amalgamated in a single continuous work. Styles are sometimes juxtaposed,
as in "Credo" or "Confiteor," in which a Renaissance chorus and a Baroque
walking bass are combined. Other times they are placed side by side, as
in the operatic "Christe eleison" and the Palestrina-style "Kyrie" II.
Yet as we have seen, he work has overarching organizational bonds that
fuse the movements into a harmonius whole. The inclusive eclecticism of
the B Minor Mass, with its blending of diverse elements, points to the
cosmopolitan idiom Ü and Enlightenment ideals Ü of the Classical Era.
|
3. John Butt, from
Bach: Mass in B Minor
|