In Bach's day, it was the custom in Leipsic to render in Latin the magnificat performed at the afternoon service on the three great festal days. It is owing to this circumstance that Bach composed his splendid composition, which was probably performed for the first time on Christmas day in the year 1723. Certain portions of the Latin mass were moreover still in general use, especially the "Kyrie" and the "Sanctus," the employment of the "Gloria" being confined to Christmas Day. Since the "Kyrie" was a regular part of the service on the first Sunday in Advent, a certain connection was thus established between it and the "Gloria," and this may be one of the reasons why Bach composed a number of so-called short masses, consisting only of those two parts.[2] And as the practice of performing the whole of a Latin mass was not yet entirely given up in the Protestant church, more particularly in Leipsic, it is easily explained how Bach could conceive the project of writing a work of the kind in Latin. In the beginning, he only contemplated writing a "Kyrie" and a "Gloria," and these, being completed on the 27th of July, 1733, were presented to the Elector of Saxony in Dresden. One after another, however, the remaining parts were added and the entire work was finished as early as 1738. To produce it as a whole, under the conditions existing in Leipsic at that time, was utterly impossible, and it is probable that Bach never heard a full public performance of his grandest work. So much the more admirable was the courage displayed by him in undertaking a composition, which frees itself from the limitations of the actual and exists only in the realm of the ideal. In this mass all distinction between Protestant and Catholic is done away with and nothing remains but a universal Christian church, the image of which appears in the gigantic work, for whose creation Bach summoned all his powers and which has no equal in the world. Its only rival is the "Messiah" of Handel, and the difference between the two compositions is a consequence of the difference in the men who produced them. Handel, the oratorio composer, treated his subject historically, while Bach remained in the domain of the church, which, however, he extended far beyond the limits of a narrow belief, a matter of no concern to him when his genius took its loftiest flight.