Johann Sebastian Bach completed what came to be known as the Mass in B minor in 1749, near the end of the his life, though he had worked on various sections of it for twenty-five years. Why the Lutheran Bach wrote what his son Carl Philipp Emanuel later catalogued as “the Great Catholic Mass” (it uses the Latin text of the Roman service) remains a riddle. Nevertheless, the Mass in B minor is considered one of the greatest works of Western music; below is the beautiful Laudamus Te from this masterpiece. 

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