page_title: Bach's Missa of 1733
section_title: Bach's intentions with the composition
hierarchical_section_title: Bach's Missa of 1733 / History / Bach's intentions with the composition
caption_attribution_description: Lage des ehemaligen Opernhauses am Taschenberg (zu diesem Zeitpunkt bereits Archiv), Ausschnitt aus: Grundriss von Dresden nach der neuesten Aufnahme, 1:9 000, Lithographie, 1828
context_page_description: Bach's Missa of 1733, BWV 232 I, is a Kyrie–Gloria Mass in B minor, composed in 1733 by Johann Sebastian Bach. It is an extended missa brevis consisting of a Kyrie in three movements and a Gloria in nine movements. Bach started to compose it, partly based on earlier work, after the death of his sovereign Augustus the Strong, dedicating it to the latter's son and successor, Frederick August II, in a letter dated 27 July 1733. At the time, Bach was in his tenth year as Lutheran church musician in Leipzig, while the Catholic court of the sovereign Elector of Saxony was located in Dresden. Bach sent performance parts of his Missa to Dresden while he kept the autograph score in Leipzig. Upon arrival in Dresden, the Mass was not added to the repertoire of the Catholic court chapel, but instead the parts, and Bach's dedication letter, were archived in the sovereign's library.
  The composition, also known as Bach's Mass for the Dresden court, is an unusually extended work scored for five-part SSATB soloists and choir with an orchestra having a broad winds section.
context_section_description: Augustus the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, died on 1 February 1733. He had converted to the Catholic Church in order to ascend to the throne of Poland in 1697. During a period of mourning, no cantata performances were permitted in Leipzig, interrupting Bach's normal work of a weekly cantata performance. Bach was free to compose a Kyrie–Gloria Mass for the court of Dresden, where the successor was the later Augustus III of Poland. Bach presented the parts of the works to him with a note dated 27 July 1733, in the hope of obtaining the title "Saxon Electoral Court Composer":
  In deepest Devotion I present to your Royal Highness this small product of that science which I have attained in Musique, with the most humble request that you will deign to regard it not according to the imperfection of its Composition, but with a most gracious eye ... and thus take me into your most mighty Protection.
  A different translation of this polite understatement is "an insignificant product of the skill I have attained in music." In the note, Bach also complained that he had "innocently suffered one injury or another" in Leipzig. Petitions to the new ruler after the death of the previous one, as the one sent by Bach, were not exceptional in nature: similar petitions by musicians to August III included those of Jan Dismas Zelenka (unsuccessfully competing with Johann Adolph Hasse for the post of Kapellmeister), Johann Joachim Quantz and Pantaleon Hebenstreit (a Lutheran court church director). What was exceptional was that Bach accompanied his petition with a composition of considerable dimensions — a liturgical composition, no less — which was surprising in that Bach was then employed as a Lutheran church composer and was here presenting a work for the Catholic liturgy.
  At the time, Germany lived under the cuius regio, eius religio principle (inhabitants of a region have to follow the religion of their ruler), which led to a somewhat double situation in Dresden under August the Strong: officially Catholic in Poland but only privately so in Dresden — no Catholicism was imposed on Lutheran Saxony, and only the court at Dresden was Catholic. Lutherans, including the Electress Christiane Eberhardine, who steadfastly refused to convert to Catholicism (and for whom Bach had composed his Trauerode when she died in 1727), had the Sophienkirche as their place of worship, while the Catholic Hofkirche (Court church) was housed in the former court theatre from 1708.
  Luther had not rejected any of the five parts of the Mass ordinary that traditionally were eligible for a musical setting (Kyrie, Gloria, Nicene Creed, Sanctus, Agnus Dei): Protestant mass celebrations could include any of these and/or their translation in the local language. There is no doubt that Bach admired his ancestor Veit for his Lutheranism. In all probability Bach wrote a Lutheran liturgical composition that would have been just as acceptable in a Catholic mass. At least the panache with which Bach showed off as a versatile composer, only six years after openly choosing the Lutheran side at the death of the new elector's mother, must be admired.
  For the music, Bach borrowed extensively from his previous cantata compositions. Bach may have had the capabilities of the singers and instrumentalists of the Dresden court chapel (which served the Hofkirche) in mind when composing the piece: at the time these included Johann Georg Pisendel (violinist and concert master), Johann Christian Richter (oboist), and the flautists Pierre-Gabriel Buffardin and Johann Joachim Quantz. These performers, versed in the French as well as Italian performance styles, were the best of what could be found anywhere in Europe. The new elector's taste for the operatic genre was no secret either. For church music the Neapolitan mass came closest to that genre, and this was the preferred Mass type at the Hofkirche. Bach was no doubt aware that apart from the excellent instrumentalists, the Dresden Hofkapelle ("court chapel") also had vocal soloists at its disposal (such as Faustina Bordoni, the wif
caption: This detail from an 1828 map of Dresden shows the location of the Opernhaus am Taschenberg, the court theatre that in the 1660s was built adjacent to the Elector's palace, then in 1708 transformed into the Catholic Hofkirche, and, by the time this map was drawn, after building the Katholische Kirche (1739–1751), among others, transformed into an archive (indicated as "Archiv" in the middle of this picture).[17]
  The location of the Sophienkirche is shown in the lower part of this detail.
exif: {}