Johann Sebastian Bach - booksnow.scholarsportal.info

THE B MINOR MASS—GENERAL CHARACTER. 53indeed, are of a calibre and grandeur which almost crushthe small and restless generation of the present day. Asthroughout the whole work the most essential portions aregiven to them, a general consideration of the whole is thebest way to understand them. The liturgical elements inthe mass are four—the consciousness of sin in man (theKyric), the Atonement through Christ (the Gloria), theChristian Church as proceeding from Him (the Credo),the memorial supper in which the Church celebrates itsunion with and in the Founder (the Sanctiis and subsequentparts). That which in this mass gives artistic connectionto the five sections into which the materials are workedout is not the under-current of congregational feeling whichis derived from the performance of a solemn function, andwhich finds its highest union in the Catholic mass. The predominantsentiment in Bach's work is, of course, absolutelyfree from any such theatrical element. The inherent continuityof the liturgical theme is alone insisted on ; it is anideal and concentrated presentment of the principal factorin the development alike of Christianity and of the individualChristian up to the solemn realisation of the Holy Sacrament.And even this is but half realised, inasmuch as themusic belonging to it is conceived of as inseparable from theother portions of the mass, though it is not, and nevercan be, performed as a part of Divine Service. Thecommunion music, however, marks the culminating point,at which the essential difference from a mere historicalpicture of Christianity is defined. It is in the intrinsicconnection of the various parts, from the religious point ofview, and in the profound contemplation of the special bearingsof certain portions of the text which this has induced,that we find the source of that deviation from the typicalforms of utterance which has already been alluded towhen speaking of the protot)^pe offered to Bach by theCatholic mass. A vein of serious meditation was not lacking,even in the Catholic Kyrie ; but it rather lent itself to thecharacter of an introduction to a solemn ceremony, and assuch, under the increasing frivolity of Catholic Churchmusic, it grew more and more vapid. Bach's Kyrie goes