Exploring Bach’s B-Minor Mass ed. by Yo Tomita, Robin A. Leaver, and Jan Smaczny (review)

In reflecting on the state of research on Johann Sebastian Bach’s B-Minor Mass in 1985, the tercentenary year of Bach’s birth, Hans-Joachim Schulze dubbed the work the “perpetual touchstone for Bach research” (in Bach, Handel, Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays, ed. Peter Williams [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985], 311–20). That Schulze’s characterization of the B-Minor Mass is no less true now than it was in 1985 is demonstrated by an impressive new collection of essays published as Exploring Bach’s B-Minor Mass and edited by Yo Tomita, Robin A. Leaver, and Jan Smaczny. The fourteen essays, by Bach scholars across Europe and the United States, engage the B-Minor Mass from the perspectives of historical and cultural contexts, analysis, source study, and reception, providing new insights into one of the best-known and best-loved of Bach’s works.

As explained in the preface, the volume grew out of the symposium “Understanding Bach’s B-minor Mass” held at Queens University Belfast in November 2007. The essays in Exploring Bach’s B-Minor Mass were selected from those presented at the symposium and were revised for publication in 2013. The essays engage past research on the B-Minor Mass while contributing significantly to the body of scholarship on the work. In addition, the volume is carefully edited both for content and readability, and is a valuable contribution for scholars and also for performers or audience members looking for insights into the Mass.

Any volume that engages with Bach’s B-Minor Mass must do so within the vast body of research on the work. In addition to a wealth of articles and essays, recent monographs dedicated to the B-Minor Mass include John Butt, Bach: Mass in B Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); George B. Stauffer, Bach, The Mass in B Minor: The Great Catholic Mass (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003); and Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: Messe in h-Moll (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2009). Exploring Bach’s B-Minor Mass not only engages such scholarship throughout its chapters, but also particularly frames our understanding of the Mass within its history of performance, scholarship, and reception in its two opening essays. Christoph Wolff’s “Past, present and future perspectives on Bach’s B-minor Mass” (chapter 1) provides a lucid and accessible introduction to the Mass, its history, and the research questions surrounding it, while Robin A. Leaver’s “Bach’s Mass: ‘Catholic’ or ‘Lutheran’?” (chapter 2) provides an excellent introduction to the Mass from the perspective of historical theology.

Chapters 3 and 4 likewise complement each other, providing readers with a context for understanding Bach’s 1733 Missa (the Kyrie and Gloria of what would become the B-Minor Mass) within the wider framework of Mass settings in eighteenth-century Germany and particularly at the Dresden court. Janice B. Stockigt’s “Bach’s Missa BWV 232^I in the context of Catholic Mass settings in Dresden, 1729–1733” (chapter 3) focuses on musical style, framing Bach’s compositional choices in relation to other Missa settings extant at the Dresden court. Szymon Paczkowski’s “The role and significance of the polonaise in the ‘Quoniam’ of the B-minor Mass” (chapter 4) complements Stockigt’s essay well by exploring the cultural, political, and musical context for the Missa in Dresden. In fact, the chapter’s title is misleading and does not do it justice, for while Paczkowski does address the polonaise in the “Quoniam,” his goals for the chapter are much broader. As he states in his introduction, “this essay intends to show that the politics and culture of eighteenth-century Dresden provide a useful context for opening up to fresh enquiry some of Bach’s creative intentions in the B-minor Mass” (p. 54), and Paczkowski...