Bach Festival
Bach Festival 2008
Sun Jun 22–Sat Jun 28
Andrew Megill-Conductor; Robin A. Leaver, Alyson Harvey, Nancy Wilson, Fuma Sacra.
In 1731 Bach composed his St. Mark Passion. Unfortunately the score is lost, but the printed libretto survives. From this it is possible to reconstruct at least something of the music that Bach reused for his St. Mark Passion. Various attempts have been made by various Bach scholars to recreate a complete score. But the problem is that while the opening and closing choruses, together with a few arias, can be successfully reconstructed from various cantatas, the Biblical narrative cannot. Thus one is forced to used music by other composers, such as the so-called “Keiser” St. Mark Passion, or attempt to compose the missing music in the style of Bach. Neither solution is entirely satisfactory. So instead of a reconstruction we will concentrate on the cantatas that Bach scholars believe Bach either used to create his St. Mark Passion, or incorporated into later works: notably Cantata 198, the funeral cantata for the Saxon Electress in 1727, and Part 5 of the Christmas Oratorio of 1734.
This summer we begin the second decade with our 11th annual Bach Festival at Westminster. Since 1998, when we performed the St. John Passion, we have presented a number of the cantatas, including Part 1 of the Christmas Oratorio, the St. Matthew Passion, the Magnificat, and the Mass in B minor (over three summers).
We have also included music by Bach’s contemporaries Telemann and Graupner, as well as his son C.P.E. Bach. Last year, to mark our 10th anniversary, we returned to the St. John Passion, the work that was the centerpiece of our first Bach Festival. This year we are we are continuing the theme of passion music, but with a difference.
We shall also perform Cantata 127 (1725), composed for the Sunday before Lent—celebrated as a “Passion Sunday” at that time, together with Bach’s setting of Luther’s German Te Deum. At the end of the week all these works will be performed. The participants will form the primary choir, in collaboration with Fuma Sacra and the Westminster Bach Festival Orchestra, and the performance will take place in Miller Chapel on the campus of Princeton Seminary. In addition to rehearsing and performing participants will also study these works, in connection with other compositions by Bach, exploring the musical, liturgical, theological and cultural traditions that form the background to this superlative music.
Also included will be master classes and individual lessons for the singers, as well as discussions for conductors and keyboard players, coaching’s on language and style and continuo practice and a lecture on baroque instruments and performance practice. Internationally acclaimed organist Joan Lippincott will perform Bach’s Art of the Fugue Thursday, June 26 as part of the Bach Festival.
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