More Than Just Beautiful Music
Detail from a window at First (Scots) Presbyterian
WHEN I ASKED Ricard Bordas, who will be conducting the Festival Kirk Choir as part of Bach Festival Charleston, whether he had any suggestions for the audience, he said without hesitation: “Arrive early, read the text—listen to a recording before if you can—and really follow the text along with the music. All this will make for a different experience because then you will see the colors and how Bach ‘painted’ the words.”
After a pause, he added: “This is more than just beautiful music.”
When I asked him what makes it so, he replied, “Every chord has meaning. Bach paints each word with a chord. He builds the whole construction of a piece with continuity and harmonic complexities that are difficult to put together for a performer. And his music has such spiritual depth, yet everything flows so easily. It’s not just beautiful music that goes in one ear and out the other. It stays there. A lot of people hear his music and can’t help crying. His music is unique in that it combines the whole package of spirituality, sophistication, and elegance.”
Ricard himself began playing the recorder at age four and started singing Bach as a young boy. By the time he was 14 he was singing in adult choirs as a tenor and later as a countertenor.
“I can say as a Baroque countertenor that Bach is the most difficult composer to sing. For choirs it is also very challenging. The music has a complexity technically and melodically. For example, sometimes he treats the voice like an instrument; he writes the vocal melody as an instrument, and what you hear so often is a solo voice having a dialogue with an instrument. It is not just a beautiful vocal line accompanied by the bass.”
“When singing Bach’s music, it’s very challenging just to breathe. If you can breathe when singing Bach, you can sing anything. It is one of the most challenging things for a singer, even the most professional singers,” some of whom Ricard said will not accept jobs to sing Bach’s choral music because they find it too demanding.
Choirmaster, Ricard Bordas
I then asked, “When you think of Bach, do you think of a poet, an architect, a painter, a…?” Before I could finish, he said firmly, “All of them.”
He then echoed a familiar sentiment about Bach’s music: “It is as fresh today as it was 300 years ago and I think in another 300 years it will be as fresh as it is now. It’s not ‘old’ music. It applies to us, regardless of our circumstances. I only wish it could be performed in schools as an educational tool so that our kids can have access to this wonderful music.”
I also asked about the two cantatas Ricard will be conducting: “Bach had to write a cantata for each Sunday of the year. For each cantata, he would take the church hymn of the particular holy season and use it as a main theme, writing the cantata around it. This is one reason that understanding the text is key to understanding the music.”
“He wrote Number 23 for the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday, which is when we will be playing it. Number 23 is based on the Parable of the Blind Man from the Gospel of Luke. Historians also believe Bach originally wrote it when he auditioned for his position as musical director in Leipzig, although at that time it had only three movements. He later added the fourth movement, “Lamb of God.”
“The first movement is a beautiful duet for soprano and alto. The second is a recitative for tenor. In the third movement the chorus alternates with a duet for tenor and bass. And the fourth—the “Lamb of God”—is like a great coda.”
Ricard pointed out that Bach wrote more than 200 cantatas, many of which were lost, and that Number 23 came early on. By contrast, Number 191, Gloria—which will conclude the festival—is a mature masterpiece. It is also a signature work that is familiar to many listeners. But what you may not know is that Bach extracted the material for it from the 1733 Kyrie and Gloria which he had written for the Catholic Court in Dresden. Later in his life, he would add the Sanctus, Credo, and Gloria to create one of his masterpieces, the B Minor Mass.
The festive Gloria you will hear is also the only cantata that Bach wrote in Latin—all the others are in German. The 40-member Festival Kirk Choir, accompanied by an 18-piece chamber orchestra, will perform it at First Scots on Sunday, March 6, at 4 P.M. It should be a magnificent finale to a rare weekend of hearing so much live music by the man that many regard as the world’s greatest composer.
Read more about Bach Festival Charleston 2011.
