The Trinity Choir Trinity Baroque Orchestra
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at One The Trinity Choir Trinity Baroque Orchestra Julian Wachner, Conductor Bach Cantatas · Schütz Motets Poetry Mondays at 1pm March 21–June 20, 2011 TRINITY WALL STREET presents The Trinity Choir & Trinity Baroque Orchestra Julian Wachner, Conductor at One weekly service featuring the cantatas of J.S. Bach, with motets of Heinrich Schütz, and transformative readings by contemporary poets Mondays at 1pm March 21–June 20, 2011* St. Paul’s Chapel Broadway at Fulton * This program booklet May 2 - June 20 WELCOME WELCOME to BACH at ONE, A miD-DAY serVICE of cantatas, PRAYERS, anD poetry. Bach, a devout Lutheran, composed 200 cantatas using both sacred and secular texts. Many of those cantatas are heard in churches around the world every Sunday, but through Bach at One, your Monday lunch hour can be enriched by timeless cantatas. Motets by Heinrich Schütz, an influential predecessor of Bach will also be presented, as will poetry readings by a group of noted poets. If you enjoy this peaceful and sacred interlude to your day, please know you are warmly invited back—to Bach at One, or to another of the worship opportunities at St. Paul’s or at Trinity Church. In particular, I call your attention to Sunday morning services at 8am and 10am here, and a new service of Compline, or prayers for the end of the day. Compline is an ancient half-hour candlelit service of chant and new music sung by the Trinity Choir. Imagine your day ending with you and others saying together: It is night after a long day. What has been done has been done; what has not been done has not been done; let it be. It is a sentiment that is increasingly rare in our busy world, yet one consistent with the sense of spiritual oasis that St. Paul’s has offered for centuries. Compline takes place here at St. Paul’s Chapel on Sunday evenings at 8pm. Thank you for visiting today. The chapel staff and I look forward to seeing you again. Blessings, The Rev. Canon Anne Mallonee Vicar O RDER OF SERVICE FEU AT RED POETS P RELUDE MY A 2 Lee Bricchetti WELCOME MY A 9 Molly Peacock MOTETS MY A 16 Rick Moody READINGS MY A 23 Elaine Sexton OFFERTORY MY A 30 Cornelius Eady cantatas JUE N 6 Joshua Mehigan JUE N 13 Major Jackson JUE N 20 J. Chester Johnson 1 PROGRM A NOTES Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) has long been and butter of the concert repertoire begins with Bach, regarded as the foundational figure on which all Western and specifically Bach’s “discovery” of equal temperament, Art Music of the so-called “common practice period” and his mastery and invention of a hierarchically based has stood. All of the great composers from this massive tonal system. period (1700–1900) have seen Bach as this type of epic cornerstone, and indeed, his life’s work does provide From the modern performer’s perspective, Bach’s solo an encyclopedic lexicon of compositional praxis, defining suites provide the young string player a requirement for and illustrating a sophisticated mastery of “tonality,” the dry technical mastery (albeit with full and constant vibrato) underlying presupposition for Mozart, Beethoven, before moving on to the concerto repertoire of Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and Wagner. Brahms, and Sibelius. And the pianist-in-training gains the ability to realize multiple independent parts by practicing Although Bach’s work has always been lauded as the the 3-part Inventions, the Preludes and Fugues and, for fun, epitome of contrapuntal technique, the reception of Bach perhaps the Italian Concerto. Generally, Bach is still passed and his work has followed a rather bizarre trajectory: from down as the old stern schoolmaster — the unreachable relative obscurity in the years following his death, to the inaugurator of all things good and pure in music underground appreciation of his keyboard works during composition and basic instrumental technique in the the classical period by Baron van Swieten, Mozart, Haydn, Western Art tradition. and Beethoven; the impressive public re-introduction of the St. Matthew Passion by a young Felix Mendelssohn In the late 20th century, there arose a new paradigm in 1827, and Bach’s subsequent coronation as a romantic surrounding the work of J. S. Bach which attempted to hero-like figure in the 19th century — and as the Godfather cast new light on the context of his output, instrumental of an ethically “pure” music as defined by Schoenberg and and vocal. Several watershed 20th-century events, specific his disciples within the Second Viennese School of the to Bach, occurred within the greater movement for the early 20th century. quest of historical authenticity specific to the performance practice of “early” music. Bach, in light of these recent When the musicologists got hold of him in the mid-20th discoveries, moves from the throne of the great century, his work was seen as the objective output of a “inaugurator” to that of the master “culminator.” mathematical genius, and sophisticated studies of Bach’s unconscious neurological patterns and intentional In brief, Bach’s own annotated Calov edition of the Bible, numerological design were the accepted analytical (although discovered in 1934), became known in Bach methodology. By the late ’60s and ’70s, the mainstream circles following World War II. The resulting studies academic appreciation of his music mirrored the anti- illuminated that Bach was indeed theologically savvy and ecclesiastical thrust of the then current philosophical that his compositional choices were intentionally focused thought, and thus Bach’s music was objectively consumed, on a sophisticated understanding of hermeneutics and thoroughly divorced from its Theological and Liturgical liturgy. All of the musico-rhetorical devices of the late-17th underpinnings. Indeed, poor Bach was pitied for his and early-18th century were then put to use in order to seemingly imprisoned, cloistered existence and as a interpret the text in exactly the same manner that a grudgingly accepting servant of the Lutheran church. preacher would utilize traditional rhetoric to persuade. Thus, motivic shapes bearing specific emotional Affekt Still today, in the modern academy, Bach’s expert voice would combine with meaning-laden choices of key, time leading—as evidenced in his 4-part harmonizations of the signature, instrumentation, voice part, number of parts chorales; his use of invertible counterpoint in the relatively and references to pre-existing tunes (both secular and simple 2-part inventions; and the epic collection of preludes sacred) to create musical essays rich in text painting, and fugues written in every key (Das Wohltemperierte emotionality, and a clear theological message. Klavier) form the basis of any music undergraduate’s six-semester sequence of music theory. These studies are Second, Joshua Rifkin, through an intensive analysis mathematical in nature, and are not unlike the problem of Bach’s original performance materials, came to the sets of an engineering student at a technological institution. practical realization that the majority of Bach’s vocal works Thus, most musicians have had it drummed into their were intended to be performed primarily with one singer to minds that Bach is the beginning of musical science, a part, completely turning the concept of massed choral and that the trajectory of the development of the bread realizations of Bach’s major works on its head. Thus the 2 performance ideal for his vocal music is subjectively based So in this early 21st-century series where we present and emotionally rich — the opposite of traditional objective, J. S. Bach’s cantatas and other vocal music — we enter Apollonian renderings of his music by large choral societies. this arena with a collective pre-disposition to realize these works within liturgical surroundings, with an awareness of And, perhaps most fascinating from a performer’s point of the performance practice of Bach’s time, and shedding off view—Bradley Lehman’s recent deciphering of the “squiggle” the previously accepted Apollonian shroud of objective on the original cover of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier provided recreation by intentionally interpreting and emotionally the solution to Bach’s handling of the tuning “wolf” or realizing the Dionysian, pietistic, and eschatological “comma” that exists in pure tuning systems, thus debunking dangers that lurk within this body of repertoire. the myth that Bach created “equal” temperament. Bach’s tuning system, although individual and specific to Bach, We welcome you and look forward to having you join was no different in methodology than all of his colleagues us on this adventure. and predecessors, all of whom were collectively attempting to provide a solution to a fully useable 12-note keyboard that —JUlian WACHner could realize the entire circle of fifths. (For more on this Director of Music and the Arts subject see Bach’s temperament, Occam’s razor, and the Neidhardt factor by John O’Donnell.) What this means is that all of Bach’s key choices are based in an old-fashioned sense of rhetorical tuning and key association. B minor “sounds” serious and studied, while D major reflects jubilation and victory, E represents the Trinity, F major represents the Pastoral etc…b 3 SUGGesteD READING for bacH at one AND THE ST. MATTHEW PASSION ( AVAILABLE to VIEW ON DEMAND at trinitywallstreet.ORG) Boyd, Malcolm (ed.), Oxford Composer Companions: Bach, Oxford UP, 1999 Butt, John (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Bach, Cambridge UP, 1997. Butt, John: Bach in the twenty-first century. BuNachwelt iv (2005), 169-182. Butt, John: Bach’s vocal scoring: what can it mean? EarlyM xxvi/1 (1998), 99-107. Butt, John: Performer’s View: Bach and the Performance of Meaning. AmerBachSocNL Fall (2001), 5, 10. Chafe, Eric Thomas. “ Bach’s Ascension Oratorio (BWV 11): God’s Kingdoms and their Representation” Bach Perspectives 8 8.