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CHORAL REVIEW
Paul Flight October 15, 2006
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All in the Family By Anna Carol Dudley
The California Bach Society has survived a number of rebirths in recent years, as a series of conductors has come and gone. This season launched auspiciously over the weekend with newly appointed Music Director Paul Flight at the helm. Die Familie Bach, Sunday's program at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley, included works by the eponymous J.S. Bach and some of his many distinguished German Protestant relatives.
The ensemble led off with "Unser Leben ist ein Schatten," a motet by Johannes Bach, J.S. Bach's great-uncle. The composition is very interesting in the design and musical treatment of its text. Bible verses and hymns alternated, a division that was reinforced by the distribution of voices. After the choral opening ("Our days on earth are but a shadow"), a trio of singers was heard "from a distance" — in this case, from the back of the sanctuary — and chorus and trio combined the opening line from the Book of Job with commentary from a hymn text. They repeated the process with a New Testament Resurrection text. Following were two verses sung by the lower voices of the chorus, and a final verse added the high soprano voices, exhorting listeners to accept their mortality and look to God for hope. "Unsern Trübsal" ("Our momentary affliction prepares us for glory"), a motet by J.S. Bach's second cousin, Johann Ludwig Bach, continued the focus on the life of the spirit rather than the troubles of this world. By then the listeners were beautifully prepared for J.S. Bach's elegant motet "Jesu meine Freude" ("Jesus, my joy"). A sturdy chorale melody permeates the motet, and J.S. follows his great-uncle's practice of alternating full choral movements with smaller ensembles: here the women's voices in three-part harmony, there an alto-tenor-bass trio, further on sopranos and tenors in three-part embroidery over an alto chorale. The group sang two pieces by Johann Christoph Bach (J.S. Bach's father's cousin) after intermission: first a double-chorus on the Latin prayer Nunc Dimittis, then a simple four-part homophonic hymn, "Es ist nun aus mit meinem Leben" ("My life is now over") — thus continuing the theme of death as a release from the difficulties of this worldly life. J.S. Bach's "Ich lasse dich nicht" ("I will not let you go unless you bless me") began as a double chorus and then united into one, the sopranos carrying a chorale tune and the other voices embroidering on it.
The program ended with the joyous "Wachet auf" ("Wake up, Jerusalem: The bridegroom comes") — not J.S. Bach's well-known cantata, but a motet by his son, Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach. The familiar chorale tune, found in many hymnbooks to this day, is by Philipp Nicolai. J.C.F Bach followed generations of tradition by introducing the chorale in the first verse, carried by the sopranos, as the other voices made new and "modern" variations on the tune. After an elaborate, freestanding setting of the second verse, the third verse borrows, note for note, his father's chorale setting. The concert ended with a tag: the son's repetition of the last two lines of text, in his own setting: "Des sind wir froh, io, io! Ewig in dulci jubilo." ("In this we rejoice, hurrah, hurrah! Forever in sweet jubilation.") The performers sang with an attractive, unforced sound, flowing evenly from soft to loud with no hint of vocal stress. The basses supplied a solid foundation and infused their fast passagework with commendable energy. The sopranos often produced a lovely, pure sound, though they were not as tight in ensemble or as uniformly lively in the fast bits. Organist Katherine Heater and cellist Amy Brodo provided a continuo for the entire concert. (Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, member of the faculty of UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University lecturer emerita, and director emerita of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.)
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Paul Flight
