Introduction

Like so many great masterpieces of music, Bach’s B minor Mass presents us with as many questions and mysteries as certainties. Why did the composer, a stalwart Lutheran, create a work for the Roman Catholic liturgy? Did he write for existing performers or for the future? Did he even intend it to be performed? What is indisputable is its status as his supreme masterpiece in the vocal field. In spending what proved to be the last couple of years of his life assembling a 90-minute Mass from new and pre-existing music, he perhaps wanted to make a lasting statement of his mastery as a composer and a final, unequivocal expression of his Christian faith.

Composer Michael Torke