Interview with Gregg Cannady: Singing a Motet

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Boulder Bach Festival, cantata, chorale, chorus, dance, emotions, fugue, Gregg Cannady, Lobet den Herrn alle Heiden, motet, organ, performance practice, Rick Erickson

Edward McCue (EM) Rick Erickson has shared extensive details about the chorale tradition and Bach’s cantatas, but you’re in the midst of preparing one of Bach’s motets for performance by the Festival Chorus on 3 March 2012. Tell us about Lobet den Herrn alle Heiden (BWV 230).

Gregg Cannady (GC) For some time there was a debate about whether this motet was really by Bach, but the general consensus today is that it was an early work that might have been commissioned for a special occasion, such as a memorial service. While it is based on the first two verses of Psalm 117 and is written for a single, four-voiced choir with basso continuo accompaniment, Lobet den Herrn alle Heiden (Praise the Lord, all gentiles) doesn’t tell a Gospel story or resemble the much simpler entrance motets found at the beginnings of the Lutheran Sunday Service in the eighteenth century, so the thought is that it might have been originally performed somewhere other than in a church. Since the manuscript includes an independent continuo part that could have been played on a portative organ, with other instruments supporting the voices, it’s possible that the motet could even have been first performed out-of-doors.

Lobet den Herrn is quite virtuosic in its writing for the voices and would have served as a spectacular celebration of the life of any individual. The first line of text begins with ascending arpeggios, and for twenty-four measures the choir weaves in and out of a fugal theme before finally coming together on a cadence. Then a second fugue appears with a new line of text, and each entrance of the second subject is increasingly pronounced and energetic. The setting becomes quite exciting when the voices sing “preiset” (“extol”) again and again in different ranges, and it reminds me a lot of a gospel choir singing their praises.

But suddenly the mood changes, and the Chamber Choir, a subset of singers from within the Festival Chorus, softly sings the third section of the motet. Homophonic, sustained and beautiful, the text “Denn seine Gnade und Wahrheit” (“For his mercy and truth”) demands a drastically different treatment than the two previous songs of praise, and the text leads us into a more polyphonic section where the word “Ewigkeit” (“eternity”) is painted beautifully by Bach. Each of the parts takes its turn sustaining the first syllable of the word for couple of measures, and slowly and surely the polyphonic writing builds up to another cadence. At that point, everybody comes in, and the full Festival Chorus begins to sing “Alleluia.”

It’s really fun to sing the Alleluia section in a very fast three, and Rick may even decide to conduct it in one. When you first look at this section you just see this one word, “Alleluia,” and you think “No Big Deal,” but you can never predict on which beat that one word will make an entrance, and, as a result, this short Alleluia section presents more than just a few challenges. In fact, the entire motet is a challenge to sing, and everybody has to be very accurate in their rhythms and flexible in their articulation of long lines of rapid notes.

EM This season the Boulder Bach Festival instrumentalists are working hard to improve their Baroque performance practice. What’s the Festival Chorus up to?

GC Well, there was a time in our choral history when the esthetic was to perform everything with a big, Romantic sound, even the early works. In the past, singers would approach every note with gusto and even weight, but if you sing each note with equal weight and a lot of force, you can’t see past the dense texture to the musical gestures that Bach selected to deliver the text.

So we’re going out of our way to make sure that we don’t weight every note equally. We’re using warmup exercises based on cantata texts to practice Bach’s gestures, and we’re paying close attention to the rise and fall of the line and the musical stress and, more importantly, unstress of the text. It’s really quite refreshing to perform Bach while carefully listening to each other and to working together to bring out the essence of each line of text. It’s a huge goal of ours to bring the beauty and genius of this music to everyone, not just to people who are already hooked on Bach.

EM Your synopsis of this motet makes me want to become familiar with the text before hearing it performed live during the Festival, yet I look forward to seeing how close you can come to making the motet truly accessible to audience members who are hearing the text for the first time.

GC Just last night, at a rehearsal of the Chamber Choir, we were talking about how we really want to make sure that the text is coming across. So rather than burying our noses in the music and looking and sounding like stern musicians who take themselves much too seriously, we’ve decided to memorize parts of the motet so that at times our voices can dance with joy or, alternatively, admit our longing for something that’s missing in our lives. Our hope is that, by opening up to the text, we will help people who don’t have an extensive background in music to instantly identify with what we’re singing about.

EM This must have something to do with universality of Bach’s music. Even though the words of this motet have sprung from a particular faith tradition, the contrasting emotions portrayed in Bach’s music aren’t limited to any particular place or time.

GC That’s absolutely right. Bach wrote this music for all people and for all times, and every year it’s our duty to present it to the Boulder community to the best of our ability.

Welcome to the Choral Scholars Program

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alto, aria, bass, Boulder Bach Festival, cantata, chorale, intonation, Latin, Leipzig, motet, music notation, organ, organ pipe, performance practice, recitative, soprano, St. Nicholas Church, St. Thomas Church, St. Thomas School, tenor

This mock brochure, offered to all participants in the Kids for Bach concert on 12 February 2012 and the Bach for Kids interactive sessions on 1 March 2012, is based on Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, by Christoph Wolff, and The Worlds of Johann Sebastian Bach, edited by Raymond Erickson.

Leipzig, 26 January 1729

Dear Prospective Scholar,

Thank you for your interest in spring admission to the Choral Scholars Program. We hope that these materials will inform you of the advantages of studying at St. Thomas School and encourage you to carefully prepare for your entrance examinations.

Johann Sebastian Bach, Cantor et Director Chori Musici

Educational Goals

Since our founding in 1212, the educational goals of St. Thomas School have been:

• The knowledge and fear of God
• The vivid knowledge of His Divine Essence and Will

Because our ancestors determined that music should also be practiced at St. Thomas School, a special Choral Scholars Program is available to those who qualify and are selected.

Advantages

Originally established as a school for the poor, St. Thomas School selects the most gifted among needy students, primarily from the vicinity of Leipzig. Since 1543, when the School became a civic institution, wealthy citizens have made charitable gifts and bequests on behalf of needy and gifted students who reside at the School and pursue both academic and musical instruction as alumni in the Choral Scholars Program. In fairness to all, instruction is also available to qualified local students as nonresident externi, without regard to need, but subject to the payment of tuition.

As the area’s most selective Latin school, with a senior faculty that often overlaps with that of Leipzig University, the level of instruction and the atmosphere of learning leads a significant number of St. Thomas School graduates to continue their education in theology, law, medicine and philosophy at the University.

The Choral Scholars Program

This spring, nine spaces are available for resident student alumni in the Choral Scholars Program.

As recipients of a free education, room and board and a small stipend, members of the Choral Scholars Program provide music for all of Leipzig’s churches.

Please note that a musical audition is required before admission to the Choral Scholars Program can be considered.

Admissions Process

A rigorous admissions process will be conducted in order to identify candidates qualified for the limited number of alumni positions in the Choral Scholars Program.

Magister Johann Heinrich Ernesti, Rector, and Johann Christian Hebenstreit, Conrector, will test the applicants’ academic qualifications. Johann Sebastian Bach, Cantor, will examine each candidate’s musical background and potential, taking care to evaluate candidates for matters of intonation and sight-reading, experience in performance practices, and adeptness in proper music expression.

This committee of three will propose its rank list to the Chairman of the Board of the St. Thomas School for immediate admission to the Choral Scholars Program, possible admission to the Choral Scholars Program after reexamination, or admission as externi, outside of the Choral Scholars Program, when space permits.

Typical Profile of a Successful Candidate

Most candidates currently attend a Latin school and enter the Choral Scholars Program when they are thirteen or fourteen years old. Scholars can remain at St. Thomas School for a maximum of eight years, usually two years per class.

Recognizing the broadened educational advantage offered at St. Thomas School, candidates typically possess a good voice, fine proficiency in reading music notation, and talent in playing one or more musical instruments.

Course of Study

Altogether, fifty-five resident alumni and approximately a hundred nonresident externi pursue a rigorous course of study at St. Thomas School in the trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. As a result, great attention is placed on the mastery of Latin etymology and syntax, with lesser emphasis on Greek and Hebrew, leading to mastery of the Catechism. With respect to the acquisition of scientific knowledge, musical tuning systems, proportions of intervals, and the geometry of organ pipes are studied simultaneously with choir practice, singing lessons and musical performance. The prosody of recitatives and the meter and rhyme of arias are similarly investigated in an effort to glorify God through music.

Classes are held weekdays from 7 to 10 in the morning and from 12 to 3 in the afternoon. Unscheduled time is reserved for individual study, with alumni in their cubicles and externi at home.

With the exception of religious holidays and the three annual trade fairs, musical exercises with all classes are conducted on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 9 and 12 and on Friday at 12 in the school auditorium, which is suitably equipped with a small organ and a harpsichord. Practical examples for the vocal and instrumental repertoire help to amplify the daily lives and duties of the Choral Scholars as they pursue a theological education. Our Cantor also provides instrumental lessons in private or small groups, as appropriate.

The Choirs

Choral Scholars from the upper four classes are divided into four choirs and earn stipends by singing at church services, weddings and funerals.

Choir I, consisting of the twelve to sixteen most select singers from the upper classes, are under the direction of our Cantor and provide cantatas and other concerted music at the two main churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas in an alternating schedule. Four times a year they also provide the Old Service at the University Church of St. Paul’s.

The Choir I vocalists are divided into two sorts, namely concertists and ripienists. The concertists are ordinarily four in number, but sometimes also five, six, seven and even eight when music for two choirs is to be performed. The ripienists, too, must be a least eight, namely two for each soprano, alto, tenore and basso part. Such concerted pieces, which are mostly of Cantor Bach’s composition, are incomparably harder and more intricate than the repertoire sung by the other choirs.

Choir II also serves the two main churches in alternation with Choir I under the direction of the second prefect, singing mostly motets without instrumental accompaniment.

Choir III serves the New Church by singing motets and chorales under the direction of the third prefect.

Choir IV sings only hymns at St. Peter’s.

Penalties

A stiff schedule of fines is subtracted from the stipend of all Choral Scholars who fail to exercise their art to the greatest degree possible. For example, every noticeable musical mistake is fined 1 groschen, and intentional and mischievous mistakes are fined 3 groschen.

These fines are used to defray the cost of repairing musical instruments and, for the use of the members of the congregations, the printing  of booklets containing the texts of the weekly cantatas.

Gustav Leonhardt to be Honored at Bachfest Leipzig

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Bachfest Leipzig, cantata, Gustav Leonhardt, Leipzig, Orchestral Suite no. 1 in C Major, St. Nicholas Church, suite, Ton Koopman

An outstanding musician has been awarded the Bach Medal by the city of Leipzig every year since 2003. In that year, Dutch Bach specialist Gustav Leonhardt was the first person who received the medal made from Meissen Porcelain. The famous harpsichordist and conductor was one of the leading pioneers in the movement to play music on historic instruments. Aged 83, he died on Monday last week following a serious illness. In his honor, the management of Bachfest Leipzig and the Dutch conductor Ton Koopman, a protégé of Gustav Leonhardt, have decided to dedicate the concert taking place on 9 June 2012 at 8 pm in St. Nicholas Church Leipzig to the memory of this important musician and educator. Koopman will perform three of Bach’s Cantatas (BWV 51, 199 and 202) as well as Orchestral Suite no. 1 in C Major (BWV 1066)  together with the soprano Dorothee Mields and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra.

– Bach-Archive Leipzig

Interview with Zachary Carrettin: Real Authentic Practice

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acoustics, Baroque bow, Boulder Bach Festival, bowing, Corelli, harmonic series, improvisation, Kenneth Goldsmith, Leopold Mozart, Mozart, performance practice, Rick Erickson, string tone, tenor, vibrato, Zachary Carrettin

Edward McCue (EM) You’ve been complimented on your expressive playing on the Baroque violin. Where did this affinity for period instruments originate?

Zachary Carrettin (ZC) When I was a freshman at the High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, I became a private student of violinist Kenneth Goldsmith. We immediately began working on the Mozart violin concertos, and when I was sixteen, I bought a Baroque bow primarily for work on solo Bach and Corelli trio sonatas. By the time I was seventeen, Mr. Goldsmith had put a Baroque violin with pure gut strings in my hands, and so I began working on the original equipment, as well as original manuscripts, before I entered college. As a Rice University undergraduate, I pursued further studies in Holland and Belgium and began to work professionally on historical instruments, so I would say that period instruments have been integrated into my training as a violinist, not something outside of learning violin technique and violin style.

EM So what do you look for in a historical instrument?

ZC This is a big issue for me as I believe that a historical instrument’s setup should achieve the most honest, pure, beautiful sound that fully expresses the harmonic series. Often times violinists will convert their instruments into what they believe to be an eighteenth century setup, and they lose all of the great qualities of the instrument. Success depends on who is doing the work and what they are using for the model for the work on the instrument.

I do play an instrument with a retrofitted Baroque neck, but it was a careful operation, and the instrument retains an enormous amount of resonance. If the ring had been lost, there would really be nothing authentic about the resulting sound.

EM I often hear musicians discussing specific bowing techniques required to play the Baroque violin in an authentic manner, but isn’t an understanding of style and repertoire at least as important as the equipment and technique?

Francesco Saverio Geminiani (1687-1762)

ZC Certainly, and that repertoire becomes so much more interesting the further that you go into it. Eventually you begin to understand things that are in the music but are not notated on the page. To do this, one needs to look at harpsichord music, and virginal music, and organ music, and lute manuscripts as all of these things inform the practice of playing the violin for seventeenth and eighteenth century repertory.

After working with so many teachers and musicians I now realize that there are many viable technical and stylistic approaches to playing Baroque music. Today’s diversity of approaches really reflects the diversity that existed in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries because, in addition to the national styles of composing and playing in France and Italy, there were regional styles. Even within a given city you might have found a violinist who lived three city blocks away from an equally important violinist, and yet the two of them agreed on nothing.

This kind of diversity of approaches led to a warning from Leopold Mozart that “one should not vibrate on every note” as opposed to Geminiani’s recommendation that “since the shake makes the tone more agreeable, it should be used as often as possible.” Clearly, each heard someone else doing something he didn’t like, so I think that treatises are often reacting against things that a particular musician didn’t favor.

And I have worked with people who favored the lower part of the bow and people who favored the upper part of the bow and some who liked to play open strings as often as possible without using the fingers and others who try to avoid the open strings as often as possible. In fact, there is documentation supporting all of these practices.

This diversity makes it difficult to implement a concept called HIPP: Historically Informed Performance Practice. I think this diversity is reconciled by applying RAP: Real Authentic Practice.

For me there are three concepts to Real Authentic, early eighteenth century, Practice. Those three concepts are: everybody composed, everybody improvised, and everybody played more than one instrument. That pretty much goes without exception. Singers played several instruments. Composers sang and played several instruments, and concertmasters played several instruments, sang, improvised and composed.

My point being is that we should be constantly expanding the tools of expression that we have at our disposal. To this end, the first ten years of playing Baroque string instruments might be devoted to reading documents, playing original instruments and learning a variety of practices, and then the next ten years might be committed to merging all of those ideas by pursuing Real Authentic Practice. My hope for everyone involved in historical performance is that we will eventually embrace all of the equipment and documents as colors on a palette for our expressivity, rather than limiting ourselves to any single approach that we perceive to be “authentic.”

EM How have you integrated singing into your playing?

ZC Your question makes me think back to when I was fifteen or sixteen. My mentor, Ken Goldsmith, gave me a stack of LP records of the great singers of the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s and said, “You know, if you want to learn how to play the violin, you must listen to the great singers.” Ferruccio Tagliavini is still my favorite tenor, and I think that what Mr. Goldsmith said is true for all of us instrumentalists.

We learn from what’s natural to the voice, and the color, the sonority that a choir achieves, should be our ideal as instrumentalists. We should always be going for that, yet, strangely, many of us forget that along the way. We get caught up with the equipment, with notions of authentic performance practice, with documents, with the different functions of a violin, and a cello and an organ, and often we stray too far away from the true nature of the sound.

Fortunately, Rick Erickson and I agree on so many things. For example, we agree on the inherent vocal nature of bowed instruments and wind instruments, and we want to find what is most natural. We don’t want to limit ourselves with our concepts of what may have been done in a particular choir or orchestra in a particular city in the year 1715, but rather, the more we read, the more ideas we have, the more we compose, the more we improvise, the more we explore, the more we try things on different instruments, the more we can bring to our audiences.

I think that, here in Boulder in the early twenty-first century, our audiences and we are in a particularly fantastic place. We have an enormous number of manuscripts and documents at our disposal. We have recordings, we have traditions of playing early music. We have teachers and musicians and colleagues with whom we can exchange ideas. So we actually have more possibilities than they may have had, say, in Dresden in 1715 or Venice in 1730.

When we combine our own imaginations and our own experiences with playing and hearing this music, the sky is the limit. That’s not say that we can do everything better than they did in Bach’s time. I don’t believe that’s possible, for a number of reasons, but whatever we do, we can do it beautifully, and we can do it in our own way.

Interview with Zachary Carrettin: Finding Our Voice

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acoustics, balance, Baroque bow, Boulder Bach Festival, bowing, Chaconne in D minor, emotions, improvisation, Mozart, painting, phrasing, Rick Erickson, Sergiu Luca, string tone, The Holy Trinity Bach Players, vibrato, Zachary Carrettin

Edward McCue (EM) How is the Boulder Bach Festival ensemble developing its own sound?

Zachary Carrettin (ZC) Our instrumentalists come from a diversity of backgrounds, and each one of us has strong opinions and a strong musical voice. As we prepare our February and March programs, we’re working together to develop a unified voice with real character.

Step one has been to begin using our Baroque bows. Last fall, when I asked my colleagues if they had access to a Baroque bow, virtually everyone said they owned one. We have decided to use our bows in a way that is informed by the Italian and French music of Bach’s time and before, and equally important is our decision to pay careful attention to the acoustic of our performance space.

Personally, I first became really aware of a room’s acoustic when I was working with a great German violinist who was bouncing the bow quite high off the string in a very detached manner. Because we were playing in a space that seated more than a thousand people and was carpeted, the acoustic didn’t resound, and I realized that, after working with him for a couple of days, his style of playing had probably developed over decades of playing in stone chapels in Europe, which have a lot of resonance. His detached manner of playing was probably perfect for those spaces, which create a musical line through the sonorous ringing of the room, whereas when we play in less resonant spaces in North America, we have to create the legato that is not provided by the room.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Denver

Some venues, however, elongate the lines of our music more than others. For example, St. John’s in Boulder has an attractive acoustic. While its resonance does not last for a long period of time, it creates a beautiful sonority. St. Andrew’s  in Denver, on the other hand, has more of an after ring, so we have to make immediate adjustments to our playing technique in order to create the sound we want.

So, as an ensemble, we have decided to create the ideal sound, the sound we want the audience to hear, wherever we play, whatever the acoustic.

EM When you played the Chaconne in D minor (BWV 1004) last September in Boulder at St. John’s, what was on your mind?

ZC The Chaconne is a difficult question. In music it’s such a masterpiece and it’s quite lengthy, and what it has to say has layers of complexity. I find that often I choose to approach it more like a lutenist than as a bowed string player. Bowed strings players are often going to go after a sustained sound, maybe more like an organ, and I find that, in the case of this work, some of the intimacy is lost if there is too much sustain.

The challenge I found in playing in St. John’s was finding the right balance between me producing the legato or the room offering it. So I explored it a little bit as I was getting to know that space. At times I thought I was underplaying a bit, and at times I thought I was overplaying it. There’s a point where you connect with the acoustic in which you’re playing and it becomes your instrument, and that is always what I’m looking for. I definitely wanted to bring the listener to the piece rather than to exert it to them, but creating that intimacy can be difficult in an unresponsive acoustic, as the danger is always underplaying.

Having said that, there are many techniques at our disposal to compensate for acoustic shortcomings of a room: bow speed, the pressure, the weight of the bow, where we place the bow on the string, when to vibrate, when not to vibrate. These are all things that I am constantly exploring because I feel that I need to be able to adjust to every venue, and the only way to do that is to practice all of the options

Sergiu Luca with Baroque and Modern Bows

One of my teachers, Sergiu Luca, once told me that he felt he understood Mozart when he had played a thousand phrases of Mozart each a thousand times and each in a hundred different ways. I might be getting the numbers wrong on that, but the idea being that he had tried every possibility for those phrases. He also told me that he didn’t improvise onstage, but rather he had tried all the possibilities, and any performance would be a collection of all of the bowings and fingering he had tried, put together in a new puzzle.

That’s really inspiring because all of us in the Baroque music profession improvise while we perform, but we also want to be improvising in the practice room. We constantly want to be trying all of the fingerings that might work in the various spaces. Having said that, when I was an undergraduate at Rice University, I often practiced in bathrooms, in stairwells, in organ halls, in concert halls, and especially in churches. Even during summers, when I spent time with my family in Venice, I played masses with organists and tried to play in as many acoustic environments as possible.

And even when I was touring with Yanni, whenever I would get a day off, I would find a church in that town or city in which to practice, and when I’m on the east coast here in the United States, I find it delightful to practice in churches built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I think the acoustic is our instrument, and we want to practice in as many acoustic environments as possible.

EM You mentioned that the acoustic at St. Andrew’s is more resonant than that at St. John’s. In a sense, then, is it more gratifying for you and for the ensemble to play there?

ZC The acoustic in Denver simply makes things easier. We don’t need to sustain. We don’t need to use vibrato. We can focus on the purity of the pitch, and we can allow the bow to do its natural decay. So in a way, the music plays itself. Having said that, it is also a slightly brighter sound than St. John’s.

St. John’s has a warmth, but because St. John’s doesn’t have the amount of after ring that St. Andrew’s has, St. John’s requires us to hold the notes a little longer and to create the decay. So, in other words, in a space that is extremely resonant, one can just pull the bow across the string and release it and the bloom happens and the decay happens by the nature of the acoustic, but in a space like St. John’s, we have to control the decay with our hand. Each bow stroke has to be thought out because we get the sonority, we get the color and we get the warmth at St. John’s, but we don’t get the after ring. So I think the challenge for us in St. John’s is to recreate the sound we created in St. Andrew’s, but in order to do it we sometimes need some vibrato, we sometimes need to avoid open strings, and we sometimes need to keep the bow on the string longer. When playing at St. John’s we have to remember the sound of the performance we gave at St. Andrew’s but forget the physiology.

EM What is the sound at Holy Trinity in New York, where Rick Erickson leads the Bach Vespers?

ZC Ah, that is truly one of the most wonderful spaces for this music on the continent.

Holy Trinity has it all. It has a wonderful amount of after ring, but it doesn’t linger excessively. If an after ring lingers too long, then different harmonies begin to stack upon one another and you start to hear cacophony. In that situation you often have to play in a more detached matter so that the after ring doesn’t become muddy. But you also have to take slower tempos, and sometimes you don’t want to take a slower tempo. What is so wonderful at Holy Trinity is that you can play at any tempo and at any speed of harmonic motion. If a harmony or a chord is changing on every beat, you can still play at a fast tempo. Then there is this wonderful, warm ring. It’s very homogenous, so the choir and orchestra always sound wonderfully blended. However, no individual voice is lost, so you hear the violas and you hear the altos. It doesn’t matter how many violins you have because you still hear the bassoon and you still hear the continuo organ accompanying. All of the different timbres come out within a wonderful blend.

Four Musical Angels by Bernardo Daddi, ca. 1340

What happens in that space is that it is really easy to stop forcing the details of the music. A musician with enough experience can simply play, and the space does half of the work for him or for her. Also it puts one in a space psychologically and physically, and dare I say spiritually, where there’s a little less sense of ego or of individual and a little more sense of being a conduit for the music.

I’m reminded of the Renaissance paintings with the celestial orchestras with angels playing instruments. The angels always appear as if they’re not exerting any effort. There’s just this sound going through them, this harmony of the spheres being transmitted through them. I think that, to some extent, in spaces like Holy Trinity, that actually happens.

Korevaar in Concert

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Clavier-Übung I, dance, David Korevaar, partita, piano, suite

Pianist David Korevaar of the College of Music at the Unversity of Colorado will perform four Partitas from Clavier-Übung I (BWV 827-30) on 24 January 2012 at 7:30pm in Grusin Music Hall on the Boulder campus as part of the popular Faculty Tuesday series. Among the most technically demanding of Bach’s keyboard works, each suite is free-ranging in its organization of a variety of dance movements.

Interview with Rick Erickson: Bach’s Cantatas

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alto, Arnstadt, bass, Boulder Bach Festival, Brandenburg Concertos, Buxtehude, cantata, Cöthen, chorale, Es wartet alles auf dich, Franz Tunder, Herz und Mund and Tat und Leben, hymn, Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, Johann Crüger, Johann Kuhnau, Lübeck, Leipzig, Martin Luther, Mass in B minor, Mühlhausen, Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet, organ, performance practice, Reformation, Rick Erickson, Saxony, scenery, sinfonia, soprano, tenor, The Holy Trinity Bach Players, Thuringia, Zimmermann’s Coffee House

Edward McCue (EM) Please tell us more about the cantatas as they have been performed less frequently here in Boulder than some of Bach’s other works.

Rick Erickson (RE) I really wanted to begin this season of my first year with cantatas, rather than what are sometimes called “Bach’s major works.” Cantatas are the heart of Bach and employ both brilliant instrumentation and writing for voices in both ensemble and in solo roles.

On the Third of March we’ll be featuring two cantatas that are, to be honest, particular favorites of mine. Herz und Mund and Tat und Leben (BWV 147) contains the famous “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” It’s a rip-roaring cantata, in two parts, that employs oboes, trumpet, strings and choir in a brilliant opening movement. For the voices I thought that I should select literature that had some real meat on it, so I knew that this would be a great place to start, along with Es wartet alles auf dich (BWV 187).

EM Many of us Bach fans know that both chorales and cantatas deal with sacred themes, but we’d like to know more, such as, what was the origin of the chorale tradition, and what were cantatas intended to do?

RE Bach, of course, lived almost his entire life in Thuringia and Saxony, now states in Germany, where the Lutheran influence was powerful. Martin Luther himself, at the time of the Reformation, had encouraged and had, in effect, created a great body of chorales that were intended to literally speak the Gospel with the voice of the people. This hymn form, the chorale, was also often a didactic teaching statement. Luther said, “Sing safe into your heart and that way also remember it,” so the chorale became a central means of Lutheran expression.

The chorale led to the production of a huge amount of literature, first of all for organ, as the organ was, and still is, employed in the Lutheran services. Chorale preludes have occupied many pages of the organ literature from very early on, through Bach and indeed until today.

By the time Bach came along, the chorale had morphed and had a very real presence in the cantatas. Franz Tunder and Johann Crüger were some of the first people to write cantatas incorporating chorales and developed this expression into a high art form. Bach grew up knowing the cantata form very well as his uncles wrote them, as did many other composers around him.

Bach may have been most influenced by visiting Buxtehude in Lübeck around the age of eighteen. He walked all the way, spent a few months, probably absorbing all he could, and came back to Arnstadt.

Bach’s cantata output even probably proceeds Arnstadt, but certainly around the time of 1707 or so, Bach had begun putting his pen to the cantata form. A brilliant example of this writing was during his brief period in Mühlhausen. He then wrote only sporadically through his time in Cöthen as the court itself was Reformed, but Bach did write a few cantatas for the Lutheran church there. But when he came to Leipzig, he entered a world in which the Kantor, which was Bach’s office title, was expected to produce a cantata every week, except during the seasons of Advent and Lent. In that capacity Bach succeeded Johann Kuhnau, who had already written a large number of cantatas, but Bach decided to compose his own series of cantatas for Leipzig rather than reuse his predecessor’s works.

About a third of these cantatas that Bach wrote for Leipzig are lost, unfortunately, but the ones that survive are great examples of the high art form which was employed as a normative event in the life of the church.

Just imagine what is must have been like for Bach to piece together a new cantata on a weekly basis. During twenty-five weeks of the year at Holy Trinity in New York, we prepare and perform cantatas in liturgy, and simply to do them is an enormous amount of work. I can’t imagine putting on top of that the writing of them.

And think about the workforce that Bach had to manage in order to perform the works. He had to prepare four choirs from the school, rehearse the town instrumentalists, stay on top of the copyists who were preparing the performance materials, and keep the whole enterprise organized according to the expectations of the municipality as well as the church. But the cantatas are, in my mind, at the heart of Bach’s writing just because they were The Job.

EM I still don’t have a clear sense of whether the chorale was a hymn for congregational singing or whether professional choirs always sang the chorales.

RE The chorale was, first of all, the principal hymn of the assembly, of the people; however, the way in which the chorale was almost always done, even from the very beginning, was in alternation so that the professionals would sing a stanza, then all the people would sing a stanza, and so forth, back and forth. This was because some hymns that had fourteen, twenty, even twenty-one stanzas, and it could get to be pretty exhausting if everyone sang all the way through. Alternation was the way in which it was often done, and I think that singing in alternation is what finally led to the cantata itself: a song shared between professionals and all the people.

EM I suppose, then, that the Leipzig congregations were eager to attend the cantata performances because there was something new in store for them every week.

RE I think it’s very fair to say that because the opera in Leipzig had closed down two years before Bach arrived, so, quite frankly, these Sunday cantatas, which were performed on other feast days as well, were very popular events and were probably the central entertainment in the community. They had a liturgical role, a meditative, spiritual role, absolutely, but, quite frankly, I’m certain that they were intended for the delight of the people as well.

EM How do these sacred cantatas compare to other Bach works that are known as secular cantatas?

RE Bach was kicking up his heels when his Collegium Musicum of University musicians and he performed some of the really ribald secular cantatas at Zimmermann’s Coffee House. The “Peasant Cantata,” Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet (BWV 212), is a great example as it was written as an homage cantata in a colloquial Saxon dialect of German, a particular delight and surprise. Other secular cantatas are also fairly bawdy in nature and play upon the foibles of the general population of the time.

The writing in the secular cantatas is distinctively different and almost, in some places, points to the rococo.  For example, in the Peasant Cantata, there are places which sound peasant-like, with droning bagpipes, which would be a very unusual gesture in a sacred cantata. And then there are a few cantatas that dance between the two forms. The wedding cantatas are almost divided in half between secular and sacred, which I find to be most intriguing.

The body of secular cantatas is much smaller than the body of sacred cantatas, amounting to no more than roughly ten to a dozen, and in Bach’s day they played a different role because they weren’t performed in a church. Today, I think that we might want to consider staging productions of the secular cantatas in a theater.

EM How would you recommend that our patrons prepare themselves for the upcoming Festival performances of sacred cantatas?

RE You know, the cantatas are such vivid expositions of all of Bach’s styles and musical languages. There is tremendous variety among choral movements, including many based on chorales. There are also instrumental sinfonia moments and really astonishing writing for soprano, alto, tenor and bass with obbligato instruments. I simply think that this wealth of expression, coupled with the thought that Bach developed one of these many-faceted jewels each week, will astound our listeners.

What I want to underscore is that, while the Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046-1051) and the Mass in B minor (BWV 232) were carefully prepared, elegantly written out compositions dedicated to distant patrons, the cantatas, as polished and complete as they were, were dedicated to the hearts and minds of the people of Leipzig. It is these very human expressions, contained within the cantatas, that impress me most about Bach. If we take the time to understand the cantatas, we end up knowing Bach in a much more intimate way.

EM One cantata movement that you mentioned earlier was the “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” I mean, it’s an international hit, even for us in the twenty-first century. Would you go so far as to say that Bach was attempting to write a series of hit pieces for every Sunday and that, when they were strung together, they were not only emotionally satisfying but, intellectually, they helped to amplify the Gospel theme of the day?

RE Look, like in Boulder, the Leipzig people were, for the most part, a very well-educated population. They absolutely would have known the chorales, understood the allusions in the chorales, and have taken home something new because of the intellectual experience.

Every cantata is an event for both the enjoyment of the ear and for the intellect. In a sense it’s happy work, but it’s hard work, to hear Bach and to follow Bach. But that makes it very rewarding work, and that’s how, by presenting his cantatas, the Boulder Bach Festival plays an important role in our community.

Interview with Rick Erickson: “Brandenburg and More”

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Baroque bow, Berlin, Boulder Bach Festival, bowing, Brandenburg Concertos, cantata, Cöthen, Leipzig, motet, Rick Erickson, Zachary Carrettin

Edward McCue (EM) The September launch of your first season as Music Director with the Boulder Bach Festival was greeted with sold out concerts and very positive press. How did you happen to come up with the theme for this season, “Brandenburg and More?”

Rick Erickson (RE) I felt that it was important to begin my tenure as Music Director by focusing on several things. One of those chief issues was to form an instrumental ensemble with its own identifiable sound and to begin addressing some historical performance goals.

So imagine what a delight and honor it was for me to come to Boulder and meet so many Front Range artists who have already been performing Bach for years. I’m following Bach’s footsteps when I can rely on such marvelous University musicians as Erica Eckert, Christina Jennings and Paul Erhard. And I have the greatest respect for Ann Marie Morgan and Matthew Dane’s work and their commitment to seeing things grow and expand. I also must include Ross Snyder, who will be fulltime with us in the spring performances, along with the Tesla Quartet, and also Mintze Wu, Stacey Brady, Summer Rhodes, Katharine Knight and Karen Terbeek. They are all profoundly gifted artists and have already contributed so much to the Boulder Bach Festival.

And let me say that am thrilled to be working again with Zachary Carrettin. He is a person that I have respected since we first met when I was guest-conducting down in Houston, and he just brings a wealth of experience and passion and ability and grace to us. He is a spectacular addition to the Boulder Bach Festival and will help us to evolve an ensemble language. This spring he has asked that begin to use early bows, rather than modern bows, and it’s my hope that, with Zachary’s leadership, we will evolve into a very tight ensemble that is one of the leading voices of the Festival.

EM So why the Brandenburg Concertos? What’s the history of the Brandenburg Concertos, and what’s so special about them?

RE I want to focus on repertoire that will be both a challenge to the players and also something of a delight to the community, and, my heavens, the Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046-1051) certainly seem to fit that bill. I loved doing the first three in September, and I’m looking forward to the last three of the set now coming up very soon at the Festival concerts in February and March.

The Brandenburg Concertos come from Bach’s time in Cöthen, yet the final product was probably derived from works that he had produced earlier. The works are dedicated to Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg, and are dated 1721, just two years before Bach moved to Leipzig. It may be that Bach was actually already casting about looking for a new position and had sent the Concertos to Berlin in hopes of being considered for some office there.

The Brandenburg Concertos are structurally brilliant and are simply delightful. Folks know them and, in many cases, have heard them in many performances and recordings, so they certainly have a popular appeal. We wanted to start with something that would attract attention to our ensemble and bring the community in to celebrate this time with us. The “Brandenburgs” are an awful lot of fun for us to play, and the great reception that the audience has already given us shows that they are enjoying them as well.

EM I certainly do love concerts where there’s smiling both onstage and in the audience, and that’s what happened at the September concert in Denver and at the one in Boulder, too.

So, anyway, I now understand why you chose to feature the Brandenburg Concertos, but, again, this season is called “Brandenburg and More.” What’s the “More?”

RE The “More” is what we’re going to hear during the upcoming concerts of the Festival, especially in the last concert on Saturday evening, the Third of March. In that performance we will hear two cantatas, a Brandenburg Concerto and then a motet, so that we can broaden our understanding of Bach’s musical language.

125th Anniversary of August Macke’s Birth

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August Macke, Der Blaue Reiter, First World War, Franz Marc, German Expressionism, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky

Homage to Johann Sebastian Bach, 1912

August Macke was one of the most renowned German painters of the Expressionist movement. Born on 3 January 1887, he died in 1914 while serving in France during the First World War. Along with Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Paul Klee and others, he left the pervading style of Realism behind, formed “Der Blaue Reiter” (The Blue Rider) and helped to create a new era in visual arts that expressed feelings and moods through distortions of color and form.