Hans Schroeder - Australian Bach Society

Australian Bach Society—ABS
ABN 51 744 708 578
March 2016
Edition 11
B-A-C-H - STAGE NEWS & SOUNDS
Bach is the Alpha and Omega of Music
‘There is no better education for a young musician
than to study and play his work. Bach’s music is a lifelong source of joy and spiritual nourishment, continually enriching all who take the time and effort to discover its enduring value.’ Said composer and conductor Dr. Richard Mills AM about the Annual Bach Competition at Melbourne Recital Centre.
Now in its seventh year, the Melbourne Recital Centre’s Bach Competition is dedicated to young musicians who are aged 17 years or under with a
passion of music of J.S. Bach. Due to the foresight of Richard Mills AM in
supporting the main award and joined by the Recital Centre’s CEO Mary
Vallentine the Competition is now a key event in the life of young musicians in
Victoria.
Australian Bach Society Inc
Founded in 2011 as an initiative
of the German Lutheran Trinity
Church East Melbourne.
Our mission is to cultivate and
disseminate a local appreciation
of the music of J.S. Bach, his
family and contemporaries, as
well as sacred/classical music in
general by arranging performances, lectures and other activiThe 2016 Bach Competition has been scheduled for Sunday 26 June. Please ties.
mark this day in your calendar now and spread the good news. It is always a
full-house event. Please keep updated via MRC’s website
www.melbournerecital.com.au
One of the Australian Bach Society’s objectives is to ‘support talented young
musicians in various ways’. I am therefore delighted to announce we will be
joining this wonderful initiative by donating the Bach Society Encouragement Award carrying a cash prize of $1,500 plus a concert engagement
within our Annual Concert Series.
Hans Schroeder
President Australian Bach Society Inc.
Thank you, Nikolaus Harnoncourt!
The Australian Bach Society would like to pay homage to Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who passed away on 5 March 2016 in
Salzburg at the age of 86 - An unparalleled interpreter of
Bach, one of the great conductors of baroque music and a
pioneer of historically informed performance.
While still a student, Harnancourt took a great interest in old
music and historical instruments. He collected systematically
a set of suitable instruments, brought together a highly qualified ensemble of musicians and, in 1953, founded the ensemble CONCENTUS
MUSICUS. 1962 was the year of the great break-through into the field of records: Harnancourt played the Brandenburg Concerts in the original version
and with original instruments.— This was followed by St. John Passion, Mass
in B-minor, St. Matthew Passion and the greatest recording project in the history of records: all of Bach’s cantatas.
One of my great treasures is a recording of J.S. Bach’s ‘Weihnachtsoratorium’
BWV 244 from 1973 with a brilliant cast of musicians, conducted by Nikolaus
Harnancourt. Thank you, Maestro!
Information & Contact
Australian Bach Society Inc.
22 Parliament Place
East Melbourne VIC 3002
www.bach.org.au
[email protected]
President: Hans Schroeder
Mob. 0425 802 046
Publicity: Thomas Bell
Mob. 0432 227 563
Australian Bach Society—ABS
ABN 51 744 708 578
Funeral-Music for Prince Leopold – a Precursor for St. Matthew Passion.
Klagt, Kinder, klagt es aller Welt (Cry, children, cry to all the world), also called Köthener Trauermusik
(Köthen funeral music), BWV 244a was probably composed by J.S. Bach throughout 1727 and 1728 for Leopold,
Prince of Anhalt—Köthen. The music is lost, but the libretto survives. As Bach is known to have used musical
material which also appeared in his St. Matthew Passion, it has been possible to make reconstructions. One reconstruction attempt was made by Dr. Mark Smith from Adelaide in 2001 and deposited in the Bach Archive
Leipzig. We have asked Mark to write his story:
This funeral- music was a fitting conclusion to a relationship important to both Bach and Leopold. However, it is also music that has come to us second-hand, imperfect, and poorly understood. Leopold had symptoms of a chronic illness already at the age of 20, and his portrait by
J.C.Müller of 1724 shows a man who appears much older than his 29 or 30 years.
In 1725 Bach apparently asked his librettist Picander to write the words for a St. Matthew Passion. By the end of 1726 Bach probably had proceeded with this only part-way, when he made
one of his regular visits back to Köthen. At that time he could well have mentioned this new Passion to Leopold. Perhaps the sick prince had already decided to commission Bach to compose
some magnificent funeral-music in advance. (One can imagine how Leopold could derive comfort from this.) Bach would then undoubtedly have in mind, that this high- quality music would
never be heard again after the funeral, unless he could re-use it in a regularly-performed piece, such as his new
Passion.
Thus 17 movements from this funeral-music are now more or less preserved in this Passion. In the funeral-music,
Bach also included two movements based on music he had composed in 1716 for the funeral of Prince Johann
Ernst in Weimar. Leopold died on the 19th of November 1728 (aged almost 34),and his funeral was held in the
large principal church in Köthen, St. Jakob, with a burial-service in the evening of 23rd March 1729, and a memorial- service the next morning. Part I of Bach's funeral-music was performed during the service on the 23rd, and
Parts II, III, and IV on the 24th.
The first movement of this music was probably very different in character from the music that survives in BWV
198. The first word "Klagt", and the massive discords in the first bar, suggest a much more powerful music.
Therefore, instead of the gambas and lutes in BWV 198, a prominent organ-part (perhaps played by Bach himself,
the celebrated organist) seems appropriate.
Leopold's love of the theatre, and even some light humour, seem to be reflected in movements 15 and 19. In no. 15
the solo bass-singer is accompanied by a 'gamba. During this aria, he probably began next to Leopold's tomb, and
then walked to the organ loft at the other end of the nave, as though the spirit of Leopold had risen from his grave.
(Leopold had been a fine bass-singer and a 'gambist.) No. 19 has a small group of singers and instrumentalists
(representing departed spirits), who must have walked from the organ-loft to Leopold's tomb, where in the last
movement (no. 24), they performed as an echo to the main group in the organ- loft.
This funeral, with its highly-expressive music, must have been very moving, especially with Anna Magdalena Bach
(who had known Leopold well), as a prominent solo-soprano. Nineteen days later in Leipzig, Bach performed
(evidently for the first time) his St. Matthew Passion.
Two successful events, Australian Baroque Brass (10.10.2016) and Weihnachts-Oratorium (5.12.2016)
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Australian Bach Society—ABS
ABN 51 744 708 578
First Rock, than Baroque
My unorthodox journey to western music’s greatest composer
By Robert Macfarlane (Leipzig)
While putting together my program for the Australian
Bach Society’s concert ‘The Path to Bach’ on 7 May ,
as the snow gently falls on Bach's Leipzig outside my
window, I took a moment to reflect on my own path to
his unique genius. For me there were two clear 'lightbulb
moments' and a good deal of luck that brought me to
this seminal music.
The first of two ‘lightbulb moments’ that led me to Bach,
and classical music generally, came when taking my first
singing lessons in my last year of high school. My generous and patient teacher struggled to find something that
would interest me: I'd grown up playing rock music in
the garage, and songs from hit musicals and light classical repertoire did absolutely nothing for me. It wasn’t
until he threw me a few songs from Schubert’s masterpiece Winterreise that I finally saw something in Classical Music which thrilled me in ways that not even the
Rock music of my childhood could. I immediately dove
headfirst into this tremendous wealth of song literature,
and six months later auditioned successfully for the
Bachelor of Music at Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium.
At the Conservatorium I was lucky enough to be assigned to a teacher, Keith Hempton, who had interests
outside of grand opera and was a lover of both early and
modern music. Fairly soon Bach, in particular the Evangelist roles in the passions, became the obvious middle
ground for my voice. My second ‘lightbulb moment’
came while singing in the chorus for the Perth Festival’s
staged production of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. The
festival had been lucky enough to engage the German
tenor Gerd Türk as the Evangelist, and hearing him sing
was nothing short of a revelation for me. Here was a
voice that wasn’t ‘Operatic’ in the traditional Italian
sense, but neither was it light and airy like many of the
early music singers I had been exposed to. The voice was
a clarion vehicle for the drama depicted in the text.
There was no question in my mind that this was what
my voice was designed to do.
Luckily enough, the doors to this repertoire began to
open for me at the same time. In 2007 I sang my first
Evangelist role (in St. John Passion) in Adelaide to great
acclaim, and led to a meeting with Graham Lieschke,
director of the Bach Cantata program at St. Johns Southgate, who brought me over to Melbourne to sing a cantata at short notice. This first performance led to a long
lasting musical friendship with Graham and the St.
Johns Cantata project, with whom I still sing whenever I
find myself in Australia.
Crucially, it also afforded me the opportunity to meet
former Thomaskantor Georg Christoph Biller during the
Thomanachor’s visit to Australia in 2009. Biller was gracious enough to hear me again in 2010, when I first
came to Europe to explore the music scene. I was immediately taken by the man’s musicality and generosity. He
made some very astute musical suggestions and introduced me to his Tenor soloist, Martin Petzold, who became a deciding influence in deciding to come to Leipzig
to study. Although I spoke very little German at the time,
and he very little English, we nevertheless spent an enthralling two hours working through the Evangelist of
St. John. His wonderful depiction of the way the phrasing should mimic the events in the text made it clear to
me that Leipzig was where I needed to be to truly get to
know Bach. We would continue to work together sporadically throughout my studies in Leipzig, which I finally began at the end of 2012.
After almost a year in Leipzig, the greatest honour of my
professional life came in the form of an invitation from
Herr Biller to sing under his baton in the Thomaskirche,
with the Thomanachor and Gewandhaus Orchestra. The
program was excerpts from Bach’s B Minor Mass,
one of the masterpieces of Western culture. To say that it
is an otherworldly experience to sing the Mass in B Minor’s Benedictus in the building it was written for, in its
proper liturgical context, would be a huge understatement. In fact, it is an experience that I cannot ably summarise with words. Instead, I will borrow the words of
recorded history’s greatest Bach Tenor, Peter Schreier.
In a recent newspaper interview, Schreier was asked
whether he believed in God. “Of course,” he answered, “I
believe in Johann Sebastian Bach.”
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Australian Bach Society—ABS
ABN 51 744 708 578
(ctd)
Robert Macfarlane (29) was born in Hamilton (VIC) and is
now residing in Leipzig as his ‘European headquarters’ pursuing an exciting career in his genre extending beyond the music
of J.S. Bach.
Robert was invited to be part of last year’s ‘WeihnachtsOratorium’ and will return to Australia again in May. We are
delighted our ‘Bach Ambassador’ agreed to assemble a tailor-made program for a recital at the German Church East
Melbourne on Saturday 7 May 2016 at 3:00 pm – joined by
John O’Donnell (harpsichord) and Laura Vaughan (viola da
gamba): The Path to Bach – The Schemelli Songbook and
the liturgical music of Weimar and Leipzig.’
UPCOMING BACH EVENTS IN MELBOURNE
•
Melbourne Bach Choir celebrating its 10th Anniversary
J.S. Bach ‘St. Matthew Passion’ BWV 244
Good Friday 25 March 2:30 pm Elisabeth Murdoch Hall Melbourne Recital Centre
Tickets and bookings: www.melbournerecital.com.au
•
Cantata Services at St Johns Southgate
St. Thomas Ostermusik by Georg Christoph Biller (2012) - Australia Premiere
Sunday 3 April 9:00 a.m.
Du Hirte Israel, höre BWV 104 - Cantata by J.S. Bach for 3rd Sunday after Easter (Good
Shepherd Sunday)
Sunday 10 April 9:00 a.m.
•
Concerts by Australian Chamber Choir
at Our
Lady of Mount Carmel, 210 Richardson Street Middle Park
J.S. Bach ‘Mass in B minor’ BWV 232
Sunday 3 April 3:00 pm
Bach in the Castle of Heaven - Music by J.S. Bach, G. Allegri, O. Messian and others
Sunday 12 June 3:00 pm - Info and bookings: www.auschoir.org
•
The Path to Bach - The Schemelli Songbook and the liturgical music of Weimar and Leipzig
Robert Macfarlane (Leipzig, tenor), John O’Donnell (harpsichord) and Laura Vaughan (viola
da gamba)
Saturday 7 May 3:00 pm German Church East Melbourne
•
Bach Competition 2016 at Melbourne Recital Centre
Sunday 26 June 3:00 pm - Free entry - Bookings: www.melbournerecital.com.au
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