page_title: Clavier-Übung III
section_title: Chorale preludes BWV 669–677 (Lutheran mass)
hierarchical_section_title: Clavier-Übung III / Chorale preludes BWV 669–689 / Chorale preludes BWV 669–677 (Lutheran mass)
caption_attribution_description: English: Title page of Johann Spangenberg's Cantiones Ecclesiasticae/Kirchengesenge Deudsch published in Magdeburg in 1545
context_page_description: The Clavier-Übung III, sometimes referred to as the German Organ Mass, is a collection of compositions for organ by Johann Sebastian Bach, started in 1735–36 and published in 1739. It is considered Bach's most significant and extensive work for organ, containing some of his most musically complex and technically demanding compositions for that instrument.
  In its use of modal forms, motet-style and canons, it looks back to the religious music of masters of the stile antico, such as Frescobaldi, Palestrina, Lotti and Caldara. At the same time, Bach was forward-looking, incorporating and distilling modern baroque musical forms, such as the French-style chorale.
  The work has the form of an Organ Mass: between its opening and closing movements—the prelude and "St Anne" fugue in E♭ major, BWV 552—are 21 chorale preludes, BWV 669–689, setting parts of the Lutheran mass and catechisms, followed by four duets, BWV 802–805. The chorale preludes range from compositions for single keyboard to a six-part fugal prelude with two parts in the pedal.
context_section_description: These two chorales—German versions of the Kyrie and Gloria of the mass—have here a peculiar importance as being substituted in the Lutheran church for the two first numbers of the mass, and sung at the beginning of the service in Leipzig. The task of glorifying in music the doctrines of Lutheran christianity which Bach undertook in this set of chorales, he regarded as an act of worship, at the beginning of which he addressed himself to the Triune God in the same hymns of prayer and praise as those sung every Sunday by the congregation.
  — Philipp Spitta, Johann Sebastian Bach, 1873
  In 1526, Martin Luther published his Deutsche Messe, describing how the mass could be conducted using congregational hymns in the German vernacular, intended in particular for use in small towns and villages where Latin was not spoken. Over the next thirty years numerous vernacular hymnbooks were published all over Germany, often in consultation with Luther, Justus Jonas, Philipp Melanchthon and other figures of the German Reformation. The 1537 Naumburg hymnbook, drawn up by Nikolaus Medler, contains the opening Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit, one of several Lutheran adaptations of the troped Kyrie summum bonum: Kyrie fons bonitatus. The first Deutsche Messe in 1525 was held at Advent so did not contain the Gloria, explaining its absence in Luther's text the following year. Although there was a German version of the Gloria in the Naumburg hymnal, the 1523 hymn "Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr" of Nikolaus Decius, also adapted from plainchant, eventually became adopted almost universally throughout Germany: it first appeared in print with these words in the 1545 Magdeburg hymnal Kirchengesenge Deudsch of the reformist Johann Spangenberg. A century later, Lutheran liturgical texts and hymnody were in wide circulation. In Leipzig, Bach had at his disposal the Neu Leipziger gesangbuch (1682) of Gottfried Vopelius. Luther was a firm advocate of the use of the arts, particularly music, in worship. He sang in the choir of the Georgenkirche in Eisenach, where Bach's uncle Johann Christoph Bach was later organist, his father Johann Ambrosius Bach one of the main musicians and where Bach himself would sing, a pupil at the same Latin school as Luther between 1693 and 1695.
caption: Title page of the hymn book in Latin and German of Johann Spangenberg published in Magdeburg in 1545
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