Thursday Evening, December 19, 2019, at 8:00 presents Sons of Bach LEON BOTSTEIN, Conductor W.F. BACH Erzittert und fallet (Oh, Tremble and Falter) 1. Erzittert und fallet 2. Was für reizend sanfte Blicke 3. Das Grab ist leer, es ist vollbracht 4. Komm, mein Hirte, laß dich küssen 5. Mein Heiland kommt, o welch ein Freudenschall 6. Rauscht, ihr Fluten 7. Heut triumphieret Gottes Sohn AMANDA WOODBURY, Soprano TAYLOR RAVEN, Mezzo-soprano JACK SWANSON, Tenor CHRIS KENNEY, Baritone BARD FESTIVAL CHORALE JAMES BAGWELL, Director J.C.F. BACH Die Amerikanerin (The American) AMANDA WOODBURY, Soprano J.C. BACH Symphony in G minor, Op. 6, No. 6 1. Allegro 2. Andante più tosto Adagio 3. Allegro molto Intermission This evening’s concert will run approximately 2 hours including one 20-minute intermission. American Symphony Orchestra welcomes the many organizations who participate in our Com- munity Access Program, which provides free and low-cost tickets to underserved groups in New York’s five boroughs. For information on how you can support this program, please call (212) 868-9276. Alice Tully Hall Please turn off your cell phones and other Starr Theater, electronic devices. Adrienne Arsht Stage Lincoln Center C.P.E. BACH Magnificat in D major, Wq 215, H. 772 1. Magnificat 2. Quia respexit 3. Quia fecit mihi magna 4. Et misericordia eius 5. Fecit potentiam 6. Deposuit potentes de sede 7. Suscepit Israel 8. Gloria Patri 9. Sicut erat in principio AMANDA WOODBURY, Soprano TAYLOR RAVEN, Mezzo-soprano JACK SWANSON, Tenor CHRIS KENNEY, Baritone BARD FESTIVAL CHORALE JAMES BAGWELL, Director Lincoln Center From the Music Director never quite eclipsed the fame and achieve- ment of their father, but they came quite by Leon Botstein close to doing so. Of the four sons of Bach A Miraculous Family on this program, Johann Christian Bach, the youngest, and Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach, his older half-brother, were prolific, There are probably enough members inspired, famous, and eminent composers of tonight’s audience who will readily in their lifetimes. When Johann Christian recognize—with a smile—the name Bach, who impressed and influenced the P.D.Q. Bach, whose music does not young Mozart, died in London in 1782, appear on the program. P.D.Q.’s creator, Mozart reported the death to his own the American composer Peter Schickele father as a “loss to the musical world.” (whose aptitude for musical jokes was unparalleled) described him as “the last Myths that masquerade as history die hard, and unquestionably the least of the great especially alluring myths, and especially in Johann Sebastian Bach’s many children.” music history. Among the most enduring Schickele’s invention of a son whose dates myth that won’t die under the weight of were “(1807–1742)?” was a resounding evidence is the notion that J.S. Bach and success for decades, in part because it his music were entirely forgotten in the was a brilliant parody of two simple and decades following J.S. Bach’s death in widely known facts: that J.S. Bach was 1750. A Bach revival is said to have begun arguably the greatest composer in the his- with Felix Mendelssohn’s legendary 1829 tory of Western “classical” music and that Berlin performance of the St. Matthew he was notorious for having very many Passion. In fact, Bach had never been children, and among them an improbably forgotten. Rather his large-scale works, large group of four who went on to have particularly sacred choral works, had not yet distinguished careers of their own as com- entered the repertoire of a rapidly emerging posers. These twin feats were as aston- world of public concert life on the continent ishing as they were legendary. Mozart had after the fall of Napoleon. Bach remained a son who became a composer, but he is a revered figure among musicians and long forgotten, even more than Mozart’s connoisseurs. Sara Levy, Mendelssohn’s quite admirable and respectable father, great aunt, actually studied with Wilhelm Leopold. There are other parent-child phe- Friedemann Bach, the eldest of Bach’s nomena---Ernest Boulanger and his two sons on today’s program, and amassed a daughters, Nadia and Lili; the two Oistrakh collection of J.S. Bach manuscripts. violinists, David and Igor; Rudolf and Peter Serkin—but nothing approaches the case Bach’s sons not only benefitted from the of the Bach family. There are three com- fame of their father but, through their posers with the surname Tchaikovsky, but careers and their advocacy also helped sus- they are not related. tain his memory. No one who encountered them was oblivious to who their father was. J.S. Bach’s lot as a parent was directly The mix of ambivalence, pride, anxiety, and opposite of that of the father of Felix rivalry involved in being a son of J.S. Bach Mendelssohn, Abraham Mendelssohn, and a musician is daunting to contemplate. who once quipped “I grew up being the Nonetheless, taken together, these four son of my father [the great philosopher sons of Bach and their father constituted Moses Mendelssohn] only to become the a dynasty without peer in the history of father of my son.” Bach’s sons may have Lincoln Center music. Wilhelm Friedemann was twen- same text. C.P.E. Bach earned legitimately ty-five years older than Johann Christian. a reputation as an innovator and a leader in During the 1740s, He kept in close contact fashioning a new style in music in Germany with his father, J.S. Bach, and his music during the second half of the 18th century. owes the most to his father’s example. He influenced the direction taken by the Wilhelm Friedemann’s life was quite color- Viennese classicism of Mozart, Haydn, and ful, marked by intrigues and financial insta- Beethoven, and he was widely considered, bility and the subject of fictional accounts. at the end of his life, as one of the great Towards the end of his career he focused composers of the age. less on composition than on performance. He became famous as an organ virtuoso Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, one of and a master of improvisation. the two sons of Anna Magdalena Bach on this program, never quite achieved Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, just four the prominence of his younger brother or years younger than Wilhelm Friedemann, older half-brothers. Attached to the court became most famous as a composer for of Count Wilhelm of Schaumburg-Lippe in the keyboard, primarily for the clavichord. Bückeburg for a good part of his career, he My colleague at Bard, Peter Serkin, is in sought to adapt to the shifting tastes of the the midst of recording a host of C.P.E. court in secular music while maintaining an Bach’s keyboard music. C.P.E Bach also output of sacred Protestant oratorios and wrote a treatise, the Essay on the True cantatas. He produced fewer works but Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, pub- among the most successful and prominent lished in 1753 that became a standard were his secular vocal compositions, some text for teachers. C.P.E’s music became of which were to texts by the writer, philol- a defining part of the repertoire for the ogist, theologian, and philosopher Johann burgeoning community throughout nine- Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), who had teenth century Europe of amateur key- an enormous influence on modern ideas board enthusiasts. One single example, a of history and culture and was Bach’s col- Solfegietto, or Solfeggio in c minor, from league during his tenure as court preacher 1766, entered the piano teaching reper- in the 1770s. toire as a staple and has remained there ever since, as millions of veterans of piano Not surprisingly, the youngest of Bach’s instruction all over the world can testify. sons, whose fame and reputation rivaled that of C.P.E Bach and J.S. Bach, wrote But as the 100 volumes now in existence music with the least evident debt to his in the massive new complete critical edi- father. Central to J.C. Bach was the genre tion of C.P.E. Bach’s works testify, C.P.E. of Italian opera. He composed at least 11 Bach was a versatile composer with a operas for the London stage, one masque, range that extended to chamber music, and an opera in French for Paris. He con- orchestral music, sacred oratorios, and tributed to pastiche stage productions that passions, cantatas, secular vocal and choral combined the work of more than one com- music, and arrangements of his father’s poser. But J.C. Bach also composed a large music. The Magnificat on this program is body of liturgical music, setting Latin and among his most enduring and powerful English texts. Some of his oratorios resem- works and is, at one and the same time ble operas, and the influence of Handel is homage to, commentary on and departure audible. Indeed, unlike his brothers, J.C. from his father’s famous setting of the Bach’s career flourished in London, and Lincoln Center not on the continent. Apart from opera and the next---a family business, so to speak, vocal music, J.C. Bach was also a prolific much like the Stradivari family. That might and inventive composer of symphonies, make the continuity of creativity between the multi-movement instrumental form for J.S. Bach and his sons appear to be just orchestra that came to dominate the nine- one example of a widespread phenome- teenth century. non. In fact, it was not.