About this edition
Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191, holds a singular place in Bach's output: it is his only sacred cantata set entirely to a Latin text, and its music is drawn directly from the Gloria of the Mass in B minor. Composed in Leipzig in the mid-1740s, most likely for a Christmas Day service and possibly connected to celebrations of the Peace of Dresden in 1745, the work unfolds in three movements — a radiant opening chorus, an intimate Gloria Patri duet for soprano and tenor, and a jubilant fugal Sicut erat in principio — scored for five-part choir, three trumpets, timpani, flutes, oboes, strings, and continuo. For conductors and scholars it offers a fascinating window into Bach's practice of parody and self-borrowing, showing how he reshaped his grandest liturgical music for a specific occasion.
This printing reproduces the score from the Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe, Band 41 (pp. 1–64), edited by Alfred Dörffel (1821–1905) and published by Breitkopf und Härtel in Leipzig in 1894, plate B.W. XLI. The Bach-Gesellschaft edition was the first complete critical edition of Bach's works, prepared over nearly five decades by leading nineteenth-century scholars and engraved to an exacting standard. It remains a foundational reference text, valued for its careful source work and its clear, spacious engraving, and it underlies countless later performing editions.
About this edition:
- Format: full orchestral score
- Page size: 8.5 x 11 inches
- Reproduced from a public domain source
- Publisher: Purple 4R Publishing
This edition reproduces a historical score that now resides in the public domain, and we are glad to bring it back into print in a clean, readable format. We hope it serves conductors, performers, students, and scholars who want an affordable copy of this remarkable work on the stand and on the shelf.
