Bach’s Mass in B minor on the feast day of St. Cecilia

Leipzig Bachfest will stream the possibly largest version of all times of Bach’s Mass in B minor on 22 November. On the feast day of St. Cecilia from – patron of musicians and of church music – the extended version of the B minor Mass originally arranged for performance by a chamber music ensemble during the June Bach Marathon will be premiered at 4 pm on YouTube. The project was realized in cooperation with MDR KLASSIK and is supported by Breitkopf & Härtel publishing house.

The concert with the Mass in B minor by Johann Sebastian Bach can be watched for ninety days starting on 22 November, 4 pm (CET) on Youtube and on mdr-Klassik. The YouTube video will also be shown on the Bach Archive Facebook page.

Apart from the 17 musicians from Leipzig, the ensembles Ælbgut and Camerata Lipsiensis, who performed the chamber music version led by Gregor Meyer, many Bach lovers from all over the world can be heard and seen – all of them submitted videos of themselves singing and playing along after the digital première. Even well-known ensembles like Gaechinger Cantorey led by Hans-Christoph Rademann took part as well as singers from Chile, Oman, Japan or Singapur. Quite a few even performed at places where Bach used to work.

The painting »Saint Cecilia and an Angel« was painted by Orazio Gentileschi and Giovanni Lanfranco (c. 1617–1618 and c. 1621–1627, National Gallery of Arts, 46172. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.)