verba docent

So let’s say that you’re Johann Sebastian Bach. You’ve decided to write a missa brevis—Kyrie and Gloria only—to send to the new elector in Dresden, Friedrich August II. This prince has built the Dresden court’s musical establishment into one of the best in Europe, while at the same time you have been working under less than favorable conditions in Leipzig. Frankly, you can’t help but feel that a royal title would give you more bargaining power with the obdurate and ignorant Leipzig city council members, who block your vision for the Leipzig church’s music programs at every turn.

View of Dresden

Like every composer before you and since, you begin with a blank piece of manuscript paper. How do you start?

Well, there’s tradition to be considered, especially the traditions of Dresden, since you want to prove that you are just as cosmopolitan as men like Zelenka, Heinichen, Hasse and Quantz. So you’ll follow many of the Dresden Mass-writing conventions, such as the inclusion of Renaissance-inspired movements, a duet for the Christe eleison, and an easy juxtaposition of compositional styles. A very specific Dresden tradition is opening the Kyrie (and therefore the Mass) with a short, slow—but emotionally powerful— introduction before launching into the movement proper.* So you decide you’ll do the same thing.

What other choices do you need to make before beginning? The performers, for one. So in another nod to the Dresden tradition, you go with a 5-part (SSATB) choir instead of your usual 4-part one, a reminder of the 5-part Latin Magnificat you reworked for your first Leipzig Christmas. You will use a large “festive” orchestra for the missa brevis, in recognition of the Dresden court’s extraordinary cappella ensemble. Continuo, of course (can’t do without that), strings, two flutes, two oboes. You’ll use your usual 3 trumpets and timpani, as you always have done for festive occasions—but you’ll hold off until the Gloria. The Kyrie, after all, is penitential.

You have your text. You have your compositional model. You have your performing forces. What more do you need before you can start?

Your key. Let’s take a detour to decide about that…

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The principles of Baroque rhetoric, an important field of study that Bach himself probably taught as part of the Latin class at Thomasschule, state that the first step in creating a composition is inventio. In this stage of creation, Dietrich Bartels (see footnote) writes, first the theme is chosen (in this case, chosen for Bach by the age-old definition of the Mass), and then the key must be determined to support the meaning of the subject—in this case, God’s forgiveness.

In Baroque music in general, and in Bach’s music in particular, there is a real significance (often theological) behind the keys that are chosen. Among other musicologists, Eric Chafe has gone to great lengths to describe the allegorical associations ascribed to different keys.** The more obvious associations are the key of D with kingship, triumph and praise, since nearly all of Bach’s movements that involve trumpets are in their natural key of D. The same is true of the natural horn; because of its history as a hunting horn, that instrument is often used to depict pastoral scenes, so its key of F became associated with the countryside and nature.

Because the German word for “cross” and musical “sharp” is Kreuz, sharp keys are associated with the crucifixion themes. For example, when the story moves towards the crucifixion itself in the St John Passion, Bach famously used a mirror-image construction at the center of the work, by setting the chorale “Durch dein Gefägnis” (about how Christ’s imprisonment frees us) as a pivot. Before the chorale are two choruses in flat keys; after the chorale comes the music of the same choruses, but this time in sharp keys, representing Jesus’ movement towards the cross.

Chafe also described E-flat major as the key of God’s comfort for his people, or Trost in German. C minor is often used for death and burial, as in the final movements of both Passion settings. F minor and E minor are both used to represent suffering, sin and sorrow, whereas E major is generally used in a very positive way.

But what about B minor?

In the footnote of pp. 152-53 of his Tonal Allegory, where Chafe so helpfully lays out these key associations, he only says that “F sharp minor and B minor are often linked to the cross and suffering.” That makes sense for both Kyrie I (B minor) and Kyrie II (F# minor), but it felt a little general to me.

So in an uncharacteristic bout of objective data analysis, I went to the source to find the answer to the question: why B minor?

I went through the catalog that lists all of Bach’s works (the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, or BWV), which really IS a catalog. In addition to listing all of the movements of all the works, this volume (published by Breitkopf) also includes a short incipit of 3 or 4 bars of the beginning of each work, so the key can be determined. I went through all of the cantatas and major works that way, coming up with just shy of 100 movements in B minor.

The results made it pretty clear why Bach chose B minor for the Kyrie—the movement that reaches towards God to ask for mercy and forgiveness. These are the principal results:
19 forgiveness/mercy
15 God’s help in trial
13 God’s blessing
13 reject world for Jesus
6 incarnation
5 God’s presence in death
5 yearning for Jesus

Together, these encompass all of the theological themes found in the short Greek text, “Kyrie eleison”.

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So NOW you’re ready to write. All the elements are there: text, compositional model, performing forces, key. And what do you write? One of the most sublime four bars in the history of western music.

(Click on score to enlarge.)

Kyrie I, bars 1-4

But what does it all mean?!!

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*For this fact, and so many others about the B Minor Mass, I would highly recommend George Stauffer’s The Mass in B Minor: The Great Catholic Mass, which I consider to be the greatest single-volume book on the Bach’s masterwork. As a side note, I’d also plug Dean Stauffer’s appearance in our Refracted Bach festival; he will be giving the opening lecture on January 31, 2012, “Why Bach Matters”.

While I’m pressing books upon you, I must mention two books that opened my eyes to the importance of rhetoric in Bach’s music: Dietrich Bartel’s Music Poetica: Musical-Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music and Bach and the Patterns of Invention by the prominent Bach scholar Laurence Dreyfus. In addition to discussing rhetoric, Dreyfus offers an impressively detailed description of the generative nature of Bach’s compositional technique.

** I would mention again Chafe’s groundbreaking books, Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of JS Bach and Analyzing Bach Cantatas.