Bach’s Mass in B Minor

Air Date:
Heard On University Of The Air

Johann Sebastian Bach has been called “the supreme arbiter and lawgiver of music,” and his Mass in B Minor is one of the last things he wrote. Bach worked in the Lutheran tradition but for reasons still debated, chose t as his last great work a Catholic Mass. In the hour to come, Madison Bach Musicians director Trevor Stephenson give us some ideas as to why Bach wrote the Mass in B Minor, how he used various instruments to achieve specific emotional effects, and tell us how audiences have received the Mass from Bach’s time to our own.