The Latin Mass

[Coda II]

Just some thoughts now that we have had time to digest the Bach feast.

I listened to, and enjoyed, quite a lot of it (and so it seems did our little one who slept much better during those ten days than before or since).

The highlight for me was the arrival on Christmas Eve of the B minor Mass - and I have been trying to work out why. I know far too little of the complete works to know where this features in the 'great works' stakes, but I have a suspicion that more than anything else it was the language of the Mass that did it for me. Notwithstanding the fact that my German is far better than my Latin and that I listen to a fair amount of sung German as a matter of course, the B minor setting just seemed right.
However, it is also true to say that I understand - in the sense of knowing what's going on - far more of the Latin Mass than the same in German purely through familiarity, and cannot un-hear the church-ness of it.

So, to anyone who has no experience of, or at least no particular associations with, the Mass in context do you find anything inherently musical in the Latin text itself?
Did you object to the overwhelming Christianity of the whole thing (as some who e-mailed the beeb appear to?)
To the Bachians - did Bach write differently for Latin and German or is it Catholic compared to Lutheran? (Though as I understand it the Latin settings were still used in the Lutheran Church.)

Oh, and a Happy New Year (based on the err, - Roman calender)

 

[tones]

To the Bachians - did Bach write differently for Latin and German or is it Catholic compared to Lutheran? (Though as I understand it the Latin settings were still used in the Lutheran Church.)

I don't think he did. Of course, the B Minor is somewhat of an oddity, in that some folk believe that it's a sort of choral Art of Fugue - basically Bach strutting his stuff to show his very best choral work. Moreover, many of the melodies (and all of the best ones) were lifted straight from the (German language) sacred cantatas without alteration. Bach was devoutly Lutheran, but the Lutheran Church did use some Latin texts (e.g. the Magnificat) and of course expediency sometimes required the use of Latin texts. To my ears he seems to have used the same basic techniques for both. These included (long before Wagner!) the use of Leitmotivs, using certain types of musical structure for certain texts. One example that comes to mind is sicut locustus est ad patres nostros in the Magnificat, which is speaking of Old Testament times and is therefore quite a stiff, square fugue, representing the laws of the OT. Then, when it comes to the Gloria, it changes, with the Holy Spirit ( Gloria Spiritus Sancti) getting the musical equivalent of three hearty cheers, as the choir builds to its climax and the triumphant soar out of the orchestra.

Oh, and a Happy New Year (based on the err, - Roman calender)

You too.