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At the age of thirty-eight, Johann Sebastian Bach accepted a job which would serve as the culmination of his life’s ambitions and provide him with the forum from which he would have an impact upon nearly every imagineable field of music for the two and a half centuries following his death. The fact that he seems to have been less than content with his job in Leipzig as the years went by is immaterial to the heirs of his legacy: for our purposes, he could have found no better job than Cantor et Director Musices in Leipzig to explore his vast compositional talents and to find performance venues for hundreds of new works.
In examining the influences upon Bach and his subsequent influence upon later generations of musicians, this Festival takes as its point of departure some of the aspects of Bach’s job description in Leipzig. In Kantaten: German Baroque Vocal Music (3rd June) and the Choral Concerts (7th and 8th June), we meet Bach the Cantor, the prolific choral composer who penned a twenty-minute cantata each week in his first three years in Leipzig. In the Bach Organ Recital (13th June) and Preludes and Fugues: Keyboard Concert (15th June) we encounter Bach the virtuoso performer, the role in which he was best known in his own lifetime. In the Orchestra Concert (14th June) we find Bach the director of the Collegium Musicum, a quasi-commercial venture that was organised around a weekly “gig” at Zimmerman’s Coffee House. In the Solo Bach Masterclass we learn from Bach the patient pedagogue. And finally, in our closing performance of the St John Passion, composed for his first Easter at Leipzig, we are moved by Bach the theologian, whose very beliefs are planted deep within the score.
The Festival’s performers, too, mirror Bach’s forces in Leipzig. The ambitious Bürgermeister saw Bach’s role as Music Director for the entire city, not just Organist and Choir Director at the four city churches. Even if the mayor’s ambitions were somewhat foiled by political in-fighting, Bach did in fact contribute to all facets of Leipzig’s musical life. So, like Bach’s Thomaschor, our choir includes schoolboys and university students. (We do bend the rules and include women, however.) The Sydneian Festival Orchestra, our equivalent of the Leipzig Collegium Musicum, combines schoolboys with professional players to tutor them, the equivalent of the Stadtpfeifer, or “town pipers” of Bach’s day. (We will refrain from continuing the analogy to compare David Pye’s trumpet solo with the playing of Bach’s virtuoso trumpeter Gottfried Reiche, however; Reiche died of a stroke after playing one of Bach’s more challenging trumpet parts!) We will, however, compare Victoria Watson’s star turn with Faustina Bordoni, the opera diva from Dresden who almost certainly performed with Bach’s Collegium Musicum. The academic rigour of the opening lectures hearkens back to Bach’s involvement with the venerable Leipzig University; he had many friends amongst the august faculty (many of whom held dual appointments at the Thomasschule) and played the organ at the university church. We even represent Bach’s employer, the Rector Johann Matthias Gesner, with our harpsichord-playing Headmaster, who, like Gesner, is a classics scholar. (Gesner is not be confused with Ernesti, with whom Bach had an irreparable falling out; the Rector was then said to have become “a foe of music”.) Indeed, Rita Fin, Director of Music at Grammar, joins me in offering our thanks to Dr Vallance for his support of
this Festival, not only by making the event possible, but also by contributing musically to three of the concerts. But certainly most important, we offer nearly two hundred Grammar boys the opportunity to play the role of the several hundred Thomasschule boys whom Bach would have taught in his twenty-seven years in Leipzig. One wonders: could they have seen beyond his hopelessly high standards and occasional bouts of temper to see his love of music, and even his gruff concern for their musical growth? The Grammar staff certainly hope that our boys will see beyond their difficult hours of preparation for this Festival to forge their own relationship with the music of Bach which will last a lifetime.
Christopher Shepard
FESTIVAL DIRECTOR
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Bach knew what it was like. When he was cantor at St Thomas’ in Leipzig, he lived in the School building. His duties included calling the roll at 6am, making sure the pupils were at their lessons on time, and in the evening checking that none were too drunk when they returned to their dormitories. He also had supervision of the sick bay when he was on duty. Failure to perform these duties properly entailed a fine. And then there was his teaching. Yet this period, from 1723, was one of Bach’s most creative and productive. It leads, of course, to the ultimate achievement of the B Minor Mass which forms the centrepiece of this year’s Festival. One of Bach’s first biographers, Johann Nicolaus Forkel, put it well. “It was only through the combination of extraordinary genius and a tireless capacity for study and hard work that Bach was able to extend the limits of his art as he did.” The result is that even those who have come after him have not been able to maintain this expanded domain.
The programme of this year’s Bach festival gives us the opportunity to sample something of the range and variety of Bach’s music, along with some music by those whose debt to him is especially profound. For many of you, it will be the first time you have seen our newly refurbished Big Schoolroom. A year from now, we expect the organ to have been installed and it is my hope that these Bach Festivals will continue to flourish and develop in these grand surroundings. We are all indebted to Chris Shepard, the artistic director of the Festival, and my colleagues in the Music Department for making these concerts happen, and to the Trustees of the School for supporting the kind of institution which makes them possible.
Dr. J.T. Vallance
HEADMASTER
SYDNEY GRAMMAR SCHOOL
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