Johann Sebastian Bach’s »Mass in B Minor«

Bach’s B minor Mass is rightly seen as a milestone in music history; the manuscript was only recently classified as part of the world’s cultural heritage. Bach’s style achieves new heights in the score: he had been planning the music in his mind for many years, and the result is so varied that the Mass is nothing short of a compendium of choral and vocal music. No less remarkable is the instrumentation: the orchestra not only accompanies the vocalists, it also supplies elaborate comments on the story.