Johann Sebastian Bark

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Welcome back.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

And we had a little concert. It's part of an interesting operation that a group is doing. It's called the Complete Bach, our group, and some collaborators in the John Sebastian. John and Sebastian Bach. The very same. We and our collaborators are performing all of the works that Bach ever wrote. No one has ever done this huge in history.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

That is huge.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

12 concerts a year for 11 years.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Wow. Oh fuck! That's a lot of Bach.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

This past weekend, a group, a really great group from New York City called the Sebastians, did all six Brandenburg concertos. And then on Friday night and on Saturday night, uh the Worcester Chamber Music Society did a concert mostly involving the a musical offering. And then on Sunday, there's something that we do each year called a cantata fon, in which five different singing groups sing five different cantatas. So uh one of the really interesting things about this operation, the complete book, is that uh Chris Shepard, our musical director, his vision is involves um getting lots of buy-in, not just from our group, which is Music Worcester, but people from all over the country, uh certainly lots of musicians and groups from Boston, um people sometimes we form a sort of uh buy-in group. So people come from North Carolina, Arizona everywhere to sing, learn the music, spend a weekend, learn the music. So it's it's really a both national and international or well not international yet, and and mostly mainly uh the New England area, but we're we're expanding our reach.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Dan, can you tell me explain to me what a cantata is?

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Thank you. Good question.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

I was learning the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Oh, cantata. So Bach wrote 212 or something cantatas. He was a he was the music director at uh a couple of Lutheran churches, and every Sunday he was in charge of writing music for uh the church choir and various, you know, there was there's an orchestra. And so a cantata typically has it's about 20 minutes to a half an hour long. It's it consists of six parts, some of it's choral singing, some of it's instrumental. And so Pac had to do this one a year, one a week for several years with some of his greatest music.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Now, can you tell me a little bit about Pac in the early days? How did he get into this? Was he one of the like Mozart, a child prodigy, or I don't know that he was a prodigy percentage.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Although he was a prodigy in one way, he had 21 children.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

How do you have time? I didn't have time for that with all the music.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

But he was very, very accomplished. He was certainly the greatest musician of the day, probably, and some people consider him the best musician later. Um but you know, back then, this is so Bach died in 1750. We're talking about the 18th century. Musicians weren't superstars, they weren't even stars as much as say Beethoven was later in time. He had to work hard, that's why he had to write a cantata every week. He was just a church employee, and he always was looking for a better job. He often didn't really like his where he was and how much money he'd get being paid, and he didn't love his singers, and so he was really toiling away. It wasn't like Lady Gaga or Beyonce today.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

What was his instrument?

SPEAKER_01 4:32

He was a wonderful keyboardist, he was probably one of the best keyboards. He wrote so much keyboard music.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

A lot of piano and sonata.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Piano was only in piano was only invented really, really late in Bach's life.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Oh really?

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Mostly the harpsichord.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Harp saccord I love the harpsichord.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Piano is uh yeah, it was a modern invention for Bach. Which came first, the harpsichord for the piano.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

No, the the harpsichord we just learned.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Yeah, the full name of the piano is piano forte.

unknown 5:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Piano means soft and forte means loud. And the the the uh interesting thing about the piano is that it's the first keyboard instrument where you could change the volume. You can play it loud, you can play it soft. The harpsichord always sounds the same because the strings are plucked.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

A little bit tiny.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Yeah, well the the strings are being plucked instead of being struck with a little hammer. So you can't control the volume. That's why it's really different quite different.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

And when did um Bach really become known and famous? Was he still alive last time? These artists are gone before they they achieve fame and recognition.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Well, he he was locally famous for sure, and uh lots of his kids were musicians as well, and so the Bach family was well known. In fact, one of Bach's sons was at it was a musician at some church and left for some reason, and the response to the guy was get me another Bach. But Bach wasn't as revered back then as he is now. In fact, Mendelssohn was really kind of responsible maybe 50 years after Bach's death for rediscovering and reinventing and re-popularizing Bach. So he's he's he's more revered now than he was in his day.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Now, when you're singing the cantatas, um I I understand some of them are in German.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

They're all in German.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

They're all in German. So you're singing in German.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Oh yeah, singing in German.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

So it's not just a matter of being able to carry a tune. You have to learn the language and know what you're singing and you don't really have to know which is singing. That would make it a lot easier.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

But of course, singing the vowels properly is hard if you don't if you're not a native speaker. So um so that's one of the hardest things about singing it is getting the getting the vowels right. And that our our director is always honest about singing the vowels properly. Who knows how well we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

How did you get how did you get into this?

SPEAKER_01 7:04

You know, i i I came kind of late to choral singing. Most people do it that major it in college or something. But I was about I remember I was uh 52 years old, I think, and my s my middle son is a very fine, talented musician, and he was singing in a children's chorus who did a concert with an adult chorus, and I was, I think, I was in the audience, and I remember sitting in the audience, listening to it and really loving it, and I looked up and said, hmm, that looks like fun, maybe I'll try it. And so at age whatever, 52 or something, I started singing. It was harder than I thought, so I took lessons, but I was I was gonna ask that.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

So had you played an instrument yourself before? Were you musical to begin with? I mean, could somebody just like me saying, I think I'll go sing out.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

I'm a wannabe. I play I play a little bit of guitar, a little bit of piano, but I'm really not very good at any of it. I can sing okay, but I always want to be good at music.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

But any funny story? There has to be stories along the way when you're getting ready for cantata or when you get on stage and whatever.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

You know, here's a story that's not a funny story, but it's a it it's the story that I think of in singing. The first concert we did after COVID was a long performance of the Brahms Requiem Mass, which is a beautiful emotional piece. And beautiful piece. And it was people were of course so so glad to be back in the concert hall and and and quite moved. And you know, every once in a while when you sing, you've probably been to a concert, when the c when the piece ends, there's a little bit of a hush before people start to clap, you know, when they're really moved. So at the end of the box of end of the Brahm Draquiem, and we have this on recording, so I'm not making up this number. There was silence for 51 seconds before people clapped. Impact.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

I remember standing there, and at at first it's it's quite moving, and then you think, wow, is something wrong here? What's going on?

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Did they like it?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

It was so I mean I mean people were crying. So so that's probably my most moving moment ever.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

That's how I felt after your first uh upload of our podcaster. Very moved by it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Well, Dan, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

I just I just want to tell our listeners, Dan, beside owning the story, is also our director of IT for the podcast. And every podcast that you've listened to out there is brought to you by Dan. So thank you for your editing skills, your computer skills. We are indebted to you. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you. Yay, yay, Dan. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, and we'll see you next time.