Johann Sebastian Bach - booksnow.scholarsportal.info

—;THE B MINOR MASSKYRIE AND GLORIA. 39His desire to prove himself serviceable to the Courtwas the inducement which led Bach to undertake thecomposition of a complete full mass. The Kyrie and Gloriawere, in this instance, conceived of as a whole from thefirst, flowed from the same fount, and were cast in thesame mould. This is evident even from the scheme ofkey by which the last subject of the Kyrie is set— not inB minor, but in F sharp minor, to obviate the effect of a fullclose, and also, as the Gloria was to consist of two movementsin B minor, to avoid monotony. The fact, too, thatthe first Kyrie is in five parts, and the last only for four,is significant from this point of view.^^ The remainingportions — the Credo, Sandus, and Osanna to the Dona—werewritten separately and by degrees. It is not quite certainthat the Credo was writtenlater than the first two portionsif we may trust certain tokens, it may be assigned to asearly a date as 1731-32. As, however, the compositionof a Credo was not obviously necessary under the conditionsof the Leipzig liturgy, it is more probable that Bach didnot write this portion till the idea of writing a full mass*was suggested to him by the magnificent success of theKyrie and Gloria. The Sandus was probably written in1735 ; certainly not sooner, but not later than 1737. Since,then, for the remainder, which consists almost entirely of rearrangedpieces, no great trouble was involved, and as Bachseems to have been anxious to get the work finished, wemay consider 1738 as the latest date of Bach's labours onthe B minor mass.^^There is not the slightest indication that Bach everpresented the last three portions of the B minor mass tothe King; and the two first even were never performedin Dresden, if we may derive any inference from the stateof the parts as they remain in the Berlin Library. Their^^ The autograph score is a clean copy, which, to judge from the initialsM. A. must have been finished, if not actually in 1733, at any rate soon after.The Kyrie and Gloria are closely connected, for on p. 20, where the Kyrieends, the Gloria is at once subjoined; and in the original score they wereincluded together under No. i.53 See App. A., No. i.