Bach's church music in Latin

Missa
BWV 233 234 235 236
Short masses by J. S. Bach
Lysa castle, possibly the location of performances of BWV 233 to 236
Related	most movements derived from cantata movements
Text	Kyrie and Gloria
Composed	1738 (1738)?: Leipzig
Scoring	soloists, choir and orchestra

A Missa (Mass) of Johann Sebastian Bach is in general a composition of the Latin Mass by the German Baroque composer.

More specifically, Missa (sometimes Missa brevis or Lutheran Mass) refers to one of his four short masses in F major, A major, G minor and G major, BWV 233 to 236. These masses consist of a Kyrie and a Gloria. Bach composed an especially extensive setting, the Missa in B minor, in 1733 for presentation to the royal court in Dresden. It became, in the last years of his life and in revised form, the first two sections of his only setting of the complete ordinary of the Mass, known today as the Mass in B minor, BWV 232.

Bach's church music in Latin

Bach was a Lutheran church musician and devoted to the composition of sacred music in German. He wrote more than 200 cantatas for the liturgy, most of them in Leipzig. He composed several settings of the Sanctus: one in 1723 in C major (BWV 237), one in 1723 in D major (BWV 238), one in 1724 in D major, and another in D minor (BWV 239); the 1724 Sanctus was in Bach's last few years integrated into his Mass in B minor. Bach composed a setting of the Magnificat in 1723, and then significantly revised it in 1733. For a Christmas service sometime in the mid-1740s (between 1743 and 1746) Bach used four movements of the Gloria from the 1733 Missa for the cantata Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191.

Bach's short masses

Bach wrote four other settings of Kyrie and Gloria, sometimes called Missa brevis (plural: Missae breves). The attribute brevis in this case means short in words, unlike the Missa brevis of the classical period which is short in duration. Sometimes the works are termed Lutheran mass, because the combination of only Kyrie and Gloria was used more frequently in the Lutheran liturgy.

They seem to have been intended for liturgical use, considering a performance time of about 20 minutes each, the average duration of a Bach cantata. They may have been composed around 1738/39. Possibly they were written for Count Franz Anton von Sporck or performed by him in Lysá.

Each Missa is in six movements, the Kyrie one choral movement in three sections, the Gloria in five movements. The first and last movement of the Gloria are also choral, framing three arias for different voice types. The music consists mostly of parodies of cantata movements. He changed the music slightly to adjust to the Latin words, but kept the original instrumentation. The opening chorus of Es wartet alles auf dich, BWV 187, became the final movement of the Missa in G minor, Cum sancto spiritu. Occasionally he switched a voice part, for example he asked for a tenor in the Quoniam of that Missa, a parody of the soprano aria Halt ich nur fest an ihm of that cantata.

The four masses are

• Missa in F major, BWV 233, scored for horns, oboes, bassoon, strings, SATB, basso continuo
• Missa in A major, BWV 234, scored for flute, strings, SATB, basso continuo
• Missa in G minor, BWV 235, scored for oboes, strings, SATB, basso continuo
• Missa in G major, BWV 236, scored for oboes, strings, SATB, basso continuo

Recordings of all Missae breves

• J.S. Bach: Missae Breves, Hans Grischkat, Schwäbischer Singkreis Stuttgart, Ton-Studio Orchestra Stuttgart, Agnes Giebel, Lotte Wolf-Matthäus, Werner Hohmann, Franz Kelch, Renaissance / Baroque Music Club early 1950s?
• J.S. Bach: Masses, Helmuth Rilling, Gächinger Kantorei, Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, Elisabeth Speiser, Ingeborg Ruß, John van Kesteren, Gerhard Faulstich, Jakob Stämpfli, Intercord 1967
• J.S. Bach: Missae Breves, Kurt Redel, de, Agnes Giebel, Gisela Litz, Hermann Prey, Elly Ameling, Birgit Finnilä, Theo Altmeyer, William Reimer, Philips 1965, 1970
• Bach: Messen BWV 233-236, Martin Flämig, Dresdner Kreuzchor, Dresdner Philharmonie, Renate Krahmer, Annelies Burmeister, Peter Schreier, Theo Adam, Eterna 1972
• The Great Choral Masterpieces, Peter Schreier, RIAS Kammerchor, Kammerorchester Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Barbara Bonney, Birgit Remmert, Rainer Trost, Olaf Bär, Philips 1991
• J.S. Bach: Missae Breves BWV 233-236, Patrick Peire, Capella Brugensis, Collegium Instrumentale Brugense, Greta de Reyghere, Wilke te Brummelstroete, James Gilchrist, Jan van der Crabben, Eufoda 2000
• J.S. Bach: Complete Cantatas Vol. 22, Ton Koopman, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Johannette Zomer, Bogna Bartosz, Jörg Dürmüller, Klaus Mertens, Antoine Marchand 2005
• Bach: Lutheran Masses, BWV 233-236, Thomas Folan, Publick Musick, Anne Harley, Andrea Folan, Miranda Loud, Pablo Bustos, Max van Egmond, Eufoda 2005

External links

• Free scores by Missa (Bach) at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• Missae Breves & Sanctus BWV 233-242 on bach-cantatas