Listen to the concert preview. J.S. Bach's B minor Mass is one of the great works of music history. Although Bach composed most of his sacred cantatas, masses, and Passions wholly in the Lutheran tradition, the B minor Mass sets the complete conventional Catholic Mass text in its five big sections: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. Composed over the course of several years beginning in 1733, the Mass is a monumental, encyclopedic achievement, a culmination of Bach's lifetime of music for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra.