Note 65 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
Bach’s thankfulness has often this same emotional tenour. In the Mass it is made conspicuous by the identity of the music of the Dona nobis with that of the Gratias agimus. The subject is an old church one. Bach had used it before in the great chorus of his Rathswahl-Cantate of 1731, Wir danken dir, Gott (No. 29), where the similar, but different and less elaborate treatment of the same subject—the second subject also is all but identical—offers an instructive study.