- Date: 1738 -1739
- Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach
- Period: Baroque (1600-1749)
Review
Johann Sebastian Bach is known to have composed four Missae Brevis (short masses, each of which comprises a concerted setting of the Kyrie, and a multi-movement Gloria for soloists and chorus) presumably either to fulfill the Lutheran Eucharistic liturgy, or as gifts to Catholic patrons such as Count Fraz Anton von Sprock of Bohemia, or the Court of Dresden. As is the case with the better-known Mass in B minor, these masses were a combination of elements, some newly written, and some culled from earlier cantatas.The first movement of the Missa Brevis in F, BWV 233, is an adaptation of an earlier freestanding Kyrie (BWV 233a), written in Weimar between 1709 and 1717. The borrowed cantata movements all date from the early Leipzig period 1723-1726; the composite form of this Mass may be as late as 1740. A Bass cantus firmus liturgically proper to the penitential seasons of Lent and Advent, and the Lutheran liturgical practice which allows for a concerted "Kyrie" on the First Sunday in Advent, together suggest that Sunday as a possible occasion.
The three sections of the Kyrie are each fugal, and related as follows - the first Kyrie develops a contrapuntal motive, the Christe its inversion, and the second Kyrie counterpoises both simultaneously. The outer two voices frame this music within simultaneous and contrasting cantus firmi: an excerpt of Lutheran plainchant from the Great Litany in the Bassus voice, and the Protestant hymn-tune "Christe, du Lamm Gottes" in the Cantus. In Bach's later version of the Missa, this vocal line, whose text is a Lutheran chorale setting of the Agnus Dei, is rescored for oboes and horns.
The Mass continues with a multimovement setting of the Glora, whose structure matches that of all four Missae Brevis: two choruses of four-part music (accompanied by strings, two oboes, and two horns) frame an inner trio of solo arias. Three of these five movements parody earlier cantata movements, another common feature of Bach's Mass settings. Two of the arias parody earlier arias from Cantata BWV 102, Herr, deine Augen sehen. Qui tollis, with its textual prayer to the One who carries the sins of the world, corresponds to the mournful aria Weh, der Seele, while Quoniam transposes an aria entitled Erschrecke doch. Both adaptations retain the original obbligato instrumental line and the basic harmonic plan of their models, but both rework idiosyncrasies in the other voices (the predominance of the "sighing" bass line in the first, and the melodic mimesis of shrieking in the second). The final chorus adapts music first used in the opening chorus of the Christmas Cantata BWV 40, Dazu ist erscheinen der Sohn Gottes, again lending an air of Advent liturgical propriety to the Mass as a whole. ~ Timothy Dickey, All Music Guide
Albums with Complete Performances of the Work
Albums with Excerpt Performances of the Work
| Title | Date |
| Bach: Cantata Arias | 2000 |
| Bach: Sacred Music in Latin, Vol. 1 | 1999 |
| Music of Handel, Bach and the English Renaissance | 2008 |
