Johann Sebastian Bach - booksnow.scholarsportal.info

;62 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH.church music was ever performed without an organ prelude.Now, whatever might have been the original purpose of thesubject employed for the Osanna, it cannot be disputed thatthese crowding and competing strains of rejoicing areadmirably well suited to the words of the multitude whoaccompanied Christ in His entry into Jerusalem. Indeed,from the point of view adopted for this section as a whole,all that seems strange in the Dona even, which simplyrepeats the music of the Gratias agimus tibi, disappears.It is not, nor ought it to be, a prayer for peace. As thegrouping of the sentences stood, the close could be nothingelse than a solemn hymn of thanksgiving. It can hardly,however, be asserted that this mode of treatment has notgiven rise to a contradiction between the music and thewords—though it is but superficial and, in the whole work,unimportant—nor that a finale with a different setting mightbe quite conceivable. But at any rate the reproach can nolonger be raised that the B minor mass has no close of dueimportance, based on the main line of feeling that pervadesthe whole.The B minor mass exhibits in the most absolute manner,and on the grandest scale, the deep and intimate feehng ofits creator as a Christian and a member of the Church. Thestudent who desires to enter thoroughly into this chamberof his soul must use the B minor mass as the keywithout this we can only guess at the vital powers whichBach brought to bear on all his sacred compositions.When we hear this mass performed under the conditionsindispensable to our full comprehension of it, we feel asthough the genius of the last two thousand years weresoaring above our heads. There is something almostunearthly in the solitary eminence which the B minor massoccupies in history. Even when every available meanshave been brought to bear on the investigation of thebases of Bach's views of art, and of the processes of hisculture and development ; on the elements he assimilatedfrom without ; on the inspirations he derived from withinand from his personal circumstances ; when, finally, theuniversal nature of music comes to our aid in the matter,