J.S. Bach - Mass in B minor (H) BWV 232 - Part IV - 05 Finale: "Dona Nobis Pacem" (Synthesized)

The Mass is beautiful, complex, layered, and a bit intimidating. One of the few pieces of music that Bach did not really "have" to write. But he did anyway. Certainly he did not have to write it for anyone in particular, so I like to think that he wrote it for himself, almost like from a genius to a genius.

That's why I am so hesitant to mess with it. (Mess with a mass? Never!). But I did anyway.

Halfway through the unpacking of this final chorus of the mass, I realised that this is in fact a fugue in the form of a stretto, overlayed with a canon. Usually the stretto is only a couple of bars within a whole fugue. This piece is a stretto almost in its entirety, and it has probably close to ten voices. He definitely wrote it for himself, to prove what he could do.

But even if you don't know what a fugue, let alone a stretto is, the magnificence of this piece, with its air of finality (it is after all the end of a long mass), comes across intact.

PS: I apologise for the long pause after the last video - I changed job, country, home, lots of things to deal with, but I've been working on this channel every single minute of free time I had.