September 2004 Newsletter

September , 2004 Volume 17 Number 1

Letter from the President

A new season is beginning, our 17th.

We must be doing something right!

Please peruse the enclosed program schedule, and hang it somewhere as a reminder.

All members are invited to attend the Annual General Meeting. It will be held Monday, September 20, at Knox Presbyterian Church, 3704 37th St. SW. We will begin at 6:00 PM to hear the various reports, elect new members to the Board, and enjoy some refreshments. This is your opportunity to hear how your society operates. We will welcome any questions and suggestions too.

Our thanks go to Chris Svoboda, Secretary, who will be resigning after serving for many years. She has also cheerfully assisted with other duties when asked. We appreciate your dedication and value your opinions, Chris. Joining the Board will be Annette Caesar. We look forward to getting to know Annette better and hope she may have some fresh ideas.

The Casino dates are September 27 and 28. If you could be one of our spares, please call Marijke van Wijk at 283-0231. She has done a wonderful job of getting all the shifts filled, but just in case……

The theme for the Bach Marathon is not specific this year, so we can enjoy a great variety of music by Bach and his contemporaries, performed by many different artists. Please join us for hours of Baroque music, including a sing-along, in the beautiful sanctuary at Scarboro United Church.

Welcome back!

Constance Jackson

Interview with Kirill Kalmykov

by Anna Carnell

For Kirill Kalmykov, cellist, music is about listening, and connecting what you hear with what you feel; soul music. There are hardly any moments in the day when he is not listening to some kind of music, any music. A good part of his current activities include sharing that philosophy with students.

He prefers working with adult students for whom music often plays the role of a physical and emotional outlet. With his younger students he is adamant that music must be their choice, not their parent’s choice, no doubt a hangover from his first musical forays into piano, then violin, followed by flute. Thankfully, his flute teacher insisted that the structure of his teeth would make him a better cellist, and he finally found the instrument he was born for.

Kirill has just returned from Cuba, where he spent two weeks giving master class to the cello students of Matanzas’ Art School. He delivered musical supplies for that school collected by V.A. Hill Fine Strings Ltd., and spent some time with the local classical musicians in Havana. He found it intensely rewarding. With limited resources, sometimes no electricity, he calls it a ‘soul experience’.

Kirill worked through a similar system of schools geared to foster the special talents of students in Russia. The tremendous sense of discipline instilled by a regimen of practice and competition may help him in the recording studio, but he never enjoyed the fiercely competitive system, with no life outside of music. At 19 and ready for adventure, he left the Conservatory of St. Petersburg for Baltimore on an exchange program, in 1994. He completed his Bachelor of music in Erie, Pennsylvania and took his masters at the University of Calgary with Amanda Forsyth.

He’s a quester, ready to try a variety of musical experiences, including a touring production of ‘South Pacific’, the musical in the U.S. He particularily enjoyed playing with the Red Deer Symphony, his first orchestra in Alberta, and, since 2002, continued with the CPO, where he worked as acting assistant principal last year. Chamber music and solo performance stretches his limits and he plays with several groups on a regular basis. Joan Kent encouraged him to join the Calgary Bach Society where he learned the use of the baroque bow. Kirill regularly performs with Bell ‘arte Strings, Mountain View Connection and other groups in local and out-of-town concerts. A trio concert performed with Kirill’s collegues Olga Kotova and Dimitri Nesterov was recorded by CBC for the Alberta in Concert at the Rosza Centre.

He also often performs with Kathleen van Mourik who introduced him to the Mountainview International Festival of Song, a unique opportunity for professional growth. Organized by Kathleen and her husband, Charles Foreman, the 2 week August festival provides superb coaching with guest artists and accompanists one year, and focuses on chamber music in alternate years. Kirill enjoys the balance of study, teaching and performance that Calgary offers. Newly married, on a recent trip to Russia, his life will feel more complete when his wife joins him in Canada.

Your Membership is important!

The CBFS has managed to put on performances of a high standard with help from our major funding sources: casinos, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Calgary Region Arts Foundation.

These sources of funding often place restrictions on how the proceeds can be used, and will not cover all the day to day expenses of running the society. For that we depend on other sources of income, like memberships. Your membership is important! Without it the society cannot continue to bring baroque music to the community.

We realize that it is not always easy to remember if your membership is current, so we have begun to print membership expiry dates on the address labels of newsletter envelopes. If the top right corner of the label has the date "09.2004", you will know that your membership is good through September of this year. If you are a little behind, don’t be embarrassed -- your renewal is gratefully received 12 months of the year.

Membership entitles you to discounted ticket pricing at most CBFS concerts and to continue to receive the quarterly newsletter. Most important of all, it entitles you to feel good about helping to make classical music a part of Calgary’s cultural landscape.

Alvin Albrecht, Treasurer/Administrator

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.htmlThe 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.htmlThe 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.htmlBach Cantatas Website URL: http://www.bach-cantatas.comDon’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.

Bach’s Christmas Oratorio

by John Bawden MMus, LTCL Musical Director Fareham Philharmonic Choir (Reprinted with permission)

In June 1722 Johann Kuhnau, the Kantor of St Thomas’s, Leipzig – much the same as a Director of Music – passed away. Bach was one of six applicants for the vacancy, but as far as the appointing Council was concerned, the most outstanding candidate for this most prestigious post was a highly respected musician already well known in Leipzig, Georg Philipp Telemann. He was elected unanimously by the Council members, but to their great disappointment he turned down the offer, and so they turned to their second choice, Christoph Graupner, a former pupil of Kuhnau. He was unable to secure his release from his current position and therefore had no alternative but to withdraw his application. In desperation the Council offered the job to Bach, who at that time was hardly known in Leipzig. One official observed that as the best musicians were not available they had no option but to take one of the mediocre ones!

And so in May 1723 Bach was appointed Kantor of St Thomas, Leipzig, where he remained until his death in 1750. It was a hugely demanding post. In return for the distinctly meagre salary he was required to teach both Latin and music at the St Thomasschule, play the organ, train the choir and compose the music for the two main Lutheran churches in the city - Thomaskirche and Nikolaikirche – and supervise and train the musicians at two others. He was also responsible for hiring any orchestral players and singers needed for the church services. With such an enormous workload it is hardly surprising that Bach was involved in several disputes with the city authorities, who periodically complained that he was not discharging his duties properly. There were also constant financial wrangles. Despite these unpromising circumstances, Bach composed some of his greatest music during this period. His choral compositions alone include such enduring masterpieces as the Mass in B minor, the St John and St Matthew Passions, some 300 cantatas and the Christmas Oratorio.

For his first Christmas Day service in the new job, Bach composed an impressive Sanctus, which he later incorporated into his Mass in B minor. The Christmas Oratorio was not written until 1734. Because of the pressure of work, and since at that time there were limited opportunities for repeat performances, Bach borrowed extensively from other pieces that he had written previously, both sacred and secular. This was standard practice for the period; Handel’s arias and choruses, for instance, are often re-workings of earlier pieces. Bach adapted this existing music to fit the words of the Christmas Oratorio and composed much new material as well. The text, which is based on the account of the Nativity given in the Gospels according to St Luke and St Matthew, was compiled by Picander, who had already provided Bach with the libretto for the St Matthew Passion. It is thought that Bach himself may well have assisted Picander in this task, though how he found time to do this in addition to all his statutory obligations is a mystery.

Although collectively the individual movements of the Christmas Oratorio form a continuous musical account of the Christmas story, Bach did not conceive the oratorio as one uninterrupted work, in the manner of Handel’s oratorios, but rather as six separate cantatas to be performed on six separate occasions - the three days of Christmas (25th, 26th and 27th), New Year’s Day, the Sunday after New Year and the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6th). The fact that the instrumental requirements for each cantata differ quite considerably is a further indication that Bach never intended them to be performed as one work. For these reasons it is quite usual to hear performances of the Christmas Oratorio comprising only a part of the whole sequence.

The oratorio contains the customary mixture of recitatives, choruses and arias. The tenor soloist (Evangelist) acts as a Narrator in a series of recitatives, with other figures traditionally associated with the Christmas story - the angels and the shepherds, for example – also making an appearance. The choir introduces the first and third cantatas with a rousing chorus, and provides further commentary throughout, mainly in the form of chorales. These Lutheran hymn-tunes, richly harmonised by Bach, would have been very familiar to eighteenth century congregations, who more than likely joined in from time to time. The arias, often very florid and detailed, are the most extended numbers in the work, and are meditations on the deeper spiritual significance of the unfolding events. A repetition of the third cantata’s opening chorus brings the sequence to an end on a suitably exultant note.

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