Missae Breves & Sanctus BWV 233-242
General Discussions - Part 2

Continue from Part 1

Discussions in the Week of June 5, 2016 (4^th round)

William L. Hoffman wrote wrote (June 8, 2016):
Lutheran Short Masses: Kyrie & Gloria: Intro.

While Bach’s original setting of the Great Catholic B Minor Mass, the Lutheran Missa Kyrie-Gloria of 1733 -- is highly regarded, the four shorter settings Bach “recomposed” at the end of the 1730s, the Missae Brevis Kyrie-Gloria, BWV 233-236, are much less well-known, although emerging from obscurity as similar contrafactions. Perhaps Bach scholars, long aware of the B-Minor Mass parodies, were content to have a sort of “Best of Bach” music both in stile antico and modern styles, with an emphasis on the former. Meanwhile, the purpose(s) of both Short Mass settings are also still clouded in mystery beyond Bach’s interest in adaptation of old music and Latin settings.

Some generalizations can be made. They are musical settings of liturgy as part of Bach’s calling for a “well-ordered church music to the glory of God.” They are a summation of some of his finest music, compiled as collections and major works in the final two decades of his life. At the same time, in the vocal music category, they are part of Bach’s Christological cycle of major works complied through various processes of parody or new text underlay, a musical practice dating to the renaissance. Further, they can be considered acts of compositional adaptation through transcription and, at the same time, transformation. While they should not be labeled “improvements” over the original, they are examples of “Bach at his best.”

Admittedly, the four so-called Lutheran Masses seem more perfunctory and less varied in styles than the original models from the opening Gloria of the Great Mass. Still, they also contain choruses and arias from sacred cantatas, achieved through contrafaction from the German original language to the Latin Mass. They are suitable for festival services and Trinity Time Sundays as liturgy before the sermon, most often at festivals. Unlike Bach’s oratorios for the major feast days -- Christmas, Easter, and Ascension (Pentecost is not known) -- and the St. Mark Passion, the standard, unchanging text of the Mass Ordinary cannot be readily adapted word for word like the poetic texts of choruses and arias from one cantata to another, almost always from secular, special occasions to sacred services, with new life breathed into them, from ephemeral to permanent music.

Short Mass Comparisons

Besides diversity and distinction, length is another factor: 55 minutes for the B-Minor Mass, 25 minutes for the shorter and better-named “Missae Brevis.” The Kyrie in the B minor Mass, original music based on a stylistic model, runs 22 minutes, while the tripartite Kyrie, mostly opening cantata choruses, last perhaps four minutes. The entire Mass Gloria of nine movements lasts about 30 minutes, compared to the five-movement Short Mass Glorias of 20 minutes. Orchestration in the Mass Gloria is more extensive, with flute, oboe, violin, and horn solos in the arias and trumpets and drums in the opening and closing choruses. Mass text declamation is more extensive, with longer phrases is more through-composed and less sectional.

The original 1733 Missa Kyrie-Gloria is well-documented as a submission to the new Catholic Saxon ruler as an example of Bach’s abilities to be designated a court composer capable of providing appropriate music when needed, whether for sacred or secular purposes. Missa "Kyrie" and "Gloria," BWV 232I and II, were composed in 1733. The original score "was reworked by Bach during the adaptation of the Missa for the Mass in B Minor, in 1748-49," says Uwe Wolf in the Bärenreiter New Bach Edition.¹

The later four Kyrie-Gloria settings were more utilitarian and specifically designed for Lutheran liturgy, and not simply exercises involving rejected materials from the original Gloria settings. Where the impetus came from is unknown but scholars have suggested that the application may have been for oldest son Friedemann, organist at the Lutheran Sophienkirchke in Dresden, or use in Leipzig Lutheran services – or both.

Individual Movements

The net result is appealing music of the first order, showing various ways of setting the opening Kyrie and the five-movement synopsis of the Gloria. The chorus settings are the opening, Gloria in excelsis Deo and Et in terra Pax hominibus, and the closing chorus, Cum sancto Spiritu and Amen. The internal three aria movements are a condensation of the six movements in the original Gloria, based on the music available to fit the phrases of the text, usually mostly balanced two-part arias but not da-capo arias with repeats of the A section.

Of the 24 movements in the four Missae Brevis, the only original music is the Kyrie in the Mass in F Major, BWV 233. It began as a separate Kyrie setting in Mühlhausen-Weimar (1707-1717) that used the cantus firmus, “Christe, du Lamm Gottes” (Christ Thu Lamb of God) sung in the lost original version but replaced by horns and oboes. The unidentified sources of the four movements (Kyrie, Gloria in excelsis, and two Domine Deus) in the first three movements of BWV 233 and 234, probably came from lost cantatas or extant works that are difficult to trace through parody.

While scant source-critical evidence exists about Bach’s composition of his four Missae Kyrie Gloria, circumstantial and collateral evidence abounds and this history is described in detail in BCW: Systematic Discussion, BWV 233-236: Thomas Braatz wrote (May 7, 2004): “Lutheran Masses BWV 233-236,” http://www.bach-cantatas.com/VD/BWV233-236.htm.² Underlying Bach’s motive, method, and opportunity are topics about the significance of Mass movement settings in Bach’s time, short-mass terminology, lack of contemporary documentation, order of works, surviving manuscripts and difficulty of dating, the Dresden Court connection, reception history and later perspectives and biases. The Count Sporck commissioning theory is discussed and an article is extant, BCW, http://www.baroquemusic.org/bqxsporck.html. Also helpful is a “Diagram of Borrowings” (from other Bach cantatas): http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Scores/BWV233-236-Sco.htm.

Four Short Masses: Genesis

The genesis of the four short Masses, 19^th century responses and contrasting, contemporary views are discussed in Uri Golomb’s article, “Bach’s Four Missae,” December 2008, BCW, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/Missae-Golomb.pdf. << Bach’s four settings of the Kyrie and Gloria, BWV 233-236 – usually referred to as Missae Breves or “Lutheran” Masses (with or without the scare-quotes) – are probably his most underrated works. Until recently, many of Bach’s most ardent admirers considered them unworthy of their creator; if they spoke of them at all, it was often with dismissive frustration or bemusement. Similarly, many musicians who have otherwise tackled large swathes of Bach’s sacred music tended to avoid the Missae (at least as far as recordings were concerned). Over the past two decades, however, there have been several superb performances – both of the complete set and of individual works; and scholars are increasingly taking them seriously.

The Missae seem to have rubbed against two cherished images of Bach. They are based almost entirely on movements from earlier cantatas, thus clashing with the image of Bach the divinely-inspired, original creator; and their Latin text sits uncomfortably with the image of Bach the faithful Lutheran. But the detractors have made two crucial errors. On the one hand, the works do not quite contradict these images as they believed. On the other hand, the images themselves are problematic, and get in the way of appreciating Bach’s achievements – not least in the four Missae.

The works’ genesis

The two Missae that surin Bach’s own handwriting (BWV 234 and 236) were composed around 1738; the other two were probably written at around the same time. Two factors, at least, suggest that the four works were conceived as a cycle:

1. Similarity of structure: Each work consists of six movements. The opening Kyrie is a chorus; the Gloria consists of two choruses (“Gloria” and “Cum Sancto spiritu”) enclosing between them three arias or duets. In each case, the first aria is for bass solo. On the other hand, the four works do not parse the text of the Gloria in quite the same way
2. Common origin: Four cantatas – Nos. 79, 102, 179 and 187 – have provided models for more than one Missa, creating links that move beyond each individual Missa.

Spitta and Schweitzer, who were convinced that the works could not have been used in the Leipzig church service, speculated that Bach wrote them for the Catholic chapel in Dresden. More recently, Peter Williams (The Life of Bach, p. 199)³ suggested that Bach may have written the works for his son, Wilhelm Friedemann, for use in the Sophienkirche in Dresden. Such speculations, however, might be a response to a bogus problem: Spitta and Schweitzer notwithstanding, the Kyrie and Gloria did form part of the Lutheran church service on several feast days. Before 1738, Bach had already performed Mass settings by other composers as part of his regular duties as director of church music in Leipzig; the fact that he has also composed his own settings might be less surprising than the fact that he had apparently waited until the late 1730s to do so.

As Robin Leaver points out, the Missae were composed at a time when Bach was engaged in a series of retrospective projects – including both the revision of existing works (e.g., the Passions) and the compilation of comprehensive anthologies (e.g., the Schübler organ chorales and the second part of the Well-Tempered Clavier). These collection were meant, inter alia, to preserve Bach’s best music in a more enduring form. The Missae fit into this pattern:

<<by adapting cantata movements into settings of the Lutheran Missa Bach changed their liturgical function from proprium to ordinarium. The cantatas were effectively part of the propria, along with collects, epistles, gospels, etc., for a given day or celebration, and thus many could only be heard on one particular day in the church year. But if they were reworked into ordinarium settings of Kyrie and Gloria the music could be heard more frequently. (Leaver, “Conservation or intensification?”)⁴

Beyond this, however, Leaver argues that the Missae were part of Bach’s larger, lifelong project to create a well-organised repertory of church music. In his later years, Bach increasingly insisted on raising the level of church music, creating a more professional body of dedicated musicians who would enable the presentation of a varied, demanding repertoire. Again, the Missae fit the pattern, forming as they do “a remarkable collection of movements, varied in musical style and form that display an extraordinary range of compositional techniques that are challenging to singers and instrumentalists alike” (ibid).

Parody and theological message

Philip Spitta’s critique of the Missae remains the most concentrated expression of the traditional suspicion towards them. Spitta was willing to condone and even praise Bach’s parody practice in general; in the Missae, however, he accused Bach of doing “violence […] to his own creations”:

<<There are among [Bach’s] remodelled pieces some which are elevated by the process and severed from a connection with some less dignified theme; and this commonly occurs when Bach transfers a composition from a secular to a sacred purpose. There are also re-arrangements which work back to the original germ of the idea, an under the new conditions give it quite a new form. Finally, there are some which are only a vivid reproduction of a piece; and just as a finished composition may differ each time it is repeated, varying with the character of the performers and the feeling, time, place, and surroundings at the moment, so it has happened that Bach makes a composition serve with a different effect, though with but slight alteration, under different conditions of feeling. All these modes of treatment have artistic justification, but none of them have been used in the masses under discussion, which, so far as possible to Bach, are mere mechanical arrangements. […] no artistic purpose in their transformation is anywhere to be detected; and even a superficial comparison must result in favour of the cantata forms. There each piece seems to have sprung from a living inspiration. It corresponds to the poetical purpose, and adequately fills its place as part of a whole; but here each gorgeous blossom is severed from the stem and bound in an ill-assorted nosegay.>> (Spitta, vol. III, pp. 30-31)⁵

Schweitzer’s Bach monograph contains even harsher indictments; both writers seem to have set the tone for later reception. Their erroneous belief (influenced, perhaps, by Lutheran church practices of their own time) that the Missae could not have formed part of the Lutheran church service might explain their willingness to dismiss them: they both hypothesized that Bach rush-composed them for an outside commission that he did not really care for.

Robin Leaver’s articles present an opposite view: that, in composing the Missae, Bach sought to award some of his music a more permanent and prestigious status within the Lutheran service. Leaver also assisted Paul McCreesh in reconstructing a hypothetical service in Leipzig in Bach’s lifetime, incorporating the F-major Missa. As the resulting Epiphany Mass album vividly demonstrates, Bach’s Missae and cantatas appeared side-by-side in the same service; Bach would not have known of any objections to using in one part of the service music that had already been composed for another part of it.

In my view, the Missae display precisely the sort of “artistic justification” that Spitta proposes for parodies. Some movements in these works constitute extensive revisions, amounting to re-compositions; others are closer to their models. Yet it is some of the most sophisticated revisions that have been judged particularly harshly – for reasons that might have more to do with the writers’ ideologies than with the aesthetic value of Bach’s work.>>

Bach’s ‘Re-compositional’ Process ⁶

Through a mixture of serendipity, circumstance, and calculation, Bach in the late 1730s was able to transform sacred cantata choruses and arias into four unified settings of the Kyrie-Gloria section of the Mass, BWV 233-35 in six movements each. Bach’s basic plan was to utilize through contrafaction from original German poetry to the Latin “Missa” three entire cantata choruses for the opening tri-partite Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy) and the opening and closing sections of the Gloria, “Gloria in excelsis Deo” (Glory to God in the highest) and “Cum sancto Spirtu” (With the Holy Spirit). He was to use three entire cantata arias for three movements in the middle section of the Gloria, usually between the text “Gratias agimus tibi” (We give thee thanks for thy great glory) and “Quoniam to solus sanctus” (For thou only art holy).

Probably composed in the later part of the 1730s, when Bach was perfecting various compositional techniques and compiling his “well-ordered church music to the glory of God,” the collection of four Missae Kyrie-Gloria, BWV 233-36, reveal various traditions and directions:

*It fosters the German tradition of liturgical settings of the first two sections of the five-part Mass Ordinary, including tropes of Luther’s settings of the chorale-based vernacular Deutsche Messe (German Mass).
*It uses the Renaissance tradition of contrafaction or new text underlay, usually involving Latin and the vernacular, as well as the Baroque (formerly common-practice period) pursuit of the collective dissemination of works.
*It exhibits a variety of German-based stylistic elements and it represents an engaging alternative to Luther’s German Mass.

Bach’s choice of particular music involved movements of similar “affect,” or mood, somber for the “Kyrie” litany plea of “mercy,” and more positive for the Greater Doxology canticle, “Gloria. Beyond this, the actual music had similar rhythmic motives especially for the words “Kyrie,” “Gloria” and closing “Amen,” while the music following can ornament the key words in long, spinning phrases. Other text phrases often have correspondingly similar lengths for the German and Latin lines, with repetitive words or syllables. To these basic requirements, Bach brought a special gift for musical text setting in terms of both the actual spiritual texts and the import of particular words through particular tones and harmonic choices. In addition, Bach’s inventive melodies not only fit the original texts and their substitutions (contrafactions, parodies) but also in different contexts can assume special poignance, distinction and meaning.

Parodied Movements

Eleven of the extant 19 parodied sacred cantata movements derive from three cantatas composed in the 1725-26 third cycle (BWV 79, 102, and 187), forming the core of the four six-movement Short Masses (BWV 233-36), opening with a Kyrie setting. All are adapted from the German-language original sacred cantatas though the parody process of contrafaction. Eleven of the total 19 parodied movements come from four of the identified cantatas in the third cycle of 1725-26 (BWV 72, 79, 102, 187) while eight movements are drawn from six cantatas in the first cycle of 1723-14 (BWV 17, 40, 67, 136, 158, 179). Of the total of ten cantatas that provided materials, four (BWV 79, 102, 179, 187) furnished at least three movements as core material while six (BWV 17, 40, 67, 72, 136, and 138) provided single movements.

For the presumed 23 needed, “borrowed” movements of Bach’s four Missa “Kyrie-Gloria,” he started with a stock of four Cantatas BWV 79, 102, 178, and 187, using their core material for choruses of three of the four tri-partite “Kyries” and a concluding “Cum sancto Spiritu,” as well as nine of the needed 19 remaining movements. Besides providing virtually all of their madrigalian choruses and arias as acceptable music, these four cantatas involve other common features and distinctions. The music is scored for the appropriate tutti orchestra in consistent tonalities, the music required few adjustments or expansions to fit the new Latin text, and the four original settings were composed in Bach’s mature yet utilitarian style of the middle 1720s for the Reformation Feast and three middle Trinity Time Sundays, respectively, 10, 8, and 7.

Bach’s overall plan entailed placing the established borrowings into appropriate tonal and textual contexts and filling the remaining 10 gaps with five Kyrie, Gloria and “Cum sancto Spiritu” choruses (BWV 233a, 72/1, 136/1, 40/1, and 17/1, as well as two Gloria arias from Cantatas BWV 67/6 and 138/5. This leaves an intriguing Kyrie chorus (BWV 234/1) and three Gloria arias for which no original sources have been found: BWV 233/2 and 3, and 234/3. Thus, four of 23 movements, or one-sixth (16%) lack original sources. Similarly, music for several movements in Bach’s cantata Mass in B-Minor, BWV 232, assumed also to be contrafactions from cantatas, have yet to be found. Meanwhile, Bach scholars are pursuing works that he may have salvaged that survive today only in printed texts for special occasions such as weddings, as well as sacred and secular celebrations.

The circumstances of plentiful and appropriate music and other performing opportunities as well as his calculating genius enabled Bach a decade after creating his annual cycles of church year cantatas, to utilize this music in another context, not as a portions of a repeated cantata musical sermon but probably in the greater part of the Lutheran Main Service as liturgical music in a broader theological context. So far, the specific uses and actual performance dates of the four “Missa,” BWV 233-236 are unknown. All that survives are the four scores in a copy from the hand of Bach student and later son-law, Johann Christoph Altnikol, done in the later 1740s when Bach was completing his Great (Missa tota) in B Minor found in son Emmanuel Bach’s estate in 1790. Two autograph scores of Missas, BWV 234 and 236, do survive, first found in Leipzig publisher Breitkopf’s first catalog of Fall 1761, listed for copying for a fee under “Masses with Instruments,” as well as a parts set for BWV 234. Obviously, these two works were not part of the 1750 estate division of vocal music and as surplus found their way to Breitkopf.

Early Reception, Recordings

It seems as though Bach near the end of actively composing church year cantatas in 1726 was looking forward to utilizing some of this music that he had just composed with such inerrant mastery, in a broader or different context. Looking back almost 300 years, the specific results of Bach’s overall process of “borrowing” now seems to be essentially another production rather than a perfunctory self-plagiarism or an attempt to “improve” or “perfect” an existing work, judged with traditional assumptions in the judgmental context of dismissing or comparing.

It is unfortunate that earlier Bach scholars initially, virtually, and unconditionally accepted the Great B-Minor Mass as a masterpiece, without fully realizing that most of it involves similar contrafactions on a larger scale composed in the last two decades of Bach’s life, and then apply that work as the yardstick by which to judge other, similar “borrowings” done in a short period of time for specific purposes. Fortunately, the current long list of recordings cited below, and made in the past 50 years, testifies to the appeal of the music to today’s audience as well as the respect and insight of current scholars and commentators.

Some 20 recordings of the Bach <Missae Kyrie-Gloria>, BWV 233-236, in the Bach Cantata Website (BCW) in the past decade, of a total of 49, (BCW, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV233-242-Rec1.htm (updated to 2013). These recordings, as well as extensive BCW general discussion, suggest that this music is finally being recognized as important part of Bach’s oeuvre. I would further suggest that it is an important part of Bach’s development of “Latin Church Music,” that is a cornerstone of Bach’s calling of “well-regulated church music to the glory of God.”

Two BCW Recordings of all four Masses listed have Pdf liner notes: No. 24, Purcell Quartet, Vol. 1 (BWV 235, 234), http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Pic-Rec-BIG/Purcell-V01c[Chandos-CD-CHAN0642].pdf ; and No. 25, Vol. (BWV 233, 236) http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Pic-Rec-BIG/Purcell-V02c[Chandos-CD-CHAN0653].pdf; and No. 37, Ton Koopman, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Pic-Rec-BIG/Koopman-C22c[AM-3CD].pdf.

Bach ‘Missa’ Motive, Method, Opportunity⁷

In transforming the various church cantata movements into the four six-movement <Missae: Kyrie-Gloria>, three factors seems to have driven Bach: motive, method and opportunity. Bach’s motive(s) could have been the desire to fill out a well-regulated church music, to create acceptable and appropriate liturgical music in Latin, and to use <Gloria text> emphasizing the <omnes tempore> Trinity or Triune God of the Christian faith. Bach’s method was contrafaction of the highest order, not simply new text underlay, but with extensive changes in the musical passages. Even so, there is still legitimate criticism regarding both “faulty text declamation adaptation” and “incongruous stylistic usages.” Bach’s opportunity was a wealth of cantata materials suitable for transformation into the Kyrie-Gloria of the Lutheran Service liturgy rather than a showcase of his writing for his Saxon monarch.

As to the actual utilization of this music appropriate for the Leipzig Lutheran Service, especially on feast days, the <Missa Kyrie-Gloria in A Major>, BW234, was performed three times by Bach, based on an original set of parts, and possible all four during the 50 years following his death in 1750, when various copies were made. “This collection was copied by Bach’s student and later son-in-law, Johann Christoph Altnickol” (Braatz, Ibid.). Bach’s second son, Emmanuel, listed all four scores bound together (“Vier Messen in Partitur” “eingebunden”) in his Estate Catalog of 1790 (P. 70), with separate performing score copies of BWV 233 and 235 from his Hamburg copyist “H. Michel.” The Fall 1761 Bretifkopf publisher’s catalog showed listings of the original scores of BWV 234 and 236, available for copying from the manuscripts. At that time, Christian Friedrich Penzel, former Bach student and St. Thomas Choir Perfect, made a copy of the score of BWV 236, dated Oct. 29, 1761, possibly for performance at a service for his probe test to succeed (unsuccessfully) his father as sexton at Oelsnitz.

FOOTNOTES

¹ Uwe Wolf, NBA KB II/2a, "Early Versions of the B Minor Mass" (2006).
² Source: NBA KB II/2, Lutheran Masses and Single Mass Settings, Emil Platen, Marianne Helms (1982).
³ Peter Williams, The Life of Bach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
⁴ Robin Leaver, “Conservation or Intensification? The Lutheran Masses (BWV 232-236)”. Unpublished paper, due for publication as part of a collection of essays on the music of J. S. Bach
⁵ Philipp Spitta, Johann Sebastian Bach (London: Novello & Company, 1989 (trans. Clara Bell & J. A. Fuller-Maitland); 3-volume edition (New York: Dover Publications, 1951).
⁶ Most of this material derives from the BCML Discussion of Mass No. 3 in g minor, BWV 235, Discussions in the Week of October 7, 2012, William L. Hoffman wrote (October 8, 2012): Missa BWV 235: Introduction and Study, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/VD/BWV235.htm. The fourth full paragraph, beginning “Eleven of the extant 19,” is original.
⁷ Source material, “Genesis of Latin Mass Music and the Kyrie-Gloria,” <Mass in B Minor>, BWV 232, General Discussions Part 17, October 14, 2009 (latest discussion): BCW, http://bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV232-Gen17.htm.

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To Come: Lutheran Short Masses BWV 233 and 234.

Douglas Cowling wrote wrote (June 10, 2016):
William L. Hoffman wrote:
< *It fosters the German tradition of liturgical settings of the first two sections of the five-part Mass Ordinary, including tropes of Luther’s settings of the chorale-based vernacular Deutsche Messe (German Mass). >
Stauffer shows quite convincingly that cyclical and pastiche masses co-existed quite happily across the Catholic world in a Neapolitan tradition. The "Missae Breve" are not "short" incomplete masses, They were "missae" combined with other free-standing mass movements to create whole masses. Monteverdi and Vivaldi both wrote celebrated "Gloria" movements, and Mozart never considered the Great C Minor Mass incomplete. It was clearly performed with movements drawn from other settings. Bach's "missae" could easily have been used in this manner at the Catholic Chapel Royal in Dresden.

Missae: Kyrie-Gloria, BWV 233-236: Contrafaction, Uses

William L. Hoffman wrote wrote (September 5, 2017):
[The following introduction to the Missae: Kyrie-Gloria, BWV 233-236), revised and updated, was part of the BCML Discussion 2016 Fourth Cycles, the weeks of June 5 and 12, as Lutheran Short Masses: Kyrie & Gloria: Intro. June 7, 2016; https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BachCantatas/conversations/messages/38994.]

While Bach’s original setting of the Great Catholic B Minor Mass, the Lutheran Missa Kyrie-Gloria of 1733, BWV 233a, is highly regarded, the four shorter settings Bach “recomposed” about 1738, the so-called Missae Brevis Kyrie-Gloria, BWV 233-236, are much less well-known, although now emerging from obscurity as similar contrafactions. Perhaps Bach scholars, long aware of the B-Minor Mass parodies, were content to have a sort of “Best of Bach” music both in stile antico and modern styles. Like their popular counterpart, the four “Short Masses” of music of sorrow and joy were appropriate for both Catholic performances in Dresden and Lutheran services in Leipzig and all are in cantata Mass form (albeit more concise) of choruses and arias in stile misto or mixed style. The four later works are set for four voices (SATB) with string orchestra with pairs of winds (horns in BWV 233 with oboes, also oboes in BWV 235 and 236, and flutes in BWV 234). While the unique compositional method is clear, Bach’s motive(s) and opportunity are still debated but they are seen as more than mere exercises and many recordings have been made in recent years (BCW, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV233-242-Rec1.htm).

Some generalizations can be made. This “Short Mass” tetralogy involves musical settings of liturgy as part of Bach’s calling for a “well-ordered church music to the glory of God.” The four are a summation of some of his finest music, compiled as collections of major works in the final two decades of his life. At the same time, in the vocal music category, they are part of Bach’s Christological cycle of major works complied through various processes of parody or new text underlay, a musical practice dating to the Renaissance. Further, they can be considered acts of compositional adaptation through transcription and, at the same time, transformation. While they should not be labeled “improvements” over the original, they are examples of “Bach at his best.”

Admittedly, the four so-called Lutheran Masses seem more perfunctory and are less varied in styles than the original models from the opening Gloria of the Great Mass. Still, they also contain fine choruses and arias from sacred cantatas, achieved through contrafaction from the German original language to the Latin Mass. They are suitable for festival services as liturgy before the sermon. Unlike Bach’s oratorios for the major feast days -- Christmas, Easter, and Ascension (Pentecost is not known) -- and the St. Mark Passion, the standard, unchanging text of the Mass Ordinary cannot be readily adapted word-for-word like the poetic texts of choruses and arias from one cantata to another, most often from secular, special occasions to sacred services, with new life breathed into them. At the same time, Bach scholars increasingly suggest that these adaptations may have been composed originally with adaptation in mind, utilizing similar affect, musical phrasing, and other favorable characteristics.

Short Mass Comparisons

Besides diversity and distinction, brevity is another factor: 55 minutes for the B-Minor Mass Kyrie-Gloria, 25 minutes for the shorter and better-named “Missae Brevis.” The Kyrie in the B minor Mass, original music based on stylistic models, runs 22 minutes, while the tripartite Kyrie, mostly opening cantata choruses, last perhaps four minutes. The entire Mass Gloria of nine movements lasts about 30 minutes, compared to the five-movement Short Mass Glorias of 20 minutes. Orchestration in the B-Minor Mass Gloria is more extensive, with flute, oboe, violin, and horn solos in the arias and trumpets and drums in the opening and closing choruses. Mass text declamation is more extensive, with longer phrases more through-composed and less sectional. The original 1733 Missa Kyrie-Gloria is well-documented as a submission to the new Catholic Saxon ruler as an example of Bach’s abilities to be designated a court composer capable of providing appropriate music when needed, whether for sacred or secular purposes. Missa "Kyrie" and "Gloria," BWV 232I and II, were composed in 1733. The original score "was reworked by Bach during the adaptation of the Missa for the Mass in B Minor, in 1748-49," says Uwe Wolf in the Bärenreiter New Bach Edition.1

The later four Kyrie-Gloria settings were more utilitarian and specifically designed for Lutheran liturgy in the festive main and vesper serviceof the word , and not simply exercises involving rejected materials from the original Gloria settings. Where the impetus came from is unknown but scholars now suggest that the application may have been for oldest son Friedemann, organist at the Lutheran Sophienkirchke in Dresden, or use in Leipzig Lutheran services – or both.

Individual Movements

The net result is appealing music of the first order, showing various ways of setting the sorrowful opening Kyrie and the joy-sorrow five-movement synopsis of the Gloria. The chorus settings are the opening Greater Dixlogy), Gloria in excelsis Deo with the Et in terra Pax hominibus, and the closing chorus, Cum sancto Spiritu and Amen. The internal three aria movements are condensations of the six movements in the original Gloria, based on the music available to fit the phrases of the text, usually mostly balanced two-part arias but not da-capo arias with repeats of the A section.

Of the 24 movements in the four Missae Brevis, the only confirmed original music is the Kyrie in the Mass in F Major, BWV 233. It began as a separate Kyrie setting in Mühlhausen-Weimar (1707-1717) that used the cantus firmus, “Christe, du Lamm Gottes” (Christ Thu Lamb of God) sung in the lost original version but replaced by horns and oboes in the final Short Mass version. The unidentified sources of the four movements (Kyrie, Gloria in excelsis, and two Domine Deus) in the first three movements of BWV 233 and 234, possibly came from lost sacred/secular cantatas — works that are difficult to trace through parody.

While scant source-critical evidence exists about Bach’s composition of his four Missae Kyrie Gloria, circumstantial and collateral evidence abounds and this history is described in detail in BCW: Systematic Discussion, BWV 233-236: Thomas Braatz wrote (May 7, 2004): “Lutheran Masses BWV 233-236,” http://www.bach-cantatas.com/VD/BWV233-236.htm.2 Underlying Bach’s motive, method, and opportunity are topics about the significance of Mass movement settings in Bach’s time, short-mass terminology, lack of contemporary documentation, order of works, surviving manuscripts and difficulty of dating, the Dresden Court connection, reception history and later perspectives and biases. The Count Sporck commissioning theory is discussed and an article is extant, BCW, http://www.baroquemusic.org/bqxsporck.html. Also helpful is a “Diagram of Borrowings” (from other Bach cantatas): http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Scores/BWV233-236-Sco.htm.

Four Short Masses: Genesis

The genesis of the four short Masses, 19th century responses and contrasting, contemporary views are discussed in Uri Golomb’s article, “Bach’s Four Missae,” December 2008, BCW, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/Missae-Golomb.pdf. << Bach’s four settings of the Kyrie and Gloria, BWV 233-236 – usually referred to as Missae Breves or “Lutheran” Masses (with or without the scare-quotes) – are probably his most underrated works. Until recently, many of Bach’s most ardent admirers considered them unworthy of their creator; if they spoke of them at all, it was often with dismissive frustration or bemusement. Similarly, many musicians who have otherwise tackled large swathes of Bach’s sacred music tended to avoid the Missae (at least as far as recordings were concerned). Over the past two decades, however, there have been several superb performances – both of the complete set and of individual works; and scholars are increasingly taking them seriously.

<< The Missae seem to have rubbed against two cherished images of Bach. They are based almost entirely on movements from earlier cantatas, thus clashing with the image of Bach the divinely-inspired, original creator; and their Latin text sits uncomfortably with the image of Bach the faithful Lutheran. But the detractors have made two crucial errors. On the one hand, the works do not quite contradict these images as they believed. On the other hand, the images themselves are problematic, and get in the way of appreciating Bach’s achievements – not least in the four Missae.

The works’ genesis. The two Missae that survive in Bach’s own handwriting (BWV 234 and 236) were composed around 1738; the other two were probably written at around the same time. Two factors, at least, suggest that the four works were conceived as a cycle:

1. Similarity of structure: Each work consists of six movements. The opening Kyrie is a chorus; the Gloria consists of two choruses (“Gloria” and “Cum Sancto spiritu”) enclosing between them three arias or duets. In each case, the first aria”[Domine Deus” or “Gratias agimus tibi”] is for bass solo. On the other hand, the four works do not parse the text of the Gloria in quite the same way.
2. Common origin: Four cantatas – Nos. 79, 102, 179 and 187 [all composed in 1726, found in BWV 235] – have provided models for more than one Missa, creating links that move beyond each individual Missa. Spitta and Schweitzer, who were convinced that the works could not have been used in the Leipzig church service, speculated that Bach wrote them for the Catholic chapel in Dresden. More recently, Peter Williams (The Life of Bach, p. 199)3 suggested that Bach may have written the works for his son, Wilhelm Friedemann, for use in the Sophienkirche in Dresden. Such speculations, however, might be a response to a bogus problem: Spitta and Schweitzer notwithstanding, the Kyrie and Gloria did form part of the Lutheran church service on several feast days. Before 1738, Bach had already performed Mass settings by other composers as part of his regular duties as director of church music in Leipzig; the fact that he has also composed his own settings might be less surprising than the fact that he had apparently waited until the late 1730s to do so.

As Robin Leaver points out, the Missae were composed at a time when Bach was engaged in a series of retrospective projects – including both the revision of existing works (e.g., the Passions) and the compilation of comprehensive anthologies (e.g., the Schübler organ chorales and the second part of the Well-Tempered Clavier). These collection were meant, inter alia, to preserve Bach’s best music in a more enduring form. The Missae fit into this pattern: <<by adapting cantata movements into settings of the Lutheran Missa Bach changed their liturgical function from proprium to ordinarium. The cantatas were effectively part of the propria, along with collects, epistles, gospels, etc., for a given day or celebration, and thus many could only be heard on one particular day in the church year. But if they were reworked into ordinarium settings of Kyrie and Gloria the music could be heard more frequently. (Leaver, “Conservation or intensification?”)4

Beyond this, however, Leaver argues that the Missae were part of Bach’s larger, lifelong project to create a well-organised repertory of church music. In his later years, Bach increasingly insisted on raising the level of church music, creating a more professional body of dedicated musicians who would enable the presentation of a varied, demanding repertoire. Again, the Missae fit the pattern, forming as they do “a remarkable collection of movements, varied in musical style and form that display an extraordinary range of compositional techniques that are challenging to singers and instrumentalists alike” (ibid).>>

Parody, theological message

“Philip Spitta’s critique of the Missae remains the most concentrated expression of the traditional suspicion towards them,” says Golomb. “Spitta was willing to condone and even praise Bach’s parody practice in general; in the Miss, however, he accused Bach of doing “violence […] to his own creations”: <<There are among [Bach’s] remodelled pieces some which are elevated by the process and severed from a connection with some less dignified theme; and this commonly occurs when Bach transfers a composition from a secular to a sacred purpos. There are also re-arrangements which work back to the original germ of the idea, an under the new conditions give it quite a new form. Finally, there are some which are only a vivid reproduction of a piece; and just as a finished composition may differ each time it is repeated, varying with the character of the performers and the feeling, time, place, and surroundings at the moment, so it has happened that Bach makes a composition serve with a different effect, though with but slight alteration, under different conditions of feeling. All these modes of treatment have artistic justification, but none of them have been used in the masses under discussion, which, so far as possible to Bach, are mere mechanical arrangements. […] no artistic purpose in their transformation is anywhere to be detected; and even a superficial comparison must result in favour of the cantata forms. There each piece seems to have sprung from a living inspiration. It corresponds to the poetical purpose, and adequately fills its place as part of a whole; but here each gorgeous blossom is severed from the stem and bound in an ill-assorted nosegay.>> (Spitta, vol. III, pp. 30-31)5

<<Schweitzer’s Bach monograph contains even harsher indictments; both writers seem to have set the tone for later reception. Their erroneous belief (influenced, perhaps, by Lutheran church practices of their own time) that the Missae could not have formed part of the Lutheran church service might explain their willingness to dismiss them: they both hypothesized that Bach rush-composed them for an outside commission that he did not really care for.

<<Robin Leaver’s articles present an opposite view: that, in composing the Missae, Bach sought to award some of his music a more permanent and prestigious status within the Lutheran service. Leaver also assisted Paul McCreesh in reconstructing a hypothetical service in Leipzig in Bach’s lifetime, incorporating the F-major Missa. As the resulting Epiphany Mass album vividly demonstrates, Bach’s Missae and cantatas appeared side-by-side in the same service; Bach would not have known of any objections to using in one part of the service music that had already been composed for another part of it.>>

“In my view,” says Golomb, “the Missae display precisely the sort of “artistic justification” that Spitta proposes for parodies. Some movements in these works constitute extensive revisions, amounting to re-compositions; others are closer to their models. Yet it is some of the most sophisticated revisions that have been judged particularly harshly – for reasons that might have more to do with the writers’ ideologies than with the aesthetic value of Bach’s work.>>

Bach’s ‘Re-compositional’ Process 6

Through a mixture of serendipity, circumstance, and calculation, Bach in the late 1730s was able to transform sacred cantata choruses and arias into four unified settings of the Kyrie-Gloria section of the Mass, BWV 233-35 in six movements each. Bach’s basic plan was to utilize through contrafaction from original German poetry to the Latin “Missa” three entire cantata choruses for the opening tri-partite Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy) and the opening and closing sections of the Gloria, “Gloria in excelsis Deo” (Glory to God in the highest) and “Cum sancto Spirtu” (With the Holy Spirit). He was to use three entire cantata arias for three movements in the middle section of the Gloria, usually between the text “Domine Deus” (God the Father) or “Gratias agimus tibi” (We give thee thanks for thy great glory) and “Quoniam to solus sanctus” (For thou only art holy).

Probably composed in the later part of the 1730s, when Bach was perfecting various compositional techniques and compiling his “well-ordered church music to the glory of God,” the collection of four Missae Kyrie-Gloria, BWV 233-36, reveal various traditions and directions: It fosters the German tradition of liturgical settings of the first two sections of the five-part Mass Ordinary, including tropes of Luther’s settings of the chorale-based vernacular Deutsche Messe (German Mass). It uses the Renaissance tradition of contrafaction or new text underlay, usually involving Latin and the vernacular, as well as the Baroque (formerly common-practice period) pursuit of the collective dissemination of works. It exhibits a variety of German-based stylistic elements and it represents an engaging alternative to Luther’s German Mass.

Bach’s choice of particular music involved movements of similar “affect,” or mood, somber for the “Kyrie” litany plea of “mercy,” and more positive for the Greater Doxology canticle, “Gloria. Beyond this, the actual music had similar rhythmic motives especially for the words “Kyrie,” “Gloria” and closing “Amen,” while the music following can ornament the key words in long, spinning phrases. Other text phrases often have correspondingly similar lengths for the German and Latin lines, with repetitive words or syllables. To these basic requirements, Bach brought a special gift for musical text setting in terms of both the actual spiritual texts and the import of particular words through particular tones and harmonic choices. In addition, Bach’s inventive melodies not only fit the original texts and their substitutions (contrafactions, parodies) but also in different contexts can assume special poignance, distinction and meaning.

Parodied Movements

Eleven of the total 19 parodied movements come from four of the identified cantatas in the third cycle of 1725-26 (BWV 72, 79, 102, 187) while eight movements are drawn from six cantatas in the first cycle of 1723-14 (BWV 17, 40, 67, 136, 158, 179). Of the total of ten cantatas that provided materials, four (BWV 79, 102, 179, 187) furnished at least three movements as core material while six (BWV 17, 40, 67, 72, 136, and 138) provided single movements.

For the presumed 23 needed, “borrowed” movements of Bach’s four Missa “Kyrie-Gloria,” Bach started with a reservoir of four Cantatas BWV 79, 102, 178, and 187, using their core material for choruses of three of the four tri-partite “Kyries” and a concluding “Cum sancto Spiritu,” as well as nine of the needed 19 remaining movements. Besides providing virtually all of their madrigalian choruses and arias as acceptable music, these four cantatas involve other common features and distinctions. The music is scored for the appropriate tutti orchestra in consistent tonalities, the music required few adjustments or expansions to fit the new Latin text, and the four original settings were composed in Bach’s mature yet utilitarian style of the middle 1720s for the Reformation Feast and three middle Trinity Time Sundays, respectively, 10, 8, and 7.

Bach’s overall plan entailed placing the established borrowings into appropriate tonal and textual contexts and filling the remaining 10 gaps with five Kyrie, Gloria and “Cum sancto Spiritu” choruses (BWV 233a, 72/1, 136/1, 40/1, and 17/1, as well as two Gloria arias from Cantatas BWV 67/6 and 138/5. This leaves an intriguing Kyrie chorus (BWV 234/1) and three Gloria arias for which no original sources have been found: BWV 233/2 and 3, and 234/3. Thus, four of 23 movements, or one-sixth (16%) lack original sources. Similarly, music for several movements in Bach’s cantata Mass in B-Minor, BWV 232, assumed also to be contrafactions from cantatas, have yet to be found. Meanwhile, Bach scholars are pursuing works that he may have salvaged that survive today only in printed texts for special occasions such as weddings, as well as sacred and secular celebrations.

It is tempting to consider that two movements of the lost Town Council Cantata BWV Anh. 4(a), “Wünschet Jerusalem Glück” (Wished-for Jerusalem fortune), may have been the original music of contrafactions found in Bach’s late 1730 Missa: Kyrie-Gloria. The opening movement of BWV Anh. 4(a), “Wünschet Jerusalem Glück,” may have become the fugal chorus, “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” in 6/8, of the Missa: Kyrie-Gloria in F Major, BWV 233 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T17219z2io). The text is: “Gloria in excelsis Deo, / et in terra pax hominibus voluntatis. / Laudamus te, benedicimus te, / adoramus te, glorificamus te. / Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam.” In mood, phrasing and line length the two movements are quite similar. Another Gloria adaptation, BWV 236/2, originated as the opening movements of the Reformation Cantata, BWV 79, composed two months after Cantata BWV Anh. 4 in 1725. The contrafaction Gloria music is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGr9JISRnWM, the cantata music is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmio2ZdUm_A. The aria BWV 4a/3, “Herr, erhöre, was wir bitten,” appears to be a parody of BWV Anh. 4/5, “Herrscher aller Seraphinen,” and may have been set as a contrafaction in the Missa-Kyrie-Gloria, No. 1 in F Major, BWV 233, in the syncopated bass aria (no. 3), “Domine Deus, Rex coelestis” (O Lord God, heavenly King, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qg2BlvOZrU), the rest of the new text is “Deus Pater omnipotens, / Domine Fili unigenite Jesu Christe, / Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris.” The original German texts are found at BCW http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Texts/BWVAnh4-Ger5.htm.

The other two parody-contrafaction sources are found in the Missa BWV 234. The extended (six-minute), tripartite opening chorus Kyrie in A Major (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pw8cZy1vos) with two flutes and strings begins as a lovely “Kyrie eleison” (Lord have mercy) homophonic progressive pastorale gigue in 3/4. It continues (mm 73) in the Lento section as a 4/4 fugue to the text “Christe eleison” (Christ have mercy) with declamation phrasing that suggests a German contrafaction. The repeat of the “Kyrie eleison” (mm 90) in the third part is a dance-like 3/8 fugue, again beginning in the bass, and having an Adagio closing on “eleison.” The extended ritornelli and non-da capo structure suggests a progressive-style chorus in stile misto opening a serenade for the Saxon Court and composed as early as 1725. The bass “Domine Deus” in f-sharp minor 4/4 is a trio-aria with solo violin, with the added text of “Deus Peter ominpotents” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boB7XibpZf4), similar in structure to the bass aria, Domine Deus,” BWV 233/3, which may have originated in the same lost serenade music as the opening “Kyrie” chorus. Possible sources will be considered in the coming BCML discussions of the Missae:Kyrie-Gloria, BWV 233-236.

Uses, Reception, Recordings

The circumstances of plentiful and appropriate music and other performing opportunities as well as his calculating genius enabled Bach a decade after creating his annual cycles of church year cantatas, to utilize this music in another context, not as a portions of a repeated cantata musical sermon but probably in the greater part of the Lutheran Main Service as liturgical music in a broader theological context. So far, the specific uses and actual performance dates of the four “Missa,” BWV 233-236 are unknown. All that survives are the four scores in a copy from the hand of Bach student and later son-law, Johann Christoph Altnikol, done in the later 1740s when Bach was completing his Great (Missa tota) in B Minor found in son Emmanuel Bach’s estate in 1790. Two autograph scores of Missas BWV 234 and 236, do survive, first found in Leipzig publisher Breitkopf’s first catalog of Fall 1761, listed for copying for a fee under “Masses with Instruments,” as well as a parts set for BWV 234 which later disappeared. Obviously, these manuscripts were not part of the 1750 estate division of vocal music and as surplus found their way to Breitkopf.

It seems as though Bach near the end of actively composing church year cantatas in 1726 was looking forward to utilizing some of this music that he had recently composed with such inerrant mastery, in a broader or different context. Looking back almost 300 years, the specific results of Bach’s overall process of “borrowing” now seems to be essentially another production rather than a perfunctory self-plagiarism or an attempt to “improve” or “perfect” an existing work, judged with traditional assumptions in the judgmental context of dismissing or comparing.

It is unfortunate that earlier Bach scholars initially, virtually, and unconditionally accepted the Great B-Minor Mass as a masterpiece, without fully realizing that most of it involves similar contrafactions on a larger scale composed in the last two decades of Bach’s life, and then apply that work as the yardstick by which to judge other, similar “borrowings” done in a shorter period of time for specific purposes. Fortunately, the current long list of recordings cited below, and made in the past 50 years, testifies to the appeal of the music to today’s audience as well as the respect and insight of current scholars and commentators.

Some 70 recordings of the Bach <Missae Kyrie-Gloria>, BWV 233-236, are currently listed in the Bach Cantata Website (BCW, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV233-242-Rec8.htm.) These recordings, as well as extensive BCW general discussion, suggest that this music is finally being recognized as important part of Bach’s oeuvre. I would further suggest that it is an important part of Bach’s development of “Latin Church Music,” that is a cornerstone of Bach’s calling of “well-regulated church music to the glory of God.” Two BCW Recordings of all four Masses listed have Pdf liner notes: No. 24, Purcell Quartet, Vol. 1 (BWV 235, 234), http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Pic-Rec-BIG/Purcell-V01c[Chandos-CD-CHAN0642].pdf ; and No. 25, Vol. (BWV 233, 236) http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Pic-Rec-BIG/Purcell-V02c[Chandos-CD-CHAN0653].pdf; and No. 37, Ton Koopman, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Pic-Rec-BIG/Koopman-C22c[AM-3CD].pdf.

Bach ‘Missa’ Motive, Method, Opportunity7

In transforming the various church cantata movements into the four six-movement Missae: Kyrie-Gloria, three factors seems to have driven Bach: motive, method and opportunity. Bach’s motive(s) could have been the desire to fill out a well-regulated church music, to create acceptable and appropriate liturgical music in Latin, and to use Gloria text emphasizing the omnes tempore Trinity or Triune God of the Christian faith. Bach’s method was contrafaction of the highest order, not simply new text underlay, but with extensive changes in the musical passages. Even so, there is still legitimate criticism regarding both “faulty text declamation adaptation” and “incongruous stylistic usages.” Bach’s opportunity was a wealth of cantata materials suitable for transformation into the Kyrie-Gloria of the Lutheran Service liturgy rather than a showcase of his writing for his Saxon monarch.

As to the actual utilization of this music appropriate for the Leipzig Lutheran Service, especially on feast days, the “Missa Kyrie-Gloria in A Major,” BWV 234, was performed three times by Bach (c.1738, c.1743-46, and c.1748-49), based on original parts, and possible all four works could have been performed during the 50 years following his death in 1750, when various copies were made. “This collection was copied by Bach’s student and later son-in-law, Johann Christoph Altnickol” (Braatz, Ibid.). Bach’s second son, Emmanuel, listed all four scores bound together (“Vier Messen in Partitur” “eingebunden”) in his Estate Catalog of 1790 (P. 70), with separate performing score copies of BWV 233 and 235 from his Hamburg copyist “Heinrich Michel.” The Fall 1761 Bretifkopf publisher’s catalog showed listings of the original scores of BWV 234 and 236, available for copyfrom the manuscripts. At that time, Christian Friedrich Penzel, former Bach student and St. Thomas Choir Perfect, made a copy of the score of BWV 236, dated Oct. 29, 1761, possibly for performance at a service for his probe test to succeed (unsuccessfully) his father as sexton at Oelsnitz.

FOOTNOTES

1 Uwe Wolf, NBA KB II/2a, "Early Versions of the B Minor Mass" (2006).
2 Source: NBA KB II/2, Lutheran Masses and Single Mass Settings, Emil Platen, Marianne Helms (1982).
3 Peter Williams, The Life of Bach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
4 Robin Leaver, “Conservation or Intensification? The Lutheran Masses (BWV 232-236)”. Unpublished paper, due for publication as part of a collection of essays on the music of J. S. Bach
5 Philipp Spitta, Johann Sebastian Bach (London: Novello & Company, 1989 (trans. Clara Bell & J. A. Fuller-Maitland); 3-volume edition (New York: Dover Publications, 1951).
6 Most of this material derives from the BCML Discussion of Mass No. 3 in g minor, BWV 235, Discussions in the Week of October 7, 2012, William L. Hoffman wrote (October 8, 2012): Missa BWV 235: Introduction and Study, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/VD/BWV235.htm.
7 Source material, “Genesis of Latin Mass Music and the Kyrie-Gloria,” <Mass in B Minor>, BWV 232, General Discussions Part 17, October 14, 2009; BCW, http://bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV232-Gen17.htm).

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To Come: Lutheran Short Masses BWV 233 and 234.