J.S. Bach
I grew up Lutheran — the Scandinavian version of Lutheranism, more evangelical but less academic and liturgically sophisticated than the German version. J.S. Bach is revered as a saint by the latter group, but we never heard of him, though we frequently sang hymns which were adaptations of chorales harmonized and arranged by him, from his passions and cantatas. The sound was definitely in our ears, but we didn’t know its origins.
Bach figured prominently in my college music history survey, and I struggled through several movements from his B Minor Mass in the Chapel Choir; but that was all I knew about Bach until I moved to Chicago after college and began singing his music with various groups, particularly with the Rockefeller Chapel Choir, which presented an oratorio series each year, covering major works by Handel, Bach, and other composers. I sang my first complete B Minor, with orchestra and soloists, with the Rockefeller Choir — and was transfixed. In those days, the choir and orchestra were able to fit in the balcony at the back of the chapel, high above and behind the listeners in the pews below. It was a superior acoustical space, and the sound heard downstairs was glorious. I remember sharply, clearly, my out-of-body experience singing that incredible work, with that fine choir; it felt as though the roof had lifted off the chapel and I was at one with the stars in heaven.
Soon after that experience I began coaching with Richard Boldrey at North Park College, and we immediately set to work on the bass arias from the B Minor. Though he did not profess to any knowledge of Historically Informed Performance Practice (HIPP), Richard was an excellent musician and teacher, and I learned a lot about making my way through a Bach score with him.
In succeeding years I spent eight summer sessions at the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, and another ten or so singing with the Oregon Bach Festival, where I became acquainted with a large number of Bach’s cantatas, and participated in many performances of the John and Matthew Passions and the B Minor. I have since conducted several performances of all three with Chorale, and with the Rockefeller Choir during the years I was employed there.
Bach’s motets occupy a unique niche in his output. It appears that most of them were composed for funerals, and lack independent continuo or orchestral parts — presumably so they could be performed outdoors, at the graveside, without instruments, or indoors, with instruments simply doubling the choral parts. This optional unaccompanied procedure was already outmoded in Bach’s time, harking back to Renaissance performance practice of some 200 years earlier. But Bach was familiar with music from that earlier time, and adapted aspects of it in his choral compositions. He also utilized the Venetian polychoral texture which appears in some of these motets, developed by Giovanni Gabrieli and others at St. Mark’s in Venice during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
It is difficult to keep all the forces required by such a complex texture synced, without the solid underpinning of an orchestra and continuo — but this has been Chorale’s practice since the beginning when we perform these works, and we don’t feel the music suffers, so long as we work conscientiously to keep things clean. Chorale’s tradition has been to perform unaccompanied since our founding, back in 2001. The discipline required to do this defines our sound, and makes us the choir we are.
We hope you will come to hear us sing motets by Bach and Anton Bruckner, and piano quartets by Johannes Brahms, on June 8, 3 PM, at St. Thomas the Apostle Church, in Hyde Park.