Bach's Architecture of Gratitude: On the Genius of the Mass in B Minor

Every lover of music finds themselves, at privileged moments, in ecstasy – certain that what they are hearing has captured, somehow, an incontrovertible truth. In Bach’s Architecture of Gratitude James Crooks explores this profound aesthetic experience in a case study of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor – widely considered among the greatest works of the western choral canon.

The book begins with an investigation of compositional principles – of what we might call the mass’s musical architecture....