Bach's of 1733, BWV 232 I (early version), is a Kyrie–Gloria Mass in B minor, composed in 1733 by Johann Sebastian Bach. It is an extended missa brevis (, ) consisting of a Kyrie in three movements and a Gloria in nine movements. Bach started to compose it, partly based on earlier work, after the death of his sovereign Augustus the Strong (1 February 1733), dedicating it to the latter's son and successor, Frederick August II, in a letter dated 27 July 1733. At the time, Bach was in his tenth year as Lutheran church musician in Leipzig, while the Catholic court of the sovereign Elector of Saxony was located in Dresden. Bach sent performance parts of his to Dresden while he kept the autograph score in Leipzig. Upon arrival in Dresden, the Mass was not added to the repertoire of the Catholic court chapel, but instead the parts, and Bach's dedication letter, were archived in the sovereign's library.
The composition, also known as Bach's Mass for the Dresden court, is an unusually extended work scored for five-part SSATB soloists and choir with an orchestra having a broad winds section. After reusing some of its music in a cantata he composed around 1745 (BWV 191), Bach finally incorporated the 1733 Missa as the first of four parts of his Mass in B minor, composed/assembled in the last years of his life, around 1748–1749. It seems unlikely that the 1733 Kyrie–Gloria Mass, either in its original form or as part of the Mass in B minor, was ever performed during Bach's lifetime.
The Kyrie–Gloria Mass was not assigned a separate number in the BWV catalogue, but in order to distinguish it from the later complete mass (), numbers like and are in use. In 2005 Bärenreiter published the Mass in the New Bach Edition series as (i.e. 1733 version of Missa, BWV 232 I), in a volume of early versions of the Mass in B minor. That volume also contained early versions of the Credo (BWV 232 II) and Sanctus (BWV 232 III) of the later Mass. Bach's Mass for the Dresden court is also referred to as and "The of 1733". The Bach Digital website refers to the work as "BWV 232/I (Frühfassung)", i.e. early version of Part I of BWV 232.
History
Bach was a Lutheran church musician, devoted to the composition of sacred music in German. He wrote more than 200 cantatas for the liturgy, most of them in Leipzig from 1723 to 1726 at the beginning of his tenure as Thomaskantor, responsible for the music at the major churches. In Leipzig, a university city where Latin was understood, musical settings of the traditional Latin texts were performed on festive holidays. Bach composed works on Latin texts, for example a Magnificat in 1723, performed both on the Marian feast Visitation and Christmas that year, and in 1724 a Sanctus for Christmas, which he later integrated into his Mass in B minor. Both works were exceptional settings: the Magnificat extended to five vocal parts and the Sanctus to six voices, when four-part singing was common in Leipzig.
Bach's intentions with the composition
Augustus the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, died on 1 February 1733. He had converted to the Catholic Church in order to ascend to the throne of Poland in 1697. During a period of mourning, no cantata performances were permitted in Leipzig, interrupting Bach's normal work of a weekly cantata performance. Bach was free to compose a Kyrie–Gloria Mass for the court of Dresden, where the successor was the later Augustus III of Poland. Bach presented the parts of the works to him with a note dated 27 July 1733, in the hope of obtaining the title "Saxon Electoral Court Composer":
A different translation of this polite understatement is "an insignificant product of the skill I have attained in music." In the note, Bach also complained that he had "innocently suffered one injury or another" in Leipzig. Petitions to the new ruler after the death of the previous one, as the one sent by Bach, were not exceptional in nature: similar petitions by musicians to August III included those of Jan Dismas Zelenka (unsuccessfully competing with Johann Adolph Hasse for the post of Kapellmeister), Johann Joachim Quantz and Pantaleon Hebenstreit (a Lutheran court church director). What was exceptional was that Bach accompanied his petition with a composition of considerable dimensions — a liturgical composition, no less — which was surprising in that Bach was then employed as a Lutheran church composer and was here presenting a work for the Catholic liturgy.