December 2003 Newsletter
December, 2003 Volume 16 Number 2
Letter from the President
As I begin this season as President, my first pleasant duty is, on your behalf, to recognize the officers who have left the Board of Directors. Marijke van Wijk has worked tirelessly for three years as President, and Art Ziebart for five years as Treasurer. Thank you for your dedication and organizational skills. These two are still part of the Bach choir, so are available for their valuable advice. Marnie Latour will replace me during my five week Winter absence.
The Bach Marathon drew excellent performers who treated us to beautifully played Preludes and Fugues, excerpts from Bach sonatas, and Chorales. Even the audience enjoyed participating as they sang a number of Chorales under the baton of Janet Youngdahl. Attendance was down, in spite of the Scarboro Fair the same day.Kudos to all the instrumentalists, singers, and volunteers who helped run the show.
Bill Zdep ably maintains this society’s web site (see back page). I encourage you to visit the site to see the wealth of information contained therein: newsletters, biographies, future activities, membership forms, and the lovely choir picture. Thanks, Bill!
Details of the workshop, lead by singer, Mel Braun, are still to be organized. Watch for more news on this day long affair.I hope our concert on December 7 will be part of your Advent celebrations. In this busy month, how peaceful it is to sit in a beautiful sanctuary, and be surrounded by baroque music imbued with religious feeling, so inspiring. Those of us on stage love bringing it to you.The first two sections of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio will be presented, and a Bassoon concerto by Vivaldi. The soloist for the latter is Francesca Davenport, who has only lived in Calgary for three years. She is part of the Faculty of Music staff at U. of C. and examines for The Royal Conservatory of Music.Seasons Greetings
Constance Jackson
Calendar of Events
December 7th, 2003, 3 PM Bach Advent Concert Scarboro United Church From J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio BWV 248 Cantatas No. 1 and 2A Vivaldi Bassoon Concerto in C Major
February 7th, 2004, 1 PM Bach Children’s Concert Mount Royal College Leacock Theatre Hands on Instruments demonstration at 1 PMChildren’s play with music 2 PMMarch 21, 2004, 3 PM
Bach Birthday Celebration - with birthday cake Scarboro United Church J.S. Bach Cantata BWV 150 “Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich.”G.P. Telemann Psalm #96 “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied”G.F. Handel Concerto Grosso Op. 6, No. 11
Profile - Michael Hallworth
Michael Hallworth, tenor with the Calgary Bach Festival Society, feels it an honour and a joy to sing Bach’s music with such talented people and so excellent a director. He participates whole-heartedly in committee work as well as the choir rehearsals and performance. He’s in his second year with the CBFS and looks forward to continued exploration of Bach’s rich music.
He’s also enjoyed branching out to other Baroque composers such as Handel and Telemann. With other choirs, he enjoyed the occasional workshop in German pronounciation or vocal technique, and feels this might be an interesting direction for the Bach choir. Michael has sung opera and oratorio and church repertoire but prefers the Baroque style for its depth and vocal variety. Singing with an orchestra adds even more to the experience and brings out the voices so beautifully.Michael credits his mother with instilling in him a love of music, taking him to live performances and filling the home with music from classical LPs. Perhaps hearing the Messiah at the Birmingham Town Hall was the formative experience from which sprang his love of choir music. Music fills his own home as well. He married a singer and they have of course brought music into the lives of their three boys.
Michael began singing with choirs when he first arrived in Canada from England, to do his teacher training at the University of Calgary. Highlights include Berlioz‚ L’Enfance du Christ, with Dr. Brown’s community choir, Carmina Burana and Beethoven’s 9th with Lloyd Erikson in the Philharmonic Chorus, Brahm’s Requiem and Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Calgary Choral Society and My Fair Lady under the direction of Jim Munro. He‚s even sung with the 1000 voice Olympic choir!
He feels lucky to have sung such a rich variety of music and to have learned his craft from such excellent directors. It’s critical, he says, to focus on the director in order to work together for one sound. The director, he feels, guides the ethereal, emotional aspect as much as the technique and offers the necessary background and insight as to the composer’s style and vision.
Retired as a school-teacher, Michael works at Bow Valley College in adult education. Though he started working on adult literacy projects, he now works with international students taking courses and teaching courses in ESL. Michael is active in the local ATESL committee. For fun, he’s busy reading up on new teaching methods in ESL and in finding material for his student’s novel studies. Once a teacher, always a teacher. Once a teacher, always a lifelong learner.
Book Reviews
Beethoven’s Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Scientific Mystery Solved By Russell Martin
What do Sotheby’s auction, Che Guevera, a small coastal town in Denmark, microscopes and Schubert have in common? Beethoven…and Beethoven’s hair.
Author Russell Martin, with thorough and impeccable research traces the route a lock of Beethoven’s hair took into this century, family to family, hand to hand through the turbulent times after Beethoven’s death. Not only does he give us a historical timeline, he gives us some interesting insights into Beethoven’s personality, his music and his devoted admirers. The following excerpt gives an idea of his style, which combines impeccable research, a true appreciation of Beethoven and the occasional twist of wry humour.
In the eighty years since Hiller, Berlioz, Liszt and their musical comrades in Paris first had striven to elevate Beethoven to the status of a composer-God, love of his compositions and devotion to him as a mythic ideal had continued to swell throughout much of the world. His orchestral and chamber music had increased in popularity in each succeeding decade, despite dramatically evolving musical tastes; a series of biographies – some accurate and highly informative, others elaborately fictionalized – had been published in three languages, dozens of plays, poems, and novels, including one by Tolstoy, had employed the basic story of Beethoven’s life as their narrative grist, and great statues in his honor had been erected in Bonn and Vienna.
In 1902, a group of avant-garde artists and musicians ushered Beethoven’s memory and music into the brave new century with a sensational “Beethoven Exhibition”, centered around the ceremonial unveiling of Leipzig sculptor Max Klinger’s marble monument, which had been seventeen years in construction. For them, Beethoven epitomized not only artistic genius but also the personal triumph of purity over base sensuality, a subject scandalously addressed by Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, which covered three walls. Much human nakedness indeed was depicted in Klimt’s frieze, and Klinger’s larger than life Beethoven also was stripped of clothing, his modesty protected only by a swath of marble cloth. Constructed of many types of stone, as well as ivory, gold, bronze, and gems, Klinger’s Beethoven was seated on a throne adorned by five angels, yet his face, patterened after a life mask made long ago by sculptor Franz Klein – was unadorned, human and strikingly reminiscent of the man who had once lived only a block away, a century before.
The myth of the divine Beethoven had remained intact for some time longer across the Atlantic as well, where nineteenth century transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller long since had convinced their like-minded countrymen in the U.S. that Beethoven wonderfully embodied an ideal spiritual reality capable of transcending the base and often painful world.
Beethoven had been dead for eight decades when paul Hiller refurbished the locket that held his hair. But the composer had remained vitally alive in the hearts of his adherents as the twentieth century opened, much more a god still among them, than a simple man who once had lived and suffered and made extraordinary music. It wasn’t until World War I had begun to soak the remnants of Romanticism in both blood and misery that the cult of Beethoven, which Ferdinand Hiller long ago had played a part in creating, at last came to a sobered close. In the horror of the fighting and its hollow aftermath, something seemed newly clear to many who had once believed starkly otherwise: the man who had created those great works had been only a man in the end.
Great Russian Musicians: from Rubenstein to Richter By Ernst Zaltsberg
This collection of essays gives a personal and thoughtful account of the life and contribution of Russian musicians who have had had significant influence on twentieth century music… and as is implied in the following excerpt, on politics as well.
On Maria Yudina: Prophet of Contemporary MusicWhile Yudina was never involved in politics, her independent and openly expressed opinions on many fundamental problems, and her faith in strong moral and religious principles contradicted the norms of life in totalitarian USSR. One episode can give an example of Yudina’s independent and strong character. It is well known that Stalin often listened to the radio. One day, he called the Broadcast Committee, requesting a record of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, which Yudina had played the day before. No recording had been made during this live performance, but, to comply with Stalin’s request, both Yudina and the entire symphony were called in and they recorded the concert at night. One single copy was produced and sent to Stalin. Shortly after Yudina received an envelope from the Kremlin containing twenty thousand rubles. In response she wrote to the dictator who had tried to destroy religious life in Russia: “I thank you, Josef Vissarionovich, for your aid. I will pray for you day and night and ask the Lord to forgive your great sins before the people and the country. The Lord is merciful and He will forgive you. I gave the money to the church that I attend.” Everybody expected the worst to happen to Yudina, but fortunately, no punishment followed.
Happy reading! If you’d like to share some thoughts about your favourite music books contact the Bach Voicemail at ph # 232-8525 or website http://www.bachcalgary.org
Editor's Website Picks
Interested in contacting other choral groups in Calgary? You will find the Calgary Region Arts Foundation client list at http://www.craf.org/clients4.html
The Academy of Ancient Music at http://www.aam.co.uk/ has program notes on works and shows pictures of artists, such as Bach. To find these, click on News and Features. A little embarrassed that you don’t know some musical term like appoggiatura? You won’t be if you check out the Glossary page of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem at http://www.bach.org/bach101/suites/glossary.html
The Denton Bach Socety revisits Bach’s first Leipzig Christmas at http://www.dentonbach.com/archive/magnificat9.htm where you can find program notes, commentaries, pictures and the full texts of the Magnificat in Latin and English.For a site with a multitude of links to all sorts of Bach info try http://www.bachfaq.org/
Interesting trivia about Bach can be found at: http://www.spiritsound.com/bachbits.html
Don’t forget our own http://www.bachcalgary.org with newsletters back to September 2000, pictures of the choir and orchestra and profiles of our conductors.
Our Society received an e-mail from the Webmaster of this site telling us that he had posted our concerts. I looked at it and it impressed me enough that I deemed it worthy of special mention. Have a look at it. They are categorized by year so you will have to look at 2003 and 2004 - Bill
Site Name: Bach Cantatas Website URL: http://www.bach-cantatas.com
Description: A comprehensive site covering all aspects of J.S. Bach's cantatas and his other vocal works. Contains discussions and detailed discographies of each cantata and other local works, performers and general topics. The site also includes texts and translations, scores, music examples, articles and interviews, and short biographies of about 1,500 performers of Bach vocal works (singers, conductors, vocal and instrumental groups). There are also other relevant resources such as a discussion of the Lutheran church year, reviews and discussions of Bach’s non-vocal works, terms and abbreviations, schedule of concerts of Bach's vocal works, hundreds of links to other relevant resources. The site is an international collective project, being compiled from various postings about the subject, most of which have been sent to the Bach Cantatas Mailing List.
Membership Information
The Calgary Bach Festival Society has a large library of cantatas which can be rented. If interested, please contact us at 282-8525 or e-mail Bill Zdep tcprint@telus.net
Volunteers are welcome and needed for several positions and projects. If interested, please contact us at 282-8525 or e-mail Bill Zdep tcprint@telus.net
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September 2003 Newsletter
2010 Annual General Meeting
