J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

MAJOR CHORAL WORKS
His most ambitious choral works—the Missa de Spiritu Sancto (1784) the Ode
to St Cecilia (1794), Confitebor tibi, Domine (1799), Exultate Deo (1800), and Dixit
Dominus (1800) all date from this time. The genesis of the Missa de Spiritu Sancto
makes an interesting comparison with that of the Confitebor. Very unusually (for the
eighteenth century) the mass appears to have been conceived entirely apart from any
immediate question of performance. The actual liturgical music he wrote for the
embassy chapels in London shows clearly enough that there would have been no
prospect of any performance there, and he took no steps to secure a concert
performance (this was before the arrival of Haydn’s late masses could have set a
precedent). 54 It was instead ‘the first fruits of his conversion’, ‘with the greatest of
humility dedicated to our Holy Father Pius VI by his most unworthy son and most
obedient servant, Samuel Wesley.’ 55
His longest choral work (around ninety minutes in performance) it is a ‘cantata
mass’ on the most generous scale, consisting of no fewer than twenty-one separate
movements. It includes all the elements one might expect: elaborate solos, choral
homophony, solo ensembles, sizeable orchestral ritornelli, and—of course—weighty
fugues. For a mass of its period it shows an usually large proportion of fugal writing.
There are the conventional (and in this case enormous) fugues for ‘cum Sancto Spiritu’
and ‘et vitam venturi’. But substantial fugues also serve for the Kyrie (the second
Kyrie is an expansion of the first), the ‘Osanna’, and the ‘dona nobis pacem’—there is
also a fair amount of freer imitation at other points. On the other hand, the fugal
texture is not always very closely wrought—not very fugal, one might say. This is not
necessarily a bad thing.
54 It had to wait until 1997 for its first—nearly—complete performance: Olleson, ‘Spirit voices’,
Musical Times 138/1855 (September 1997), 4.
55 From the presentation copy he sent to the Pope: Olleson, Wesley, p.30.
151