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Description: |
Final movement of J. S. Bach's Mass in B Minor BWV 232. The first glimpse that the world would see of this Mass was in 1733 when Bach dedicated its Kyrie and Crucifixus to Friedrich August II, Elector of Saxony, a man who had converted to the Roman faith (abandoning his wife who would not convert). For the next fifteen years Bach expanded this Missa Brevis, borrowing heavily from his German cantatas and adapting them to Latin, to produce a complete setting of the Mass ordinary. Bach did this knowing that the work would never see performance during his lifetime. So, in terms of its origin, the B Minor Mass is an enigma - a Latin work by a Protestant that is impracticable in both the Roman and Lutheran liturgies. |
