In class the past couple of weeks we have been spending a lot of time listening to, discussing, and enjoying the famous Mass in B minor. This work is considered by many to be the crowning achievement of not only Bach's career, but the entire Baroque period. The Mass was not finished until the year before Bach died, and was probably never performed in it's entirety while he was still alive. It is a huge work, since it consists of the entire Latin Mass, which I believe is unusual for a Lutheran composer. Much of the music in the mass is borrowed from Bach's own earlier works. We talked about this at length in class and Dr. Pierce even showed us audio samples from the original works (the source material) and then the corresponding re-arrangement as it appears in the Mass in B minor. Sometimes the borrowing only takes the form of duplicate or similar chord progressions, but other times it is almost an exact copy. Even though I am only an insignificant hobbyist composer, I can understand where Bach is coming from in doing this. At times I have written things that I think are really "catchy" or I am especially fond of, and as my music skills improve I revisit the older music, and I re-work it. I am not sure if Bach was attempting to improve on any of his older music, or if it was just really meaningful to him, or whether he just did not have time to compose brand new music for every section. I can only say that in my opinion, he did improve upon his older cantatas because the Mass in B minor is pretty awesome. I am writing this while listening to the music and it is currently the crucifixus movement for chorus. When I was younger (in my teens) I had certain music that I used to call my "deep breath" music, because it just made me stop and take a breath, and enjoy the beauty of it. I had music by Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorak, and Mendellssohn included (among others). But somehow, I never knew about this Mass by Bach. Wow! I just heard the German 6 transition thing to G major again (we discussed this in class, how the crucifixus is in e minor and uses a German 6 (enharmonic to Eb7 dominant chord) that resolves to a one-six-four and then to the dominant (D) of G and finally cadences on G. That really is sweet. Sorry for the theory tirade, but I really like theory. The piece barely ends and the jubilant chorus sings about the resurrection of Christ - an upbeat, loud, timpani-and-trumpet accompanied piece.
In class, we have watched from the very beginning, this DVD performance of the mass. It is the kind of thing that I would actually like to own someday. I especially like that there are subtitles. A very interesting thing I just noticed is that during the Et in Spiritum Sanctum the bass soloist just sang something like the words "we believe in the catholic church". I just found that interesting coming from a Lutheran. I suppose Bach could have been using the word the way dictionary.com defines it. Their definition is "Catholic: pertaining to the whole Christian body or church." In which case, it doesn't confine one to actually meaning the Roman Catholic church. Well, we just ran out of time right when the Credo section of the mass ended. So, we have at least watched most of the mass during class. Overall I have really enjoyed my time spent listening to the Mass in B Minor. It is an incredible, and huge work. I didn't realize how lengthy it was until we only got through the Credo section after two 50 minute listening labs of just watching a performance of this piece. Very inspiring to me, and very moving and something I will try to incorporate into my collection of beloved "Deep Breath" classical music.
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