In addition to the Mass in B minor, Johann Sebastian Bach composed a handful of other Latin-texted sacred works, including the Cantata (BWV 191), two Magnificats, a number of mass fragments, and four Latin Missae for liturgical use in the Lutheran church. This latter group, known as the "Lutheran Masses" or "short masses," was composed between 1736 and 1740. The more modest lengths of these works position them in the looming shadow of the monumental B minor mass—each of the four Lutheran masses contains only settings of the Kyrie and the various sections of the Gloria, rather than the entire mass Ordinary cycle. Of course, despite their smaller scope and lower overall profile within Bach's oeuvre, these works reward individual consideration. The work in question here, the Mass in A major (BWV 234), is thought to have been composed around 1738 and performed several times in Leipzig during the late 1730s and 1740s. Much of the work's constituent musical material, however, had previously been heard. A substantial portion of Bach's oeuvre consists of works based on preexisting compositions by Bach himself or other composers, and it is in this spirit of

parody—a term applied here in terms of emulative and/or pragmatic recycling without the modern implication of irony or send-up—that Bach employed in the A major mass (as in the other short masses, as well as the B minor mass) and a number of his own earlier works. While the Kyrie appears to have been newly composed, the Gloria draws on four of Bach's cantatas: the opening Gloria is based on music from BWV 67, the Qui tollis on a number from BWV 179, the Quoniam tu solus on BWV 79, and the Cum Sancto Spiritu on the opening of BWV 136. Still, that Bach deployed his musical ideas in an economical fashion does not diminish their inherent luster, and the adaptation of old music to different texts is not casually undertaken. Moreover, here, as elsewhere, Bach took occasion to alter or elaborate on the preexisting material to suit its new context. The same variety of texture and dramatic contour heard in the respective and contrasting chordal and imitative passages of the Kyrie/Christe/Kyrie movement are heard in the various discrete sections of the Gloria—and, in the spirit of the more dynamic nature of the text, in even greater measure.

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