Bach's Missa of 1733

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.

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.

[5][7] 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 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": In deepest Devotion I present to your Royal Highness this small product of that science which I have attained in Musique, with the most humble request that you will deign to regard it not according to the imperfection of its Composition, but with a most gracious eye ... and thus take me into your most mighty Protection.

[14] 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),[15] Johann Joachim Quantz and Pantaleon Hebenstreit (a Lutheran court church director).

At least the panache with which Bach showed off as a versatile composer, only six years after openly choosing the Lutheran side at the death of the new elector's mother, must be admired.

Nor the fact that Bach's Missa was composed for virtuoso performers, nor that it was a composition requiring a SSATB choir could be considered exceptional at the time and place.

The most exceptional feature of Bach's mass appears to have been its duration, which largely exceeded what was usual compared to similar compositions at the time in Dresden.

[2] As for the result of his petition to the new ruler in Dresden: some three years after his request Bach received the title of Royal Court Composer.

The Missa of 1733 forms a considerable part of the Mass in B minor which publisher Hans Georg Nägeli described in 1818 as "the greatest musical art work of all times and nations" when he tried a first publication.

[13] In 2005, Bärenreiter published the work, titled "Missa, BWV 232 I, Fassung von 1733", as part of the Neue Bach Ausgabe.