Bach’s Mass in B Minor begins with a majestic howl of pain—four adagio bars that combine formal grandeur with writhing interior lines, as if figures in a cathedral frieze of the Last Judgment were coming to life. The text is “Kyrie eleison,” or “Lord, have mercy,” and the distribution of the words in the chorus suggests the flailing of a desperate crowd. Half the sopranos sing “Kyrie, Kyrie, eleison, eleison,” the other half sing “Kyrie, eleison, eleison, eleison”; the altos sing “Kyrie, eleison, Kyrie, eleison,” the tenors and basses “Kyrie, Kyrie, Kyrie, eleison.” Only the first and last chords in the sequence are solid triads, the rest tinged by dissonance to one degree or another. The orchestration is a touch grotesque, with the first violins given a shrill D two…
