Anthony Tommasini - The Indispensables: A Critic’s Personal Guide to Classical Composers

INTRODUCTION

I must have been about thirteen when I first listened to a recording of Bachs Mass in B Minor. As a child I was essentially alone in my passion for music. No one in my family (not even an uncle or aunt, from what I knew) had sung in a chorus, played the guitar, or anything. So the finished-basement den of our house on Long Island was my private musical refuge, where I practiced the piano, one of those boxy old uprights, and listened to classical records.

About a year earlier I had begun studying with a new piano teacher, Gladys Gehrig, an awesome woman in her late sixties. A Bach devotee, Mrs. Gehrig had me learning several of the composers Two-Part Inventions, and my first Prelude and Fugue. One day she urged me to get to know Bachs mass, the greatest masterpiece of all time, she said. Her words made me eager to hear the piece, but also a little wary. It sounded intimidating. And the recording I found in a storeHerbert von Karajans weighty, full-orchestra version from 1952, on three LPscertainly looked daunting.

I may not remember the exact moment I put on Side One, but I remember vividly how those opening choral pleas of Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy) affected me. Today, after decades of experience with the piecefrom hearing numerous performances and recordings, from studying the score in college classes and playing it through on the pianoI still find the music overwhelming, though for me it will always be imprinted by my first reaction long ago in the den.

The mass opens with a five-part chorus, buttressed by the instrumental forces, singing Ky-ri-e in three stern chords of increasing intensity. The melodic line, taken by the Soprano I section, rises up a step, and the harmonies seem to lift with it. This simple musical gesturean imploring melodic phrase that ascends step-by-step with each urgent statementis a timeless music trope. As that third chord on the final syllable of Kyrie cuts off, the members of the Soprano II section, only they, start to sing eleison on a pleading three-note ascending phrase, as if saying to their brethren, Dont give up yet.

Before they finish, though, most of the other choristers, too impatient to wait, burst in with a second, even more wrenching cry of Kyrie. The Sopranos I again carry the top melodic note, having slipped up a scale step to F-sharp. You expect this short phrase, just like the first Kyrie, to rise with anguished fervor up higher still, to a G.

At least thats what I expected hearing it that first time. Something in the way the notes of the chords mingled made it seem like that was where the harmonies were headed.

Instead, as it sounded to my adolescent ears, Bach has the sopranos cling to that F-sharp for a piercing moment, digging in with more vehemence, clashing with other voices and instruments.

Now, at the time, though I dutifully practiced scales on the piano, I knew almost nothing about harmony, voice-leading, suspensionsall the musical elements Bach was utilizing to make this passage so powerful. But intuitively I must have grasped some of what was going on. I certainly knew what I felt about it. There is a touch of angry desperation in that second cry of Kyrie. Its as if the chorus were saying, Lord, are You hearing us down here? Hey, were talking to You! How about some mercy?