Johann Sebastian Bach's Magnificat is a musical setting of the biblical canticle Magnificat. It is scored for five vocal parts (two sopranos, alto, tenor and bass), and a Baroque orchestra including trumpets and timpani. It is the first major liturgical composition on a Latin text by Bach.

The Magnificat in E-flat major, BWV 243a, also BWV 243.1, by Johann Sebastian Bach is a musical setting of the Latin text of the Magnificat, Mary's canticle from the Gospel of Luke. It was composed in 1723 and is in twelve movements, scored for five vocal parts (two sopranos, alto, tenor and bass) and a Baroque orchestra of trumpets, timpani, oboes, strings and basso continuo including bassoon. Bach revised the work some ten years later, transposing it from E-flat major to D major, and creating the version mostly performed today, BWV 243.

The work was first performed in Leipzig in 1723. In May that year Bach assumed his position as Thomaskantor and embarked on an ambitious series of compositions. The Magnificat was sung at vesper services on feast days, and, as suggested by recent research, Bach's setting may have been written for a performance on 2 July, celebrating the Marian feast of the Visitation. For a Christmas celebration the same or a later year, he performed it at the Nikolaikirche with the insertion of four seasonal movements.

As a regular part of vespers, the canticle Magnificat was often set to music for liturgical use. Bach, as some of his contemporaries, devotes individual expression to every verse of the canticle, one even split in two for a dramatic effect. In a carefully designed structure, four choral movements are evenly distributed (1, 4, 7, 11). They frame sets of two or three movements sung by one to three voices, with individual instrumental colour. The work is concluded by a choral doxology (12), which ends in a recapitulation of the beginning on the text "as it was in the beginning". In Bach's Leipzig period, Magnificat is the first major work on a Latin text and for five vocal parts.

Bach composed the work in 1723, his first year as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, probably for the feast of the Visitation. For the occasion, he presented the Magnificat as his first work on a Latin text and his first five-part choral setting in Leipzig. Otherwise, he used five voices in the funeral motet Jesu, meine Freude, the Missa in B minor, composed in 1733 for the court of Dresden, from which he derived the derived cantata Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191, and in the Mass in B minor. Richard D. P. Jones notes: "Without exception these works lie outside the normal routine of Bach's sacred vocal works".

The opening movement Magnificat anima mea (My soul magnifies the Lord) is performed by all voices and all instruments except the recorders. The instruments present the material with almost continuous runs in the upper parts, octaves and broken triads in the bass. The sopranos enter first, in third parallels: they sing the first word "Magnificat" (literally: makes great) with a melisma on the first syllable, ending in a figure like a trill, then a stressed dotted note on the stressed syllable "gni", and relaxing on "ficat". The motif is abbreviated to a "fanfare figure" of just four notes, a low upbeat followed by three same notes, with the first one dotted. The sopranos sing it twice, reaching first E-flat, then G. The interplay of the fanfare and the melismas shapes the movement. One measure after the sopranos, alto and tenor begin to imitate the sopranos, another measure later, the bass adds the short motif as an octave up. The text remains Magnificat for most of the movement. After the voices conclude with "Dominum", the instruments close in a shortened version of their opening.

Source: Wikipedia ("Magnificat anima mea" from Magnificat in Eb Major (BWV 243a No. 1) for Small Orchestra).

Although originally scored for for 3 Trumpets, Timpani, Oboes, Bassoon, Violins, Viola, Voices (SSATB), and Continuo). I created this Arrangement of the "Magnificat anima mea" from Magnificat in Eb Major (BWV 243a No. 1) for Small Orchestra (Piccolo Trumpet, Bb Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Flutes, Oboes, English Horn, French Horn, Bassoon, Timpani, 2 Violins, Viola, Cello & Bass).