The choral phenomenon in the Bay Area is real. As it was discussed here a couple of issues ago, the number of groups and their activity is greater than ever, a situation that has no apparent relationship to the condition of music education and quality of teaching in the public schools. People do need music and they need to sing, whether they’ve been primed and prepped in school or not. And, I would like to believe, the constant presence of music, even with the near disappearance of classical music radio and the musical default of the region’s NPR and PBS stations , and perhaps the surfeit of bad music, may well be stimulating musical people to get active and do it themselves, chorally.

I would like to have heard several of these choirs now, during the season to be singing, but last weekend I had to settle for two, representative of very different types and not comparable to each other, both singing in Berkeley’s First Congregational Church. One, Saturday, was Magnificat, a professional ensemble singing one to a part. The other, on Sunday, was the Baroque Choral Guild, a volunteer chorus of 60 singers, its membership coming from both the Peninsula and the East Bay. A professional group has an advantage in programming, being more flexible and able to focus on special material and concepts and produce programs of fresh and special interest, even often-sung music of the 17th century.

Magnificat’s program, a striking one, was heard in Berkeley’s First Congregational Church, the second performance on what has become the three-in-a-weekend itinerary for the more ambitious ensembles, Palo Alto-Berkeley-San Francisco. Pursuing the viewpoint of contextual re-creation that he applies to his other group, the California Bach Society, the director, Warren Stewart, offered a reconstruction of a Christmas vespers as it might have been performed in the Dresden court chapel in the 1660s.

Stewart was this time repeating a program from its first season 10 years ago when Magnificat performed not only Schütz’ Christmas Story (also called his Christmas Oratorio) but also his Magnificat separated by the minister’s section that included the reading of a sermon by Martin Luther. All that was imbedded in a complete festive service, from the opening Versicle and Reponse to the Collect, Benediction and a closing motet (Michael Praetorius’ In dulci iubilo).

The striving for authenticity counted not for its own sake, but because it was musically convincing. The eight vocalists sang both their solo, solo ensemble and choral responsibilities with the taste and stylishness that is crucial to making this “service” a sacred “witnessing” as a unified whole. One of these singers, Martin Hummel, of Germany, was the Evangelist, singing from memory (from the heart, figuratively, as well) in a smooth, lightly expressive tenor, his tone warmer than the bright, lyric sound associated with the Bach Passion Evangelists. A former student of Rene Jacobs, Hummel has recorded Schütz’s Evangelist Story on the Harmonia Mundi label.

Then, as the minister, Hummel also read the sermon, his German so finely spoken as to project the musical expressiveness of the words, a text that originated in one of Luther’s Christmas Day sermons. (The influence of Luther’s sermons on preachers extended for well over a century and past Schütz’s time.)

The richness and beauty of Schütz’s music was much heightened in this performance. Brought out were the subtle varieties of shading and timbre because of the expertness of the individual singers and their complementary vocal timbres, and also because of the exemplary ensemble of period instruments. These consisted of violins and viola, violone (John Dornenburg, playing elegantly), theorbo, portative organ, and The Whole Noyse, a quintet of two cornetti, 2 sackbuts and curtal (a precursor of the bassoon), The violist and first cornett also doubled on recorders.

We don’t normally think of “orchestration” in music of the early and middle Baroque but as heard in such a performance, Schütz was a master at it. The finesse involved the varying combinations and voicings of these instruments matched his imaginative strategies for assigning singers to roles in the little oratorio. Choice examples were the accompanying of “The shepherd in the field” by two recorders, babbling away against the soft corduroy gutteral sound of the curtal, and the support of the three Wise Men (two tenors and a bass) by two violins in close imitation.

The singing of Catherine Webster, the lead soprano, and soloist in the role of the Angel, was beautiful, in the full but focused quality of her voice and in her natural, unpressed expressiveness. Her colleagues were individually excellent, as were the instrumentalists. Stewart conducts in a loose, soft beat that might invite imprecision from a less skilled ensemble. That very ease however, may have encouraged the rhythmic freedom and lift the performers properly found in this music, so keenly tuned to the rhythm of the text and the stress accents in the German.

The church “service” elements went smoothly, musically, and acceptably in the case of the two hymns that the audience sang along, following the lead lines of the cantor, a pleasing baritone, Hugh Davies. After his intoning the opening Versicle, “Deus in adiutorium,” his seven colleagues sang the Response, then Schütz’ setting of Psalm 110. The Christmas Story, serving as the Lesson, was followed by a chorale and readings of the Lord’s Prayer, the scriptural text, and sermon. “Now thank we all” (in German sung to a Gregorian chant), the Magnificat and concluding elements were capped by Praetorius’ glorious motet. It was a very special and satisfying, unified experience because the feeling of it was so real. Based on this performance that was being recorded, the resultant CD that can be expected, can be highly recommended.

The Sunday evening with the Baroque Guild Chorus was an entirely different proposition, of course. It is a good but not exceptional volunteer chorus, with a soprano section built around several voices of clear, fine quality and male chorus that is the group’s strength. The addition of two deep basses would make a difference, also a couple of high voices with bright, focused tenor sound as that section’s needed core. Sanford Dole, an active and prominent choral person in the area, conducts tactfully and clearly, with a pleasing sense of phrase.

The program, with the exception of the concluding work, Lauda per la Natività del Signore by Respighi, was representative in its choice of Christmas music. (One other selection stood apart, the set for male chorus of Poulenc’s Quatre petites prières de Saint Françoise d’Assise.) The Respighi is in his most graceful and grateful mode, the Respighi of “Ancient Airs and Dances,” here picking up on Italian carols, pastorale tunes in compound meter, the Canzone di Pifferari, things like that, as well as villanelle (villancicos to my ear), and other early Baroque music. His harmonic style, choral writing, Italianate as it can be in its melodiousness, are combined with his unerring color sense, as he played with the curious and intriguing ensemble of two flutes, oboe, English horn and two bassoons. (A piano chimes in at the end sounding like a substitute for a missing orchestra, but in fact, was here a two-hands version of the four-hands original).

The text is a charming and homey Nativity tale, involving the angel (the bright-voiced soprano Jennifer Ashworth), the shepherd (a light, restrained tenor, Daniel Hutchings), choruses of angels and (male voices) shepherds, and most importantly, Maria, sung by Heidi Waterman, a genuine mezzo, not your usual second soprano. She has an excellent, full voice, musical quality and a expressiveness that is emerging and showing promise. One song for Maria, “O car dolce mio figlie,” is accompanied by English horn alone, echoing from the third act of Tristan und Isolde.

The work was sung in Italian, I finally decided by the process of elimination not by the sounds that emanated. What is it with American volunteer choruses that they are so lip lazy and insensible to the distinctive sound of foreign languages and the pleasure of creating that? The BCG men did better, though not excellently, with the more difficult sound of French in the Poulenc St. Francis Prayers. The set achieves a dear, intimate quality enhanced by the music’s picking up on the speech rhythm , the sonorous writing, the composer’s characteristic harmonic shifts. There are certain touching phrases, like the almost sensuous “may we give back to You all praise,” the sweetness of the setting of “so that I may die for love of Your love,” the rocking back and forth on two harmonies for St. Francis’ classic “Many are called, few are chosen.”

The program’s first work was the Advent Cantata by Daniel Pinkham, composed in 1991 when the composer was 68. You would have thought that by them he might have found more imaginative uses and techniques in choral writing than appeared in this setting of the seven so-called great “O” antiphons. It is melodious, even lyrical, harmonically after the early modern French style, and pleasant. Sanford Dole’s own Of the Father’s Love Begotten consists of six variations on the plainchant hymn of that title. They progress dutifully through different styles (coming a cropper in my view, on the pop “boom-la-la” variation), and cresting impressively on the cantus firmus setting (No. 5), before a polyphonic thickening in a webwork of running lines concludes a generally attractive piece.

The women had their moment with Britten’s popular A Ceremony of Carols, effectively accompanied by the harpist Randall Pratt, the solos by Ashworth and Waterman. It was nicely done but exposed a couple of typical weaknesses. The altos sound like watery sopranos not altos. Many of the women flag in the breathing department so that, despite the accuracy of a brave few, lines often sag enough below the middle of the pitch to prejudice things. (The Britten does not generally have long phrases, so the piece still worked effectively). Equally important, without the breath being supported properly, the lines run out of gas. Instead of impelling the music towards the phrase endings and cadences, the cantilena goes limp, and there’s no question of driving to a real climactic ending, as needed in the Respighi..

The Baroque Choral Guild is an estimable chorus, no doubt, and gave a good account of itself. It still strikes me that with all this choral activity, of which the BCG is representative, that there would be some discovery and performance of more imaginative music of this era, in styles that step beyond the choir loft and into the poetry and sound world of these times.

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