Most of Johann Sebastian Bach's extant church music in Latin—settings of (parts of) the Mass ordinary and of the Magnificat canticle—dates from his Leipzig period (1723–50).
Bach started to assimilate and expand compositions on a Latin text by other composers before his tenure as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, and he continued to do so after he had taken up that post.
A few traditional Latin texts, such as the Magnificat and some excerpts of the Mass liturgy, had however not been completely banned from worship practice during the Protestant Reformation.
In Leipzig, compared to Lutheran practice elsewhere, an uncharacteristic amount of Latin was used in church:[2] it included music on Latin texts being performed on ordinary Sundays,[3] on high holidays (Christmas, Easter, Pentecost), and the Magnificat also on Marian feasts (Annunciation, Visitation, Purification).
From around 1740 there was an increase of Bach copying and arranging stile antico Latin church music by other composers, which sheds light on a style shift towards more outspoken polyphonic and canonic structures in his own compositions in the last decade of his life.
He also set the Sanctus part of the mass liturgy a few times, and copied and arranged mass-related compositions by other composers.
In 1724 Bach composed a Sanctus for six vocal parts (SSSATB) and elaborate orchestral score for the Christmas service.
For the Missa in F major, BWV 233, scored for horns, oboes, bassoon, strings, SATB, and basso continuo,[15] Bach derived most of the six movements from earlier cantatas as parodies.
[6] For the Missa in A major, BWV 234, scored for flute, strings, SATB, and basso continuo, Bach parodied music from at least four earlier cantatas.
[16] For the Missa in G minor, BWV 235, scored for oboes, strings, SATB, basso continuo, Bach derived all six movements from cantatas as parodies.
[6] For the Missa in G major, BWV 236, scored for oboes, strings, SATB, basso continuo, Bach derived all six movements from cantatas as parodies.
Bach composed the Sanctus in C major for SATB choir and orchestra, BWV 237, possibly for St. John's Day, 24 June 1723.
[19] It is a composition for SATB voices, string orchestra and continuo, based on the Gloria of Antonio Caldara's Missa Providentiae.
[27] In the period from 1727 to 1732 Bach produced the manuscript of a Kyrie–Gloria Mass in C minor [scores] for SATB choir and orchestra, BWV Anh.
The hymn tune used for this setting is derived from the melody of Sanctus minus summus, published in meter-less music notation in 1557 (Zahn No. 8633).
[30][31][32] The Acroama missale [scores] is a collection of six Mass settings by Giovanni Battista Bassani, first published in Augsburg in 1709.
29 is a Kyrie-Gloria Mass in C minor of which only the continuo part survives,[38] found in a manuscript Bach wrote in the period from 1714 to 1717.
166 is a Kyrie–Gloria Mass in E minor composed in 1716 by Johann Ludwig Bach, known as Missa super cantilena "Allein Gott in der Höh' sei Ehr", JLB 38.
[51][52] Around 1742 Bach arranged the Kyrie and the Gloria of Palestrina's Missa sine nomine a 6 [scores], and copied the other movements of this Mass, up to the Agnus dei, without modification (BNB I/P/2; BWV deest).
[25][53][54] Bach's manuscript copy of Francesco Gasparini's Missa canonica, BNB deest, was rediscovered in Weißenfels in 2013.
[57] A few weeks after arriving at his new post as Thomaskantor in Leipzig in 1723, Bach presented a Magnificat for SSATB voices and orchestra at the Marian feast of Visitation (2 July) Later that year, for Christmas, he presented this Magnificat again, with additionally four inserted hymns, partly in German and partly in Latin, related to the celebration of that feast.
In 1733 Bach again presented this Magnificat, but transposed to the key of D major and in a somewhat more elaborated orchestration, for the feast of Visitation.
As a response the Hussites sought, and eventually received, permission to mix native-language phrases in an otherwise Latin text.