By the time J.S. Bach began composing, Martin Luther’s Reformation had profoundly altered the Church’s traditional form of worship. In German churches, the customary Latin had been replaced with the country’s native language, although the Latin mass text -particularly the Kyrie and Gloria portions - remained in Protestant church music. These "incomplete" mass settings were named "Missa." Today, these compositions are frequently referred to as "Lutheran Masses."

The two Lutheran Masses recorded here, like their companion works, the Missae in G Minor and G Major (BWV 235 & 236), make wide use of previous compositions by Bach and incorporate reworkings of arias and choruses from his cantatas while still holding their own distinctive mechanisms. Bach did not only perform his own compositions, he also performed works by other composers, including Marco Gioseppe Peranda, whose Kyrie-Gloria Mass is featured on this disc. Bach likely performed Peranda’s mass in the latter years of his Leipzig period.

Review:

The Bach Collegium Japan alight on the aesthetic of the new liturgical context with supreme eloquence in both of these works. Suzuki judges the pacing with quiet authority, promoting a generous phraseology where voices and instruments cohabit with a glorious quasi-nonchalance. The two Masses are among the finest recorded.

– Gramophone