80: The Doctrine of Affects and Baroque Movement-Splitting

Just yesterday (relative to when this was written), I had the immense pleasure and honor of hearing—live for the first time—the Mass in B minor. (Of course, I mean Bach’s Mass in B minor BWV 232, but to say “the Mass in B minor” without further qualification is to always  mean Bach’s, just as to say “the Ninth” without further qualification is to always mean Beethoven’s.) And as I sat in the front row watching, listening, and thinking, and the idea for this article came to mind. Basically, why did Bach break up 5 movements into almost 30 in the B minor Mass to create something of a grandeur and scale never seen until then? 

The answer lies in the old story of the “doctrine of affections”—basically, the idea that artistic works should convey only one emotion, or they’ll get too chaotic because only one emotion can ever really come through. 

This is especially evident in the Credo: “Credo in unum Deum” and “Patrem omnipotentem” have, among their “affects”, the fact that they deal with setting to music what the Nicene Creed has to say about God the Father. There’s a distinct section about God the Father versus about God the Son, so it would not have been “okay” according to that theory, to put them together. (Sidenote, it is biconditionally true that every duet in the B minor Mass refers explicitly to God the Son, and every explicit reference to God the Son is in a duet—but that’s a story for another time.) More obviously, perhaps, is the perceived impropriety, according to this theory, of placing into the same movement the the two most emotional moments in the whole of the Mass: the consecutive assertions that Christ died and was buried, and that, after 3 days, Christ rose again from the dead and ascended to the Father. One is the utter despair of Good Friday, the other the boundless joy of Easter Sunday, (There is a plot twist in how he handles the Crucifixus, but I’ll let you discover it for yourselves—either by waiting until the dedicated article comes out or by going and listening to it, which you should totally do!) so of course, “for our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried,” and “and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end” feel different when just spoken and correspondingly get wildly different musical treatments.

Everyone, of course, treats the mention of the crucifixion completely differently from the mention of the resurrection. But what matters in this case is the scale to which Bach—a Lutheran, by the way, not a Catholic—blew open this form which used to be much smaller into the 2-hour masterpiece he left us. And thanks to this “doctrine of affections” we see Bach writing in just about every imaginable style and mood, taking us on a journey with and through him along the way. 

I won’t spoil how the Crucifixus ends—you have to look it up yourself!—but I will give you another example, complete with two links. Look at the first two movements of the Gloria: “Gloria in excelsis Deo” and “et in terra pax.” The first of these, “Glory to God in the highest” has tons of energy and dizzying counterpoint. It paints the picture of the awesome nature, the power, the glory (of course), the joy, the love of being with God, of just being God, period. That, of course, is a totally different attitude than “and peace to people of good will,” which you’ll notice is much longer (2 minutes versus 4-6), and, of course, more peaceful. 

Here’s “Gloria in excelsis Deo”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBoMDj_vzRE&list=PL5cdTocj3EsHAQgbDjjktOZ1sFZw3ZB7v&index=4

And contrast that with “et in terra pax:”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjdkBqaEyRQ&list=PL5cdTocj3EsHAQgbDjjktOZ1sFZw3ZB7v&index=5



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