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About Episode 27

In this special holiday edition of Bach Talk, host Ron Klemm takes you behind the scenes of The Bach Society of Saint Louis’ cherished Christmas Candlelight Concert, returning to Powell Hall on December 23. Hear from members of the chorus, orchestra and team at The Bach Society as they share what makes this concert so meaningful. From the Candlelight Processional to the mix of traditional carols and reimagined works, this concert has been a St. Louis tradition for over 70 years. With a preview of this year’s program, discover why so many say, “It isn’t Christmas without it.”

Music Featured in This Episode:

All selections performed by The Bach Society of Saint Louis Chorus & Orchestra, A. Dennis Sparger conducting, from Christmas Candlelight concerts in Powell Hall, St. Louis, Missouri with the year of performance in parentheses.

“JTTW” indicates selection is on BSSL 2017 release; “GLORIA” indicates selection is on BSSL 2014 release; both available for download here.

1. RANDOL ALAN BASS: Fanfare/Joy to the World (2016, JTTW) 
2. arr. BARLOW BRADFORD: Still, Still, Still (2014, JTTW) 
3. arr. BARLOW BRADFORD: Christmas Medley (2022)
4. arr. BARLOW BRADFORD: Angels We Have Heard on High (2018)
5. arr. STEPHEN MAGER: Ding! Dong! Merrily on High (2005; GLORIA)
6. arr. DENNIS SPARGER/RONALD KLEMM: “Silence to Joy”—Candlelight Procession #5 (“Break Forth, O Beauteous Hev’nly Light” harmonized by J.S. BACH) (2022)  
7. HEALEY WILLAN: The Three Kings (2011)
8. arr. SPARGER: “Silent Night” (audience portion; 2022)
9. JOHN RUTTER: Magnificat, Movement 1 (2016)
10. JOHN RUTTER: Magnificat, Movement 4 (2016) 
11. CRAIG COURTNEY: A Musicological Journey Through the Twelve Days of Christmas, Movement 11 (2013; GLORIA) 
12. COURTNEY: A Musicological Journey Through the Twelve Days of Christmas, Movement 8 (2019)
13. M. LEONOVYCH, arr. Wilhousky: Carol of the Bells (2005;  GLORIA)
14. arr. DENNIS SPARGER: Candlelight Procession #1, opening (2019)
15. arr. BARLOW BRADFORD: Away in a Manger (2016; JTTW)
16. MACK WILBERG: O Little One Sweet (World premiere; 2021)

Transcription

About Episode 26

Whether in the studio, on stage or in a collaboration, soprano Clara Rottsolk brings joy to her work. Lauded by The New York Times for her “clear, appealing voice and expressive conviction,” she’s a sought-after performer on several continents. As Bach Talk host Ron Klemm and The Bach Society’s Assistant Executive Director Danielle Feinstein learned, perhaps Clara’s greatest joy comes from sharing her artistry and passing along a legacy of excellence.

In this episode, she reflects on her upbringing as the child of church musicians and the lessons that help her stay grounded in an unpredictable career, from surprise debuts to redefining success on her own terms.

Music Featured in This Episode:

1. J.S. Bach – Laudamus te from Mass in B minor Clara Rottsolk, soprano; Bach Society of Saint Louis Orchestra, conducted by A. Dennis Sparger From a concert performance, May 15, 2022
2. 2 J.S. Bach – Two-part Invention in C, BWV 772 Sandra Geary, piano
3. 3. J.S. Bach – Laudamus te from Mass in B minor Clara Rottsolk, soprano; Bach Society of Saint Louis Orchestra, conducted by A. Dennis Sparger From a concert performance, April 27, 2025

Transcription

About Episode 25

From the podium to the podcast mic, our conductor is once again taking center stage on Bach Talk. Ron Klemm and Scott MacDonald sit down with Music Director and Conductor A. Dennis Sparger as he reflects on his 40 years with The Bach Society of Saint Louis and shares insights about the music he loves. In this episode, he also takes us inside Mozart’s immortal Requiem, the opening work of our 85th season, exploring what makes it so powerful and why it continues to move audiences.

Music Featured in This Episode:

1. J.S. Bach – Dona nobis pacem from Mass in B minor
   The Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by A. Dennis Sparger
   From a concert performance, April 27, 2025

2. Mozart – Kyrie from Requiem
   The Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by A. Dennis Sparger
   From a concert performance, October 27, 2019

3. Mozart – Lacrimosa from Requiem
   The Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by A. Dennis Sparger
   From the same concert performance, October 27, 2019

4. Mozart – Hostias from Requiem
   The Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by A. Dennis Sparger
   From the same concert performance, October 27, 2019

5. Ola Gjeilo – Ubi caritas
   The Bach Society Chorus, conducted by A. Dennis Sparger; Sandra Geary, piano
   From a concert performance, October 17, 2021

6. Mozart – Communio / Cum Sancto Spiritu from Requiem
   The Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by A. Dennis Sparger
   From the same concert performance, October 27, 2019

Transcription

Ron Klemm (0:00)

This is Bach Talk. Dona nobis pacem. Grant us peace.

The gripping final chorus to Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor. You're hearing The Bach Society of Saint Louis from their recent performance in 2025 as they concluded their 84th concert season with this powerful and deeply personal work. Now, St. Louis' oldest continuously operating chorus turns the page and kicks off its milepost 85th anniversary season and they do so with another setting of that same text, another masterpiece that has passed the test of time. Hello and welcome to Bach Talk. I'm Ron Klemm.

Scott Macdonald (1:31)

And I'm Scott MacDonald.

Certainly an organization like The Bach Society could choose to rest on its laurels after 85 seasons of incredible music, but not so. Current music director and conductor A. Dennis Sparger has led and grown the chorus since 1986.

He continues to strive for more vision, more innovation, and of course more artistic excellence. The opening concert of The Bach Society's 85th season will feature Mozart's immortal and enduring Requiem. Ron and I visited Dennis at his home this summer to talk about Mozart, about the upcoming 85th season, and to reflect on his 40 years at the podium of The Bach Society.

Ron Klemm (2:33)

It's so wonderful to be in this beautiful, bright breakfast room. Say that three times real fast.

A. Dennis Sparger (2:40)

We've enjoyed it many, many times.

Ron Klemm (2:42)

Dennis Sparger, our music director and conductor, is our host today.

A. Dennis Sparger (2:48)

Glad to have you.

Ron Klemm (2:49)

Thank you for being here.

But now usually you and I are on the other side of the table.

A. Dennis Sparger (2:54)

Absolutely.

Ron Klemm (2:54)

And you help me and we grill our guests and pepper them with all sorts of questions. Are you ready to be the recipient of those peppering of questions?

A. Dennis Sparger (3:06)

Well, I realize the answer always has to be yes if we're going to move forward.

Ron Klemm (3:10)

The Bach Society has been around for a long time, but it's been through so much. Think about that legacy. What does that mean to you?

Well, it's just amazing that Dr. Heyne's vision of bringing the music of Bach to St. Louis has been able to survive now for 85 years. And we're really positioned to go another 85 years. We've just have moved into a very positive position, I think, with our board and with our chorus and with our orchestra and our audience.

Of course, wonderful things are happening. And I know for Dr. Heyne, it was a little rough going at different times. Audiences would be there and then they wouldn't be.

And financial support was there and then it wasn't there. And at one time, I think after about 12 years in, The Bach Society was running in today's about $115,000 in debt. And they continued on and got through that period.

I know Dr. Heyne worked for many years without compensation because he believed in this so strongly. And just things have gotten better and better. And we're really proud of this organization.

You're talking about Dr. William Heyne, who founded The Bach Society back in 1941 and conducted that first performance that we talked about and that he got all those questions right. But you have actually out-tenured him because this is the beginning of your 40th anniversary season with the Bach Society.

A. Dennis Sparger (4:46)

Oh, my goodness. It's just unbelievable.

Ron Klemm (4:49)

It is. Well, yeah, it kind of is. But also you have seen so many ups and downs. And I wonder if there's anything that stands out on either end of that, that immediately you think about in that tenure, in that period.

A. Dennis Sparger (5:05)

Well, I think of the times that quite often when budgets were down, repertoire would suffer. There are certain works like the St. Matthew Passion. It calls for a double orchestra, double chorus, six soloists, a children's chorus.

It's an expensive work to undertake. So that would have to be set aside for a few years. And yet sometimes out of these difficult moments can come on new opportunities.

I remember in the 90s, we were a little low in the budget and it was suggested that we do an a cappella concert. What? The Bach Society as chorus and orchestra.

That's how Bach composed his music. And my executive director at the time, John Walsh, suggested that we sing the Rachmaninoff Vespers in Russian, of course.

Ron Klemm (5:54)

Of course!

A. Dennis Sparger (5:55)

So we took that on and it turned out to be a wonderful experience. And we've done it several times since. And our singers just really take to the music.

So we've been able to make the best of worst situations.

Ron Klemm (6:09)

I remember there was a point where cash flow was a significant issue and came to the point where we were hoping and praying that we wouldn't get a snowstorm at Christmas because Christmas always was the way where you could balance the season out financially. And if we lost that, we would have been in deep trouble.

A. Dennis Sparger (6:30)

Well, I think it was my third year with The Bach Society where we were giving two consecutive nights of performances at Powell Hall and the windchill for both nights was 50 below. And yet we had performers and we had an audience and we carried on.

Ron Klemm (6:48)

So many people. We were at the Chorus America conference together and we talked to a whole bunch of people. And almost to a person, they would talk about what effect COVID had on their organization. Now, those were the people who were there.

A. Dennis Sparger (7:05)

Yes.

Ron Klemm (7:05)

And remember, a lot of organizations did not survive.

A. Dennis Sparger (7:09)

They didn't make it through.

Ron Klemm (7:10)

And we have, first of all, Melissa Payton is the best executive director there ever was. And we're very blessed to have her and know you other people, you can't have her. But the point is that there were some incredible initiatives during that time.

Do you remember some of those things and why they were so important that got us through?

A. Dennis Sparger (7:30)

Well, we didn't have many options. So we turned to doing things digitally so people could watch and listen at home.

We took our fall Bachtoberfest party and we had it online. And, you know, I performed here from our den and others were in their homes and this all kind of worked. And we made some money from it.

And Christmas, we were able to use a televised broadcast from several years earlier. And yet we brought in some new and fresh material to be a part of it. And that worked.

And our audience stayed with us, our donors stayed with us. And we made it through the year. Now, while all of that was very, very positive, the downside is that our singers were not being served, you know, for well over a year.

These wonderful people who come out every week to rehearse the great music and the wonderful feelings they get from being a part of the organization. They were on hold while the staff was pretty well working to get all of these things accomplished.

Ron Klemm (8:38)

And choirs were some of the last things to come back because of the nature of using your voice.

A. Dennis Sparger (8:46)

Sure.

Ron Klemm (8:46)

And so it was it was pretty special when we all came back. I remember that first rehearsal.

A. Dennis Sparger (8:51)

And we came back wearing masks.

Ron Klemm (8:53)

Yeah, we did.

A. Dennis Sparger (8:54)

And trying to protect one another and ourselves.

And I think we did a few concerts that way. And then we eventually could be weaned off of them. And now we seem to be back to normal, if there is a normal.

Ron Klemm (9:04)

A lot of people are still struggling with with getting audience back and we seem to be doing OK. So we feel very blessed.

A. Dennis Sparger (9:13)

We've done better than OK.

Ron Klemm (9:14)

Absolutely.

A. Dennis Sparger (9:15)

It's really wonderful.

Ron Klemm (9:15)

So 85th anniversary season for The Bach Society, your 40th anniversary season.

What goes into thinking about what you're going to do? How do you decide, OK, here's what we're going to do for this event for this season?

A. Dennis Sparger (9:32)

A big question.

I'm required to have a three year plan always that not only identifies what the repertoire will be, but what solo requirements are involved and what the cost will be so we can can budget for this. So we don't just budget from year to year. It's like a three year plan.

So so the board especially has a good feeling for where we're going with the organization. So a lot of what we're doing this year was in the works three years ago. And and my plan was to do at least, you know, a big work by Bach and to include other composers that will really resonate with our audience.

So, you know, here we have Mozart and Handel and for Christmas, John Rutter.

Ron Klemm (10:21)

How about that?

A. Dennis Sparger (10:22)

It's always wonderful, exciting to hear. So that's how this was all set up.

Ron Klemm (10:27)

I want to talk about that opening concert in just a moment. So can you stick around or do you have to go somewhere?

A. Dennis Sparger (10:33)

Oh, I can stick.

Ron Klemm (10:34)

Oh, that's right. You're home.

A. Dennis Sparger (10:35)

I'm already home. Yes.

Ron Klemm (10:36)

That's music director and conductor A. Dennis Sparger. With Scott MacDonald, I'm Ron Klemm. This is Bach Talk.

My wife and I have had the joyous privilege of going to both Salzburg and Vienna and seeing a lot of the Mozart sites.

A. Dennis Sparger (10:54)

Oh, yes.

Ron Klemm (10:55)

And I will tell you about the contrast.

I cannot get over the contrast between Salzburg and Vienna. It reminds me at least a little bit of the difference between a rural area or even a Midwestern city and the major city. Singers and other people want to find their fame and fortune.

They leave St. Louis and go to Vienna and go to New York or LA or something like that. What was Mozart's deal?

A. Dennis Sparger (11:21)

Yeah.

And if you can think of those cities back in the 18th century when they were even smaller. Well, as you know, Mozart was raised as a child prodigy. By the time he was three years old, he was recognized for his extraordinary abilities.

And by the time he was five, he started writing his first piece of music. And his father and mother were taking him on tours of all the major capitals throughout Europe and gaining all of this fame. Audiences were being just overwhelmed by what this young child could do.

But by the time he became a teenager and it was time for him to start finding a job, a steady job, no one was making an offer. So he was pretty well stuck with coming back home to little provincial Salzburg where then he worked for the archbishop. So this began by the time he was 17 years old.

And the archbishop didn't have that great of an interest in music. And he wanted the liturgical works to be shorter, like no mass could be more than 20 minutes in length because the archbishop didn't want to be standing around at the altar waiting for the choir to finally finish singing. So this didn't turn out to be a very good job.

He was not really appreciated at all. And he'd made a few trips to Vienna with the archbishop and he realized, wow, this is where I want to get back to. And eventually he just kind of created enough of a problem.

He was literally kicked out by the seat of his pants. And so he moved on to Vienna in 1781. This is 10 years before he died.

And this was the musical capital of the world at the time. And Mozart was really well accepted there. You can imagine this is a guy who now could be writing symphonies, his concertos, chamber music, operas, and of course, his public performances.

And he did teaching as well. And people just thought the world of him. His exceptional talents soon led to a really strong friendship with the Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who was the director of the Imperial Court Library.

And this guy was an avid patron of many of Vienna's musicians. And he also maintained an interest in old music in his personal library. So Mozart had access to that library.

And through that, he became acquainted with the oratorios of Handel and the instrumental works of Bach. And this encounter with these two Baroque giants just had an influence on his own writing, especially in portions of the Requiem.

Ron Klemm (13:48)

Yeah. Which makes sense why you programmed it as one of the initial works of the season, because it ties into the Bach Society.

A. Dennis Sparger (13:56)

Yes. When you start hearing those fugues.

Ron Klemm (13:58)

Yeah.

A. Dennis Sparger (13:58)

And Mozart was really, I think, transported by reading all of these fugues by Bach and realized that. And his wife was extremely impressed with polyphony.

So that also encouraged him to write in this direction.

Ron Klemm (14:15)

Here's a guy who's known for symphonies, concertos, opera, big time.

A. Dennis Sparger (14:20)

Oh, yes.

Ron Klemm (14:20)

What drove him to write a Requiem?

A. Dennis Sparger (14:23)

You know, Mozart was not writing much any sacred music in Vienna. There was no need for it there.

He was rather discouraged at that point. So here in July of 1791, Mozart's final year, he had the opportunity to write a Requiem. He was being commissioned.

He was visited by a solicitor that is like a lawyer representing someone with this anonymous offer for a commission. And he was offered the fee of 225 florins. Now, that doesn't mean much to us.

Ron Klemm (14:55)

No.

A. Dennis Sparger (14:56)

But it was about half of his fee for writing an opera like the Marriage of Figaro. So here, an opera that might be four hours long, all he has to write is like a one hour piece and make half the fee.

So this was pretty exciting to do it. Yeah. So his only requirement is that he was supposed to keep this quiet and deliver the sole copy, only one copy, to the Requiem as soon as possible.

Ron Klemm (15:21)

To this whoever?

A. Dennis Sparger (15:22)

Well, it was only after Mozart's death that it was learned that this all was the result of a commission from Count Franz von Waldeck of Schloss Stuppach, a fellow Freemason who'd ordered the Requiem as a memorial for his 20-year-old wife, who died earlier that year. Now, it was his practice to commission these works and then copy them into his own hand and pass them off as his own work.

Ron Klemm (15:49)

Oh, no.

A. Dennis Sparger (15:51)

And to encourage Mozart's immediate attention, he provided half the fee right up front. Now, you know the legends. The legends are still out there that there's a mysterious stranger came during a storm and Mozart was ill and distraught, and he believed that he'd been summoned to write his own Requiem.

Well, not so.

Ron Klemm (16:13)

No.

A. Dennis Sparger (16:14)

Actually, that July was a month of great happiness for Mozart.

On the 26th, his wife Constanza delivered a son. And at this time, their first son, Carl Thomas, was almost seven. Between those two births, they had lost two sons and two daughters who died at birth or infancy.

Ron Klemm (16:32)

As many people did in those days.

A. Dennis Sparger (16:34)

So, this was a time when the Mozart's were really surrounded by joy and hope. I can mention it was just a month earlier that Mozart composed his beautiful motet Ave Verum Corpus, a sublime and optimistic little piece.

So, these were some good days for Mozart at that time.

Ron Klemm (16:54)

He was up to his eyeballs in projects, right? Was it just the money?

I mean, is that why he took on this project in the first place?

A. Dennis Sparger (17:02)

Well, for sure.

Ron Klemm (17:03)

Mozart was making good money.

A. Dennis Sparger (17:05)

Yeah. He also spent good money.

Ron Klemm (17:08)

Oh, okay. I don't know anyone like that.

A. Dennis Sparger (17:10)

Yeah. So, that was part of the deal of what was going on. Now, we would like to think that because he had not had an opportunity to write sacred music, he may have just felt like he needed to do this as well. We're never going to know for sure.

Ron Klemm (17:25)

Right.

A. Dennis Sparger (17:25)

But, when he accepted this commission to compose a Requiem, he had already spent two months working on the Magic Flute. So, for a while, at least he was able to work on both of these projects at once. By mid-August, and we're talking a month later, he received a commission to write La clemenza di Tito.

Ron Klemm (17:45)

Oh, yeah. Another opera.

A. Dennis Sparger (17:45)

Clemency of Titus, which was scheduled for production in Prague in three weeks.

Ron Klemm (17:52)

Well, if anybody could do it.

A. Dennis Sparger (17:55)

And he did. So, he stopped all work on the Magic Flute and the Requiem and really got busy. He composed this opera within, believe it or not, 18 days.

Ron Klemm (18:05)

That's unbelievable.

A. Dennis Sparger (18:07)

So, accompanied by his wife Constanze and his student Franz Xaver Süssmayr, Mozart journeyed to Prague for the premiere on September 6th. Well, after that, he returned to Vienna, completed a clarinet concerto, and attended the premiere of the Magic Flute three weeks later.

By this time, illness had began to interrupt his creative flow. But he completed the Masonic Cantata Das Lob der Freundschaft by November 15th. He continued working on the Requiem as his health continued to deteriorate.

Ron Klemm (18:41)

But did he know he was running out of time? Do you think he thought he was going to get very, very ill?

A. Dennis Sparger (18:48)

Yeah.

Ron Klemm (18:49)

And there was no quick recovery, obviously, but he must have had...

A. Dennis Sparger (18:53)

Not until the final days. Up until the final days, like five, six, seven days, he thought he was going to recover from this.

During these final days, his friends would gather around his bedside and sing portions of the Requiem with him. He died on December 5th at 1255 in the morning, leaving the Requiem unfinished.

Scott Macdonald (20:10)

We can't talk about the Requiem without acknowledging that not every note of the Requiem was Mozart's. He passed away with some part of the Requiem still left to finish. And you mentioned that his student, Süssmayr, was one of the three, at least, students who continued on to finish this work. Can you talk more about those?

A. Dennis Sparger (20:34)

Oh, sure. Well, let's start with what Mozart actually composed. He wrote the first movement in full.

Everything you hear in the opening movement is totally Mozart. Then he wrote the choral parts and the baseline for the rest of the work, at least from the Kyrie through the first eight bars of the Lacrimosa, in addition to the Offertory. Now, he kind of skipped over a few movements getting to the Offertory because he wanted to know how the Offertory was all going to turn out before he wrote the ending of the Lacrimosa because he wanted it to lead to the Offertory.

In a few places, he even provided suggestions for the orchestration. And he knew the orchestra parts could be filled in later.

Ron Klemm (21:18)

Sure.

A. Dennis Sparger (21:19)

And of course, he did leave instructions that the opening movement would be used again at the end with just a different text for that purpose. With the down payment already spent and sources of income were now removed, it became imperative for Constanza to deliver a completed Requiem and collect the balance of the commission. By the way, she ultimately sold the Requiem five times.

Scott Macdonald (21:45)

Wow.

A. Dennis Sparger (21:46)

And this was quite possible then. There were no copyright laws, just exclusivity that was going on. But she knew that she had to have that Requiem completed before she could turn it over and get the balance.

So she turned to three of Mozart's pupils to do this job. The incomplete work was first given to the 30-year-old Jakob Freystädtler, who completed the Kyrie Fugue by filling in, not always accurately, the instrumental doubling parts. He soon returned the score and it went to the 26-year-old Joseph Eybler, who is also a pupil of Albrechtsberger and a protege of Haydn, parenthetically.

A composer of some merit, Eibler succeeded Antonio Salieri as Kapellmeister of the Austrian court. He was forced to resign from this position in 1833 when he suffered a stroke while conducting, ironically, Mozart's Requiem.

Ron Klemm (22:41)

Why are we laughing? That's terrible.

Scott Macdonald (22:46)

Tragedy plus time.

A. Dennis Sparger (22:47)

Yeah, exactly. And like others, Eibler had been at Mozart's side in the final weeks and helped care for him. So he filled in the instrumental parts from the Dies Irae to the Confutatis, that's a long span, and then composed measures 9 and 10 of the Lacrimosa. But after working on it for several weeks, he returned the score.

Constanze then turned to her third choice, which was Süssmayr, a 25-year-old composer who eventually made his mark in German Singspiele, which is kind of like musical comedy today. He removed all the contributions of both of these guys and then completed all the unfinished movements. He even claimed to personally have composed the Sanctus Benedictus and Agnus Dei, but Constanze reported years later that she provided him with some of Mozart's sketches.

Ron Klemm (23:36)

Oh, what a wise woman.

Scott Macdonald (23:38)

So how much can you speak to the actual, the physical process? You know, you mentioned returning the score. Was this something where they were handed, you know, the actual folio and were given to write in the notes and literally hand the same score back?

A. Dennis Sparger (23:54)

And this is how scholars in more recent times have been able to go back and analyze the handwriting and the ink and determine who was doing what.

Ron Klemm (24:05)

AI will never replace Mozart. But I am looking to the day when I'll bet you that someone will plug in all of Mozart's work and all of his, you know, his style and all of that type of thing and leave out these other guys that finished it.

And then we're going to have another version by anonymous.

A. Dennis Sparger (24:29)

Well, there have been more than 30 completions to the work.

Ron Klemm (24:33)

Well, The Bach Society has sung at least three, maybe four.

A. Dennis Sparger (24:36)

Someone has to do it. And quite often composers who are quite good at this still don't quite match what Mozart would have done.

Ron Klemm (24:45)

Sure.

Scott Macdonald (24:45)

I want to take a step back here and take a look about the context in which the Requiem was written. Obviously, it was written on behalf of this mysterious commissioner who was commissioning it out of tribute to his late wife.

But we can't ignore that this was in 1791. This was a religious work being written by one of the top composers of the day in Vienna, not a particularly religious city, but the center of the aristocracy, of at least of the region during the French Revolution, when both the notions of religiosity and aristocracy were, if not crumbling, radically unquestioned. Yes.

A. Dennis Sparger (25:28)

Yeah.

Scott Macdonald (25:28)

What would it have meant for one of the leading composers of Vienna to compose a monumental Requiem in 1791?

A. Dennis Sparger (25:37)

An amazing event. And of course, that work went on to be performed a lot. For Mozart, it was very important, I think, because it reaffirmed his religious convictions as a Roman Catholic.

He was closer to God than what we may think, especially if you've seen the film Amadeus, and you notice the kind of personality that was portrayed there, which may have been a little overboard. Mozart did write to his father saying, God is ever before my eyes. I realize his omnipotence, and I fear his anger, but I also recognize his love, his compassion, and his tenderness toward his creatures.

Now, as you listen to the Requiem, you'll probably notice a sense of anxiety in the work, as Mozart wrestles with these concepts of life and death, of heaven and hell. But all of this kind of comes together with his personal feelings about it all.

Ron Klemm (26:44)

You have had much experience with this work.

I lost track. It was like eight or nine or 10 times that you've done this. What have you learned?

A. Dennis Sparger (26:56)

What I learned with every performance, prepare. I find it's always very important to go back and study a work from the beginning, to not take anything for granted that you think you know what you're doing, but to restudy it, dig in for something a little deeper, look for something you missed the last time.

Ron Klemm (27:18)

But you wouldn't repeat a work, well, of course, 40 years, I guess, but every three or four years, as you have done with the Mozart Requiem, unless it meant something to you personally.

A. Dennis Sparger (27:28)

Oh, yes. It's a profound work. It just reaches, I think, into you so well.

I could say something about the first time I performed it. Well, I didn't perform it. I prepared it.

When I was a senior in college, our choral director was on sabbatical. So a substitute was brought in for the year. And as it turned out, he was not doing such a good job with the concert choir.

So eventually, he took out the very top singers for a little chamber choir. And then he said, Sparger, teach the rest of the people the Mozart Requiem. So I had all of these rehearsals to kind of teach it from the beginning.

And so that was my first experience.

Ron Klemm (28:08)

Baptism by fire?

A. Dennis Sparger (28:10)

By fire, yes.

And then, of course, in 1963, with the assassination of President Kennedy, the Mozart Requiem was the memorial work that was performed. And so many of us of that vintage remember sitting and watching that service on television and hearing Bernstein conduct that.

Ron Klemm (28:30)

Very moving.

A. Dennis Sparger (28:3)

So when I founded the Masterworks Chorale in 1974, three years later, we were performing the Mozart Requiem. I performed it again and again. So this will be like my 10th or 11th time in doing it. It's just an amazing piece.

Ron Klemm (28:46)

Speaking of moving performances, I don't think there's any question that The Bach Society's inaugural concert of the 85th anniversary season will indeed be a moving event. And I want to get into that right around the corner.

So stick around and we'll do that. That's music director A. Dennis Sparger of The Bach Society of Saint Louis, along with Scott MacDonald. I'm Ron Klemm. This is Bach Talk. In contrast to the Mozart Requiem, which you have done, what, pushing a dozen times, I looked at the repertoire list for The Bach Society of Saint Louis since, I don't know, since The Bach Society started doing something other than Bach back in Heyne's day. And I found the Schubert Mass in G, which you have programmed on the initial concert for this season, I found it exactly once.

A. Dennis Sparger (30:04)

Yes.

Ron Klemm (30:05)

Am I right?

A. Dennis Sparger (30:05)

Yes. I remember that performance.

Ron Klemm (30:07)

Okay.

That shocked me, surprised me anyway, because it's just such an elegant work. And maybe it's just understated.

A. Dennis Sparger (30:16)

Lovely work, understated.

Ron Klemm (30:17)

Is that it?

A. Dennis Sparger (30:17)

Yeah, sure.

Ron Klemm (30:18)

You wanted to dust it off again or what?

A. Dennis Sparger (30:20)

Well, this work was selected because I had originally planned on doing Mozart's Mass in C minor.

Ron Klemm (30:26)

That's right.

A. Dennis Sparger (30:27)

And in the Mass in C minor, oddly it scored for two sopranos, no alto, tenor and bass. But because the Mass in C minor, like the Requiem, was never finished, and again, there was no financial support for it, so that's why Mozart didn't come back to it, that he has very little for the tenor and even less for the bass.

So I thought, I wanted to find a work for the other half of the concert that would complement the drama, the intensity, the richness of the Mozart with a work that's a little bit lighter in scope. They would also provide a little more work for the tenor and bass.

Ron Klemm (31:07)

Well, yes, we want to hear them if they're going to show up. Yeah.

A. Dennis Sparger (31:09)

So I thought the Schubert might be the work that would balance. And as we found that we were going to replace the Mass in C minor with the Requiem, the decision still held very well that the Schubert indeed was a nice balance for that composition.

Another thing I've kind of learned, and it took me a long time to learn this, is that one should as much as possible make friends with the audience. That if you can begin a program with something that's easier on the ear, something that the audience feels in tune with right away, then they're willing to go wherever you want to go on the second half and they'll stay with you.

Ron Klemm (31:50)

This is the work, correct me, which you do often, but correct me if I'm wrong, this is work of a teenager, isn't it?

A. Dennis Sparger (31:59)

18 years old.

Ron Klemm (32:02)

Unbelievable. How is that even possible?

A. Dennis Sparger (32:05)

Well, because some of our great composers just had it right from the beginning. As you know, Bach was into his 20s before he was really composing.

He spent all of his youth gathering all of this information and putting it all into his head and then out it began to flow. But people like Mozart and Schubert and Mendelssohn, they just get into it right away. Schubert wrote over a thousand pieces.

In the year that he wrote this mass in G, he wrote 200 works in that one year. It's really something. But there's another reason for keeping the Schubert in this concert, and that is this concert will be in memory of our accompanist, Sandra Geary.

Ron Klemm (32:52)

And I wanted to make that turn because that's why you chose the Mozart Requiem as well.

A. Dennis Sparger (32:57)

Yes. But I thought the Schubert Mass is a reflection of the qualities that we most admired in her.

Ron Klemm (33:06)

Isn't that right?

A. Dennis Sparger (33:06)

Grace, charm, elegance, balance, understatement. She preferred to not be in the limelight, but to support others.

And this little mass also is, I think, content to stay in the background. I think it's content to be the smaller half of a big program with Mozart as the featured artist.

Ron Klemm (33:30)

We could talk for a long time about Sandra Geary and what she meant to the Bach Society for 32 years.

I still remember those first rehearsals and thinking right away, oh, we've got something here. And there's a special skill set for that. Part of it is reading your mind.

But she was indeed someone who was a helper, as she said. Someone who would help the organization not try to lead it in any way. But there were those few times when you chose a particular piece specifically to put a spotlight on her.

And I was so glad that you did that. One of those we're going to do again, this first concert.

A. Dennis Sparger (34:20)

In 2001, the Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo wrote a setting of the Ubi Caritas, where there is love and charity. There is God.

Ron Klemm (34:30)

There is God.

A. Dennis Sparger (34:32)

And we did that a cappella piece. And it's just beautiful. About 10 years later, the composer was rehearsing at one of the college choirs in America. And he just sat at the piano and just started playing, and then cued them to sing.

And then he would cue them to stop singing. And he would continue improvising and then cue them back in. And fortunately, I think someone was recording it.

So he was able to transcribe it and then publish the piano part. And it extends that work to a little more than double its length. But it's just lovely.

And of course, it was perfect for Sandra, because she played so expressively, so musically. More than just playing the notes, there was real music every time she sat at the piano.

Ron Klemm (35:57)

We have had a chance and are still grieving, of course, but we've had our opportunities to do that. The audience has not.

A. Dennis Sparger (36:04)

Yes.

Ron Klemm (36:04)

And so I'm so glad that and we looked for quite a while for a special hymn that we could use for the audience to participate. And of course, we found the most famous Irish hymn of all. And we look for arrangements for it.

And then you said those dreaded words to me. Well, you know, we could always write our own arrangement. And so the audience is going to be able to sing Be Thou My Vision with the choir and it'll be and the orchestra and the orchestra will be a very, very special.

I think special moment.

A. Dennis Sparger (36:40)

Yeah.

Ron Klemm (36:41)

What else do you want to accomplish in year 40?

A. Dennis Sparger (36:45)

Just to spend time with the people I love so much and making the music I love so much.

Ron Klemm (36:52)

And getting to Powell Hall again for the first time in a while.

A. Dennis Sparger (36:56)

Yes. You know, our the last two years while while Powell Hall has been undergoing all of this redevelopment, that's just turning out so beautifully. We were able to have our Christmas concerts at the 560 Music Center at Washington University. And and the concerts went very well there.

And our audience was very gracious to show up and we sold out all the performances there.

Ron Klemm (37:20)

But it's not the same.

A. Dennis Sparger (37:22)

But it's not the same. Yeah.

Ron Klemm (37:23)

And and it's so great to be back in Powell.

A. Dennis Sparger (37:26)

Yes. Yeah. I'm already thinking about now how do we work the candlelight procession?

Ron Klemm (37:30)

Oh, yes. You are. Well, you do pretty well on that side of the table. Well done. Don't you think, Scott?

Scott Macdonald (37:39)

Oh, I agree. It made my job very easy.

A. Dennis Sparger (37:42)

So you might keep me for year 41.

Ron Klemm (37:44)

We'll see. We'll see. The jury is still out. That's Bach Society music director and conductor A. Dennis Sparger along with Scott MacDonald. I'm Ron Klemm.

This is Bach Talk. More music from Mozart's Requiem in the Beyer edition from a concert in 2019 by The Bach Society of Saint Louis. Musical portions today featured selections from concert performances by The Bach Society of Saint Louis Chorus and Orchestra, Dennis Sparger, music director and conductor, as well as longtime Bach Society accompanist Sandra Geary. Our recording engineer is Paul Henrich.

Scott Macdonald (38:53)

And special thanks to Dennis for being our guest and host today. Bach Talk would like to hear from you. If you don't mind, we'd appreciate it if you would take a moment to rate and review our podcast on your favorite platform.

Wherever you listen, your feedback helps us reach more listeners, tell our story, and keep the conversation going. If you have comments, questions, or suggestions about Bach Talk for our team or for any of our guests, we'd love to hear them. You can fill out the quick and easy comment form on our website at bachsociety.org/bach-talk or send us an email directly at bachtalk@bachsociety.org.

Additional assistance was provided by Andie Murphy and Charissa Marciniak of Right Relations. With Ron Klemm, I'm Scott MacDonald. Bach Talk is a registered trademark of The Bach Society of Saint Louis.

About Episode 24

From calling Aaron Copland on a whim to commissioning works for James Earl Jones, Philip Brunelle’s career is marked by bold ideas, fearless curiosity, and a lifelong commitment to music. Host Ron Klemm and Bach Society's Music Director and Conductor A. Dennis Sparger sit down with the legendary founder of VocalEssence; one of the world's premier choral organizations based in Minneapolis, MN. A member of the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame, Philip shares stories from six decades on the podium, his belief in trust between singers and leaders, and how curiosity continues to drive his work today.

Music Featured in This Episode:

1. William Grant Still – “Swanee (sic) River” from Old Folks at Home
Ensemble Singers of the Plymouth Music Series/Philip Brunelle
From Collins Classics CD 14542 “Witness” Volume II

2. Aaron Copland – “In the Beginning” VocalEssence Ensemble Singers/Philip Brunelle
From a 2018 concert recording

3. Stephen Paulus – “The Day Is Done;”
VocalEssence Ensemble Singers/Philip Brunelle
From a 2019 concert recording

4. Egil Hovland – “Evening Prayer", words by Karin Boye
VocalEssence Ensemble Singers/Philip Brunelle
From a 2018 concert recording

Transcription

(00:00) Ron Klemm
This is Bach Talk.

(00:14) Philip Brunelle
Trust. It's the same as, you know, as Dennis knows.

(00:17) A. Dennis Sparger
Sure.

(00:17) Philip Brunelle
With choirs.

(00:17) Ron Klemm
Sure.

(00:18) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes.

(00:18) Philip Brunelle
You know, learning what you're gonna do, that you trust your singers and they trust you.

(00:23) A. Dennis Sparger
That makes sense.

(00:23) Philip Brunelle
Yeah. I mean, one of the things when I started VocalEssence, I had no idea how do you create a board? How do you raise money? I didn't know any of making that happen.

(00:33) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(00:33) Philip Brunelle
But I figured it out. We make it.

(00:36) A. Dennis Sparger
Yeah, we make it work.

(00:36) Philip Brunelle
But it's not by hoping it will happen. You have to work hard to make it happen, and you have to know that people believe in what you're doing.

To me, it was all about what we will do is top quality.

That everybody will come to a concert many times not knowing the repertoire we're going to do, and they'll go, well, we don't know what we're going to hear, but we know it will be well done. And that's the most important thing.

(01:41) Ron Klemm
That's the voice of Philip Brunellee, along with the ensemble singers of the former Plymouth Music Series of Minneapolis. We know them now as VocalEssence more about Philip in a moment you are hearing an arrangement of an old Stephen Foster folk song by William Grant Still. It's from an early recording in a series called Simply Witness, part of an Ongoing Commitment by Philip and VocalEssence to the music of African American composers. But that barely scratches the surface of all that they do.

Hello and welcome to Bach Talk. I'm Ron Klemm. This past June, we shared a live episode of Bach Talk. That is to say an episode that took place in front of a live audience as part of the 2025 Chorus America Conference here in St. Louis. As you may recall, internationally acclaimed conductor Leonard Slatkin was our special guest, and if you missed it be sure to go back and listen. During that conference, over the span of several days, we at The Bach Society of Saint Louis had the wonderful and unique opportunity to talk to over a dozen prominent figures in the field of choral music in the coming months. We hope to share some of those conversations with you beginning today.

Perhaps the grand patriarch at the conference rivaled only by our own music director and conductor Dennis Sparger was Philip Brunelle, a member of the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame. Philip is one of the most highly respected conductors in America. He has worked tirelessly for well over six decades, sharing the joy of exploring and experiencing music of every style imaginable.

It was a joy too for Dennis and I to sit down with Philip in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency at the Arch here in St. Louis during the Chorus America Conference a few weeks ago. And as you're about to hear, his reputation as a visionary is well deserved.

It is an honor to have Philip Brunelle with us. Uh, I'm alongside Dennis Sparger, music Director of the Bach Society of Saint Louis.

(04:04) A. Dennis Sparger
And is there even a stronger word than honor.

(04:06) Ron Klemm
An amazing, uh, gentleman with a, a, a tremendous, uh, pedigree and all of that. But let's talk Philip Brunelle about your life. You, you are now still conducting the, uh, group called VocalEssence up in Minneapolis, and you began that group when?

(04:23) Philip Brunelle
56 years ago. I began VocalEssence. I knew that the Twin Cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul, they didn't have any choral organization beyond the groups that did the traditional pieces, and that was great. But who was gonna do all this other music that was out there? So I, which is typical of me, picked up the phone because my motto is, you don't know if you don't ask.

So I picked up the phone and called this guy named Aaron Copeland and said, Mr. Copeland, would you come to Minneapolis and conduct your choral music? And he said, young man. No one has ever asked me to do that. Tell me the date I'll be there.

(05:09) Ron Klemm
That is a story. I read that, and that shocked me that no one asked him to do because his choral music is wonderful.

(05:15) Philip Brunelle
It's wonderful.

(05:16) Ron Klemm
Yeah, yeah,

(05:17) Philip Brunelle
Yeah. And so we had a, and so we became lifelong friends. We later recorded his opera, The Tender Land, which won awards and I mean. Yeah, no, Aaron was a delightful, wonderful man. So it was the same thing, you know, some years later I needed a narrator for a piece that I wanted to commission for narrator and orchestra. And I thought, whose voice do I want? And I thought, you know, I think James Earl Jones would be the right voice. Um. Hmm. I better call.

(05:52) Ron Klemm
So, because what's he gonna say, yes or no, right?

(05:55) Philip Brunelle
Well, and I got his number and I called him and I said, I would like to commission a piece for narrator and orchestra for you. And he went "for me? No one's ever commissioned a piece for me." And he said, "I'm honored and of course I'll do it." And we went from there. We became dear friends. Yeah.

(06:18) A. Dennis Sparger
How terrific.

(06:19) Philip Brunelle
We'll just do it.

(06:20) Ron Klemm
I'll hand you my number when we're done, and if you need a narrator, you just call me.

(06:24) Philip Brunelle
Gotcha. Gotcha. Ron.

(06:25) Ron Klemm
But I, let's start with Aaron Copeland. What, describe him in a few words. What was, what was he like?

(06:34) Philip Brunelle
He was so friendly. He was so, um, I mean, so easy to be with. He, he would get in front of the choir and say, you know, I'm not really a conductor. Um, but you know, I love what I've composed and I hope we can do some music together. I mean, it was very wonderful, humble, very lovely man.

All the way. He was great and uh, and he wasn't a good conductor, you know? But I will tell you, he knew what he wanted.

(07:11) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(07:11) Ron Klemm
Well, that's right. Yes.

(07:11) Philip Brunelle
And he would describe, and so you'd be singing, I remember we were singing At the River, and we sang what was on the page and he went, no, I know that's what's on the page, but that's not quite what I really wanted it to be.

(07:27) Ron Klemm
Mm-hmm.

(07:28) Philip Brunelle
Yeah. So let's kind of work. And so each piece we would kind of work through what it was that he was looking for, and uh, he was, yeah, he was absolutely a gem to work with and the choir, of course, loved him.

(07:43) A. Dennis Sparger
Oh, that's terrific.

(07:43) Philip Brunelle
And they were poured, they just poured themselves out for him because of what he did.

(07:48) A. Dennis Sparger
Sure.

(07:48) Philip Brunelle
Yeah. Great.

(07:49) Ron Klemm
Yeah. You, you really, uh, touched on something that's a whole other episode of this podcast, and that is lifting the music off the page.

(07:58) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(07:58) Ron Klemm
Isn't that what our job is?

(08:00) Philip Brunelle
It is.

(08:01) Ron Klemm
And, and how, how do you approach that? What's, what's the key?

(08:06) Philip Brunelle
Well, first of all, every piece and every composer is different.

(08:10) Ron Klemm
Yeah.

(08:11) Philip Brunelle
It's not gonna be the same thing with each one.

(08:15) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(08:15) Philip Brunelle
And you have to kind of like. What is the pieces feeling? What was the composer trying to do with this piece? How can we achieve that idea? Uh, because indeed rhythms are just an approximation.

(08:33) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes.

(08:34) Philip Brunelle
Of what the composer was looking for. Yes. It may show dotted eighth, 16th, dt, dt, dt, but you know, that may not be quite what they wanted.

(08:46) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(08:46) Philip Brunelle
Maybe they wanted it to be triplets and they, you know, who knows who, but the fact is. Each piece rhythmically and just in terms of its spirit and its phrasing, you have to take them individually

(08:59) A. Dennis Sparger
Sure.

(08:59) Philip Brunelle
And try to make them your own.

(09:01) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(09:01) Philip Brunelle
Because you need to be able to share that with the chorus.

(09:07) Ron Klemm
Mm-hmm. I find so often that people who work in the choral music industry have their roots in the church and in church music. What's it been for you?

(09:22) Philip Brunelle
Well, let's put it this way, if your father was a minister, it started with you as a "PK" Preacher's kid. So it started, it started with me as a boy soprano.

And my calling card was a song called The Holy City, which I sang forever as a boy soprano, won contests, singing that and did it all. Oh no. Nursing homes, churches, conventions. Oh, we want little Philip to come and sing the Holy City. Yes, which I did. Oh yes. And then years later, when I mentioned this to a friend.

She dug in the Minnesota radio station, WCCO in their archives, found the recording of where I had won this contest singing. And so now she put it out there that people could hear little Philip Brunelle, age eight singing the Holy City. So, yeah. It's there.

(10:30) A. Dennis Sparger
Did you bring a copy of that along with you today?

(10:32) Philip Brunelle
You know, I didn't. Oh, I didn't, but you know, Dennis, you can find it.

(10:36) A. Dennis Sparger
We can find it.

(10:36) Philip Brunelle
If you really want it.

(10:37) Ron Klemm
Yeah. And he could accompany you on the accordion too, if you really would.

(10:41) A. Dennis Sparger
I had a similar background, but my, my training was to accompany my mother who did the singing.

(10:45) Philip Brunelle
Ah, okay. Well, my mother was my accompanist, so oh, yes. Yeah, absolutely.

(10:51) Ron Klemm
But you also, uh, early on, uh, became an organist, uh, and, and, and an instrumentalist. Tell us a little bit about your instrumental background.

(10:59) Philip Brunelle
Well, I started with, I started, uh, I didn't start piano lessons till I was four

(11:05) Ron Klemm
Uhhuh. Oh, wow. That's a, that's, that's a little old, isn't it?

(11:08) Philip Brunelle
I kind of waited. Yeah. Right. So I did that. But then our family knew this friend who was, uh, a missionary in Ecuador. And he would come up occasionally and he played the marimba. And I thought, oh, I should learn to play the marimba. So I did. And uh, so I did, but then I was told, oh, you should learn to play the organ. So I was 12 when I started lessons on the organ.

And so I just, you know, sort of kept all that going. Um, plus just loving everything about singing and uh, um, early on had this fascination with Handel. So I thought, well, you know, there's gotta be more things than just Messiah. And so I started looking at all of his oratorios and was fascinated. So when I started VocalEssence, we began by doing a Handel Oratorio every year, but we never did Messiah.

Because everybody else was doing that. So we did all, we did all these others, and it was amazing. And I also realized that they were kind of lengthy and audiences were saying, couldn't you make cuts? And so I went, oh. And then I found out that Handel made cuts.

(12:25) Ron Klemm
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

(12:26) Philip Brunelle
And didn't do the whole thing.

So I realized I didn't have to do three hour oratorios. I could do one and a half or two hour oratorios. And start, and it was like, oh, you learn programming lessons.

(12:41) Ron Klemm
Yeah.

(12:41) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(12:41) Ron Klemm
The key there of course is not to, uh, mess up the story too bad.

(12:45) Philip Brunelle
No, no, no, no, no, no. But there's always in those, a lot of arias that are just simply, uh, adding an emotion to the moment.

(12:53) A. Dennis Sparger
Sure.

(12:54) Philip Brunelle
Yeah.

(12:54) Ron Klemm
How does VocalEssence, the group that you're, uh, in charge of these days. How does it?

(13:00) Philip Brunelle
You mean that I founded.

(13:02) Ron Klemm
That you, that you founded? Didn't we talk about that?

(13:04) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes.

(13:04) Ron Klemm
Okay. Talk about the founding of VocalEssence. Alright, there you go.

(13:09) Philip Brunelle
Well, I was appointed the organist director at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis and when that happened I got thinking about, 'cause I've lived in the Twin Cities forever and I got thinking about, you know, there should be a choral group in town that would focus on music besides the 10 or 12 war horses which people were doing. And so that got me thinking about it. I went to the minister at the church and said, do you think outside of the church we could start a choral series?

And he was wonderful and said, do what you need to do. And so many of the church choir participated, but also people in the community got involved in this. It started as a, um, a, a volunteer organization and then over the years it created, um, more parts to it. I now, uh, here we are 56 years later. Uh, we started a professional chorus of 32 singers.

Uh, and then 10 years ago I thought we needed to start a youth choir that looked like the Twin Cities, not just a youth choir, but I didn't want it to be quotas and so I have a wonderful associate conductor. Uh, and so he took the idea and went into every high school in the Twin Cities and said to the kids, now if you'll come and talk to me about being in a new choir, uh, I'll give you a water bottle. So he gave away about 400 water bottles and

(14:56) Ron Klemm
Incentives are everything,

(14:57) A. Dennis Sparger
I guess it was. Yeah.

(14:58) Philip Brunelle
You know, and he also said to them, I, you know, the audition was to take their phone and sing something to him.

(15:06) A. Dennis Sparger
Aha.

(15:07) Philip Brunelle
And that was the audition.

(15:08) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(15:08) Philip Brunelle
Anyway, we have this group. It's, as I said, not about quotas. It's about can you, uh, are you interested in being in a choir?

And so if you looked at this group now of 40 singers, and of course obviously they're high schools, so it changes every year, but if you looked at it, you'd go. Oh, that looks like the Twin Cities. It sort of represents everybody. It's a mixture of all of those groups come together. And obviously after the first year, those folks tell their friends.

(15:40) Ron Klemm
Yep, yep.

(15:40) A. Dennis Sparger
Sure.

(15:40) Philip Brunelle
And then their friends. And so you get this whole group. And then the fourth group that we started about, uh, maybe, let's see, it's been 10 years now. Uh, I wanted to do something among the retirement homes in the Twin Cities to get older people singing and continuing to sing. And I thought, well, you don't wanna call them old people's choirs. So we've now called them Vintage Voices.

(16:08) Ron Klemm
I love it.

(16:09) A. Dennis Sparger
Perfect. Yeah.

(16:09) Philip Brunelle
They love it.

(16:10) Ron Klemm
Yeah.

(16:11) Philip Brunelle
And so we are in three different, uh, places in the Twin Cities where people can come and they do concerts and sing, and it's been absolutely great. So we have Vintage Voices. The, the youth choir, we asked them to create their name the first year and they decided to take the last four letters of Minnesota SOTA.

(16:34) Ron Klemm
Yeah.

(16:35) Philip Brunelle
And call themselves "Singers of This Age."

(16:39) Ron Klemm
How about that?

(16:40) Philip Brunelle
And so we,

(16:41) Ron Klemm
that's a creative bunch.

(16:42) Philip Brunelle
So we have SOTA. Yeah, they're great. And so that, and then we have the ensemble singers, which is the professional group. And then we have a chorus, a volunteer chorus of 120.

(16:53) Ron Klemm
Wow. Wow. And then with the 120, you do big things. With orchestra?

(16:59) Philip Brunelle
Some with orchestra, some acapella. But you know, it could be, it could be acapella, things that they needed to do. And each year, maybe a different theme and we work together. Yeah.

(17:09) A. Dennis Sparger
And do you find spaces for 120 voices to perform in?

(17:13) Philip Brunelle
Yeah. Well we do. We find, we find some, uh, either in schools or churches find for them to work. It's been great.

(17:50) Ron Klemm
From their 50th anniversary concert in 2018, the VocalEssence Ensemble singers led by Philip Brunelle with just the final portion of, in the beginning by Aaron Copeland. More of our conversation with Philip Brunelle at the 2025 Conference of Chorus America in just a moment with Bach Society Music Director Dennis Sparger.

I'm Ron Klemm, and this is Bach Talk.

I wanna talk a little bit about your work in opera, because you've spent some time with the Minnesota Opera for actually some length of time. Do you still work with the Minnesota Opera at all?

(18:33) Philip Brunelle
No, I worked with them for 17 years.

(18:35) Ron Klemm
Right.

(18:36) Philip Brunelle
I mean, when I was at the University of Minnesota, I was a, a piano and percussion major.

And my second year at the university, I was asked to come and play a concert with Minnesota Orchestra. So I did, and the third year I was there, they said, we want you to become a full-time member. So then it was, okay, I need to keep going to school, but I need to be in the orchestra full time, which I did. So I played in the orchestra for five years.

(19:12) Ron Klemm
Starting when you were how old?

(19:15) Philip Brunelle
20.

(19:16) Ron Klemm
Wow.

(19:17) Philip Brunelle
Yeah. 20.

(19:18) A. Dennis Sparge
rSounds like twentyish.

(19:19) Philip Brunelle
Yeah, it was 20. yeah. Did that. And then, um, after five years, uh, one summer I had this wonderful opportunity. I got a call, would I come for a opera training program at the Metropolitan Opera, and, uh, I thought this would be great.

So I did. It was going through tons of operas, uh, with George Schick, who was the number two conductor at The Met and, uh, Schick, he was a great guy. And so I did that. I came back and Minnesota Opera called and said, we'd like you to become the music director. So this was in the early days, starting VocalEssence, and I was at the church, but I said yes.

So for 17 years, I was the music director at Minnesota Opera, and then as VocalEssence just got bigger and bigger, I realized I couldn't do this. So then I just quit the opera and I've been back twice to conduct something for them. But, uh, yep, that, and I've done guest conducting of operas. I've done some in Sweden, did one in South Africa, other places in the USA. So, so I've kept that part of it. And obviously also at VocalEssence, we've occasionally done, uh, concert versions of operas that I, if, if, if they had a major choral part. It wasn't gonna be an opera just to show some solos.

(20:53) Ron Klemm
Yeah, no, no, I understand.

(20:54) Philip Brunelle
But if it had a wonderful choral part, Ooh, why don't we do that?

(20:58) Ron Klemm
There you go.

(20:59) Philip Brunelle
You know, and we did, yeah.

(21:01) Ron Klemm
Uh, touring. It appears that the VocalEssence has done a little bit of touring around the world. At least you hinted at that. Tell us about that.

(21:09) Philip Brunelle
Well, the next one coming up. Uh, the ensemble singers, the 32.

(21:14) Ron Klemm
Yeah.

(21:14) Philip Brunelle
Will be in England. The last week of July. They've been invited to sing at The Three Choirs Festival, which is like the big deal.

(21:27) Ron Klemm
Yes, it is.

(21:27) Philip Brunelle
In England.

(21:28) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(21:28) Philip Brunelle
And we are the third American choir in their history.

(21:33) Ron Klemm
Really?

(21:33) Philip Brunelle
To, in, to be invited. So we will do a concert there. We will do an even song at Westminster Abbey. We will do a concert in the Abbey at Bath and we will do a broadcast, uh, a video broadcast, uh, of Christmas music for the BBC.

(21:55) A. Dennis Sparger
Oh, wonderful.

(21:56) Philip Brunelle
Yeah.

(21:56) A. Dennis Sparger
Wonderful trip.

(21:57) Philip Brunelle
Yep. Yeah, so they will be, it will be great to have these things. I've also arranged for, you know, like a lunch one day for them to have lunch with John Rutter and then another lunch with uh, Bob Chilcott and uh, you know, so there's been some nice little things that will happen around the way.

(22:17) Ron Klemm
Touring though, can't be the first focus of the, of the group?

(22:20) Philip Brunelle
No.

(22:21) Ron Klemm
No. It's about building this audience as you, as you said. And uh,

(22:25) Philip Brunelle
It is. Except, you know, when you get a call from three choirs, you go, maybe we could come.

(22:30) A. Dennis Sparger
Maybe we could come,

(22:31) Ron Klemm
figure out a way.

(22:31) Philip Brunelle
Maybe we can work this out.

(22:32) Ron Klemm
Yep. Figure out a way.

(22:33) Philip Brunelle
But, also your home audience loves the fact that there are people interested in hearing you in another country.

(22:42) A. Dennis Sparger
Somewhere else, yes.

(22:42) Philip Brunelle
They think, oh, that's kind of wonderful to have happen.

(22:46) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(22:46) Philip Brunelle
We've also, several times toured to Mexico and done programs down in Mexico City, uh, and in that area and a couple of times to Asia. We were with the World Choral Symposium over there in Korea and sang, and another trip was in China and Japan.

(23:11) Ron Klemm
Wow.

(23:11) Philip Brunelle
So, yeah. So there's been, you know, things there. So yeah. The problem with all those, of course it's called expense.

(23:17) Ron Klemm
Well, it's very expensive.

(23:19) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes.

(23:19) Ron Klemm
Do what, what repertoire do you take to, uh to, to represent, uh, the Midwest to, uh, other lands. What, what do you look to do with that?

(23:31) Philip Brunelle
Depending on the event or the country? Mostly I take American music.

(23:38) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(23:39) Philip Brunelle
Um, when you go to Europe, the only composers they've ever heard of, unfortunately are Bernstein and Copeland. And so, you know, and I go, that's fine and we can do that.

(23:52) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(23:52) Philip Brunelle
But we've got lots of other composers. Uh, and the same thing would be true when we have gone to Asia.

(24:00) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(24:00) Philip Brunelle
And, but they love to know that we could do arrangements of spirituals

(24:05) Ron Klemm
For sure. Spirituals. I was gonna ask about that.

(24:07) Philip Brunelle
Oh yes. They want, but they also are interested if you can do folk songs. I mean, the only folk song I think they know is Shenandoah. You know, and I'm going like, it's beautiful, but you know what? We have others, you know? So, you know, there's you, it's kind of a feeling of broadening. What is out there in terms of repertoire and what you can do. But basically I would try to do American music always, including some Minnesota composers. Because we have a number of them, whether it's Dominick Argento or Libby Larsen or Stephen Paulus. I mean, there's a number of them that you know we could do. So I've always included some of that.

(25:23) Ron Klemm
Once again, we are hearing the VocalEssence ensemble singers in concert led by their founder and conductor, Philip Brunelle. This is "The Day is Done" by Minnesota composer, Stephen Paulus. Let's listen to just a little more.

More from Philip Brunelle in just a moment, including his thoughts on the long-running radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. Our conversation took place at the 2025 Conference of Chorus America in St. Louis, along with Bach Society Music Director Dennis Sparger. I am Ron Klemm, and this is Bach Talk.

I wanna know about Garrison Keillor.

(27:09) Philip Brunelle
Okay.

(27:10) Ron Klemm
Talk to me about this guy and you. Now let's, let's set the record straight. He was on the air for a long, long time, but you led a choir for his very first broadcast. Am I right?

(27:25) Philip Brunelle
I was on the first broadcast.

(27:27) Ron Klemm
Oh, okay.

(27:27) Philip Brunelle
But there wasn't a choir on the broadcast.

(27:29) Ron Klemm
Oh, okay.

(27:30) Philip Brunelle
He had called me, he was at the university as a student. I didn't know him and he didn't know me. Mm-hmm. But he called and said, um, say I'm gonna start this radio broadcast and I need somebody who knows classical music and hymns. And I said, yeah, that's me. And he said, do you really know hymns? And I said, Garrison, every hymn, you know, I know the question will be, who knows more verses and the answer is me. Which was true, was true.

(28:09) Ron Klemm
Of course it was true.

(28:09) Philip Brunelle
Anyway, so he invi, he asked me to come on the show. So I was on the first show. It was, you know, a veryintimate little thing of a couple people. We did the show and I stayed around for a couple of months doing it, and I then realized I just didn't have time.

Because it was going to evolve and I could see that he needed in a hurry. Yeah. In a big hurry. And I couldn't do that. So then I said, you know, Garrison, why don't you invite my friend Butch Thompson?

(28:42) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(28:42) Philip Brunelle
To come on and he could be your music guy, because Butch was fantastic. Yeah. And, and, and, and he did, and Butch became the next guy on the show. Then some years later, he started thinking about having a chorus come on and he called me

(29:00) Ron Klemm
Yeah, once in a while. Yeah.

(29:02) Philip Brunell
eAnd then we, we would go on like once a month or once every six weeks. And the secret with Garrison was, I mean, he'd, you could either bring some ideas of repertoire that you could propose, uh, he didn't want it too high faluten, you know? No. Yeah. But that's okay. We, we did, but, but he liked classical music. Oh, yeah. So it wasn't that. No, we did, but it was more, uh, also, uh, that he wanted to write lyrics to songs and then have us perform them, and they would be hilarious lyrics and all that.

And it would all be done at the last second. You never, some of it you might get a day before, but you know. And so

(29:49) Ron Klemm
The music or the lyrics or both?

(29:52) Philip Brunelle
Both. Both.

(29:52) Ron Klemm
Oh, for crying out loud, goodness.

(29:54) Philip Brunelle
Yeah. But you see, as long as you were flexible and could do it. But at the same time, Garrison and I were good friends and if he handed me something that I thought we couldn't do well.

(30:06) Ron Klemm
Mm-hmm.

(30:06) Philip Brunelle
I would just say, yeah, I don't think we can do this. Let's save it for another time. And he'd go, okay. You know, he didn't like, oh, he wasn't, you know, but at the same time, I knew that if I thought we could do it, then we would, at our quick rehearsal, I'd say, okay, gang, here's what we have. Let's, let's put it together.

And, and, and they would do it. Um, but Garrison was very, uh, he had lots of last minute ideas, which is how he operated. I would also do a, I didn't do a lot, but I did about, oh, I'd say 10 or 15 programs with symphony orchestras with him.

(30:45) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(30:45) Philip Brunelle
And around the country, and you know, that was obviously had to be preset.

(30:50) Ron Klemm
Sure. Mm-hmm.

(30:51) Philip Brunelle
And so you'd get that and you knew the music, but even then he would have written new lyrics to things that showed up at the last moment. Okay, here we go. This was, it was typical. And Garrison and I stay in touch. I don't. I haven't talked to him for the last week, so you know. Right. Well

(31:10) Ron Klemm

You have his number.

(31:11) Philip Brunelle
I do. You can talk. He calls me. I call him. Yeah. He still is all over the country performing. Yeah, he's, but now he's pretty much doing it with just, he's there and he goes with Rich Dworsky as his pianist. He might bring a singer along, but it's just , you know, but he loves doing it small and he's doing it all over, so it's great.

(31:32) A. Dennis Sparge
rWell, he, he still has a strong followers.

(31:35) Philip Brunelle
Oh, my word. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Absolutely. I mean, you know, Garrison is, he's now, uh, 83.

(31:43) Ron Klemm
I'll tell that you just gave that up, but that's alright.

(31:46) Philip Brunelle
No, he'd say it, he'd say it too.

(31:48) Ron Klemm
I know he would.

(31:48) Philip Brunelle
Yeah.

(31:48) Ron Klemm
There are two things I just learned though in the last two minutes about Philip Brunelle, and that is one. You don't mind taking risks because that's what you have to do. Yes. In life, right? You got it Sometimes.

(32:01) Philip Brunelle
Yes.

(32:02) Ron Klemm
And the other thing is the importance of trust, right?

(32:06) Philip Brunelle
Mm-hmm.

(32:06) Ron Klemm
Mm-hmm. If you don't have trust with somebody, it's not gonna work.

(32:09) Philip Brunelle
No. Trust was the big and still is for the, it's the same as, you know, as Dennis knows.

(32:15) A. Dennis Sparger
Sure.

(32:15) Philip Brunelle
With choirs.

(32:16) A. Dennis Sparger
Sure. Yes.

(32:16) Philip Brunelle
You know, learning. How you, what you're gonna do, that you trust your singers and they trust you and make it work.

(32:22) Ron Klemm
And you're a board and your colleagues,

(32:25) A. Dennis Sparger
your soloists, your orchestra, all of us. Makes sense.

(32:28) Philip Brunelle
Yeah. I mean, one of the things when I started VocalEssence, uh, and of course I had no idea how do you create a board?

How do you raise money? I didn't know any of making that happen. Mm-hmm. But I figured it out. And so in 56 years, uh, we have never had a deficit. Uh. But it is not by sitting around. It is by raising money, by talking to people. And you know, I mean, we have a budget now of about two and a half million.

(32:59) Ron Klemm
Wow.

(32:59) Philip Brunelle
And, uh, we make it, yeah. We make it work. It's not by. You are hoping it will happen. You have to work hard to make it happen, and you have to know that people believe in what you're doing.

(33:11) A. Dennis Sparger
Yeah. Yeah. I remember many, many years ago that you changed the name of the organization. Did it take a while for that new name to start sticking with your audience?

(33:21) Philip Brunelle
It did. We changed the name because of course we were at Plymouth Church, so I thought, well, Plymouth Music Series. However, there were two problems over the years. One, one of the big suburbs in town is Plymouth, Minnesota.

(33:36) Ron Klemm
Right.

(33:37) Philip Brunelle
So many people thought our concerts were in Plymouth, Minnesota.

(33:42) Ron Klemm
Geographically confusing right there.

(33:44) Philip Brunelle
Then the other one, when your initials are Plymouth Music Series, PMS.

(33:50) A. Dennis Sparger
Uh huh.

(33:51) Philip Brunelle
Maybe not.

(33:52) Ron Klemm
Yeah.

(33:52) A. Dennis Sparger
Yeah.

(33:53) Philip Brunelle
Maybe someone,

(33:54) Ron Klemm
Someone caught that.

(33:55) Philip Brunelle
Yeah, someone caught that.

(33:56) A. Dennis Sparger
So the name was terrific when you began.

(33:58) Philip Brunelle
Yep.

(33:58) A. Dennis Sparger
Just. Just right.

(33:59) Philip Brunelle
It was right. But this was 15 years later, we realized we've gotta change.

And then I brought a group of, of, um, advertising folks together. Let's think about a name. And we tried a bunch of them. Of course. They said, oh, well we can just call it Philip Brunelles Music series. I said, absolutely not. Because my goal is I'm gonna do this as long as I can, but at the time that I should step down, it's gonna continue.

(34:27) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm.

(34:27) Philip Brunelle
Therefore, I don't want it named after me. 'cause you'd have to change the name again. Yeah. So then we began, and finally somebody said, you know, the essence of what we do is vocal. Why don't we call it VocalEssence? And I went, you got it. And that's how we get the name.

(34:44) A. Dennis Sparger
Mm-hmm. But so is the quality of the organization. This made it work so well.

(34:50) Philip Brunelle
Mm-hmm.

(34:50) A. Dennis Sparger
No matter what you would've called it.

(34:52) Philip Brunelle
Exactly. Exactly. To me, it was all about that. What we will do is top quality. That everybody will come to a concert many times not knowing the repertoire we're going to do, and they'll go, well, we don't know what we're going to hear, but we know it will be well done.

(35:10) A. Dennis Sparger
Oh, that's just incredible.

(35:11) Philip Brunelle
And that's the most important thing to come there. So there's a lot of music we do that is not. Familiar, but people will come and they go, okay, you know, this is probably something I should hear. And here we go, let's see what happens. There'll be other times that it'll be something they know, but it's a real, it's a real kind of interesting mix of putting those together.

(35:31) A. Dennis Sparger
Yeah. And how often does the chorus perform throughout the year?

(35:35) Philip Brunelle
We do six concerts a year and so there's, you know, there's an October. Uh, there's this year coming up, uh, there's the October one. There's the December welcome Christmas program. There's January when John Rutter is gonna be with us.

(35:54) Ron Klemm
Wow.

(35:54) Philip Brunelle
Our February is our witness concert, which focuses on African American music, which we've now done for 35 years.

(36:03) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes.

(36:03) Philip Brunelle
And then there will be several more concerts in the spring that we will do. Mm-hmm. So, yeah. Yeah. Usually six. Yeah.

(36:11) Ron Klemm
You, you clearly are a forward thinking type of guy.

(36:15) Philip Brunelle
Yep.

(36:15) Ron Klemm
But you've also earned the right to reflect.

(36:18) Philip Brunelle
Mm-hmm.

(36:19) Ron Klemm
You've had a lot of time to think about all the things that you've accomplished, and I just wanna reflect, uh, see if you'd reflect on a couple of things. For example, who, who or what shaped Philip Brunelle most?

(36:34) Philip Brunelle
Well, certainly I owe a lot to the encouragement of my mother. My father, as I mentioned, was a minister, but he died when I was in eighth grade and left her with five kids.

(36:49) Ron Klemm
Wow.

(36:50) Philip Brunelle
And uh, it was, I didn't know at the time how poor we were, but we were below the poverty level. I found out later, but. She was, you know, so positive we're gonna make this work. There was never, oh, woe is me. None of that. We just simply moved on. And I, one of the stories I remember hearing later was that when my father died, my piano teacher, who was this phenomenal guy in town, uh, called my mother and said, I know you can't afford lessons anymore.

For Philip, but he can't stop, so if you won't tell him, they will now be free. And so until I finished high school, I would get these classes. I used to wonder, I wonder how she can afford to do this, you know? And then after high school, she told me that Mr. Bergman had said this. And I've tried when I go out to do workshops with young people. I say, you know, you won't find a ton of people that are ultra talented, but you'll find people. Mm-hmm. You need to be able to believe and help these people.

(38:08) Ron Klemm
Yeah.

(38:09) Philip Brunelle
And some way, whatever that is. Yes. And for me, it was my piano teacher helping me to do that. But she was, she was a very positive person.

And so when I think about doing things like saying, well. You don't know if you don't ask.

(38:24) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes.

(38:25) Philip Brunelle
It would be the kind of thing that my mother would've said to me as I continued on in life. I also had a phenomenal high school choral director, um, Harry Opal, who was very well, that we would never have done junk. We would've done good music.

(38:47) Ron Klemm
Right.

(38:47) Philip Brunelle
And he was very, and he was there at Mini Haha Academy for 40 years. And he also, knowing my situation when I started. In ninth grade kind of took me under his wing and kind of steered me, found me the right organ teacher to take lessons from. And I was the accompanist also for the choir.

And he wa he was just a very important figure in my life. So, you know, a few people like that to guide you can make all the difference.

(39:21) A. Dennis Sparger
Certainly.

(39:21) Philip Brunelle
As we all know in how it works. I also, at the church, um. I tried, have tried to encourage, uh, high school kids, you know, hey, if you wanna on Sunday, be my page turner at the organ, do. And I remember one time, oh, this is 20 years ago, uh, I had a young kid who was my page turner and one Sunday he came to me and he said, I suppose you, you don't want me to be your page turner anymore. And I said. Why? And he said, well, you know, I just told my folks that I'm gay. I said, what is that to do with turning pages? Not anything, I know.

(40:07) Ron Klemm
Yeah.

(40:07) Philip Brunelle
You know, and he kind of really, I said, of course not. No, you can, you're, you're my page turner. You know, I mean, it's stuff that, how you , how you you can encourage people, how you do, you know? Yes.

(40:19) A. Dennis Sparger
Support them.

(40:19) Philip Brunelle
Support them, and what you do. Absolutely. Yeah.

(40:24) Ron Klemm
What would you, last question. Okay. I promise I, and I thank you so much for your gracious time. This has been terrific. What would you like to impart on our young people moving forward? What is the life lesson that you wanna pass on?

(40:42) Philip BrunelleI would say that I would say to young people who are interested in music. Um, I want you to be inquisitive.

I want you to just be wondering what's out there, what you know, what music don't I know that I should know of which there is vast amounts. I feel the same. I know lots of music, but I don't know it all. And so I'm always inquisitive. How do you become creative at figuring out the music that's available to us?

And what might it be? Some of it, eh, maybe not. Throw it away, other music. Ooh, this is really good. And I never knew that piece, so I would just encourage young people to just expand their, uh, their reach of what's out there. Um, certainly you can find out titles, but there's so much more that. You don't know about and you think, oh, I never knew this piece.

I never knew that piece. You know, I never heard of that composer. It's okay, but find out about them. So I just encourage young people to be experimental in terms of looking at the repertoire that's out there and what they can do.

(42:03) Ron Klemm
Build trust.

(42:04) Philip Brunelle
Oh, yes,

(42:04) Ron Klemm
I heard that.

(42:05) Philip Brunelle
Yep. Take risks. Take risks. Absolutely. Oh my word.

(42:09) Ron Klemm
And be curious and be, be curious.

(42:12) Philip Brunelle
Absolutely. Be curious.

(42:13) Ron Klemm
That's the most important.

(42:15) Philip Brunelle
Yes. Yep.

(42:16) Ron Klemm
Artistic director, VocalEssence, Philip Brunelle with us at the 2025 Conference of Chorus America with Bach Society Music Director Dennis Sparger. I'm Ron Klemm, and this is Bach Talk.

We're listening to Karin Boye's "Evening Prayer" Set to Music by the Norwegian composer, Egil Hovland, edited by Philip Brunelle who leads the VocalEssence ensemble singers.

Do you enjoy hearing about other choral ensembles besides The Bach Society of Saint Louis? Let us know. Take a moment right now to contact us, just go to Bachsociety.org and click on Bach Talk where you'll find a simple form that you can use to ask your question or leave a comment. If you'd rather interact more, just send us an email, bachtalk@bachsociety.org, we look forward to hearing from you.

The associate producer of Bach talk is Scott MacDonald, promotional and other assistance provided as always by Charissa Marciniak and Andie Murphy of Right Relations. Special thanks today to Dennis Sparger. Of course. And to our esteemed guest, Philip Brunelle

Bach Talk is a registered trademark of The Bach Society of Saint Louis. I'm Ron Klemm.

About Episode 23

Host Ron Klemm is joined by Danielle Feinstein, Assistant Executive Director of The Bach Society of Saint Louis, to kick off season three of Bach Talk with soprano Bethany Worrell. They talk about how teaching and performing go hand in hand and what it means to grow as both an artist and educator. Bethany shares stories from her career, reflections on choosing growth over perfection and why “being an artist is very cool.”

Music Featured in This Episode:

1. Johannes Brahms – “Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit” from Ein Deutsches Requiem, Op. 45
Bethany Worrell, soprano; The Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by A. Dennis Sparger
From a concert on March 22, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church, Kirkwood, Missouri

2. Edvard Grieg – “Lauf der Welt” Op. 48
Bethany Worrell, soprano; Muse Ye, piano
From a recital on December 8, 2023, at Britton Recital Hall, University of Michigan

3. Rosario Scalero – “Perdono” from Seven Songs for Soprano & String Quintet
Bethany Worrell, soprano; Linnea Geenen, violin I; Caleb Frailey, violin II; Kimberly LaFranzo, viola; Raymond Tsai, cello I; Robert Paddock, cello II
From a recital on October 1, 2023, at Stamps Auditorium, University of Michigan

4. J.S. Bach – “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”
Sandra Geary, piano
From a special recording session on November 14, 2022, at Jazz St. Louis

Transcription

Ron Klemm 0:00
This is Bach Talk.

Bethany Worrell 0:25
What I do think about is feeling whatever I have determined to be the main emotion of the piece and breathing in that. So the few bars before I come in, I will be breathing in this serene, calm, but hopeful feeling. And if I breathe in that way for those bars and for my first entrance, it will be those things.

If the audience knows to listen for Aber, ooh, you know, I think they'd get more out of it because I get more out of it. Being an artist is very cool.

Ron Klemm 1:22
Being an artist is very cool indeed. Who would doubt that? Coming from someone as eloquent and sensitive, yet at the same time so vivacious and bubbly as Bethany Worrell.

That's Bethany singing the pivotal soprano solo in the Brahms A German Requiem at a recent concert by The Bach Society of Saint Louis. Hello, I'm Ron Klemm. Welcome to Bach Talk.

Praised by Opera News for her gleaming tone, such as we're hearing right now, Bethany Worrell is equally at home on the stage, in the concert or recital hall, or in the classroom or vocal studio. She just completed her first year as the new Director of Vocal Studies at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. We locals call it UMSL.

A few weeks prior to her appearance with the Bach Society this past March, Dr. Worrell invited us over to her neck of the woods, the beautiful Touhill Performing Arts Center at UMSL. The Bach Society's Danielle Feinstein joined me, and we had a wonderful time talking about the Brahms Requiem, of course, but also about much more, performing in general, Bethany's approach to singing, education, even tricks of the trade. It took no time at all for us to realize just how blessed we are to have Dr. Bethany Worrell in our town. First of all, thank you for inviting us to your house. This is really a wonderful facility here, the Touhill Performing Arts Center. You've performed here already, and tell us a little bit about that.

Bethany Worrell 3:07
I started last fall at UMSL at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, and one of the first bright spots in the semester was that Dr. David Wacyk, who's our Director of Orchestras, and Dr. Jim Henry, who's our Director of Choirs, invited me to perform on the first Masterworks concert that UMSL has done since the pandemic, since 2020, and we performed the Poulenc Gloria, and I was the soprano soloist. It was fantastic.

Ron Klemm 3:37
You're kind of the new kid on the block.

Bethany Worrell 3:39
I moved here in August.

Ron Klemm 3:40
Settled in right away.

Bethany Worrell 3:42
Yes, so I'm the new Director of Vocal Studies at UMSL, and I wear a lot of hats, which, coming from being a performer, that's kind of the norm, so I feel very comfortable wearing lots of hats, so one thing I do, I run the solo voice program here at the university, so I am in charge of all the adjunct voice teachers. They're on my team. Our vocal collaborative pianists are on my team, and I organize all of the solo offerings, so we have a diction teacher.

We have diction that we offer. I assign all of the voice students to their studios, and I teach a good number of them privately. In addition, I teach the Singing Actors Workshop, and we have our first class of that this semester, and we're doing a musical review.

We're doing Rodgers and Hammerstein's Grand Night for Singing.

Ron Klemm 4:42
Cool.

Bethany Worrell 4:42
Yeah, it's going to be really fun.

Ron Klemm 4:44
Tell us about your career path, coming to St. Louis.

Bethany Worrell 4:48
I grew up in West Central Illinois. I grew up in Macomb, Illinois, about three hours north. Did my undergraduate degree there.

I took a gap year, and then I got into the New England Conservatory of Music for my master's degree, and I loved Boston. I went there, had a lot of success at the school, but knew I wanted to pursue a classical career, and knew I really loved Boston, and I'm really small town girl from Illinois, and then going out to this major city, but felt really at home there. So I went to school there for two years, and then for seven years, I lived and worked and sang in Boston professionally.

Then I wanted a change of pace, and so I decided to move to New York City. I sang there for two and a half years. At that time, I always knew I wanted to go and get my doctorate so I could be a university professor, and I felt ready for that part of my career, and took auditions.

Miraculously, I started in fall of 2020, so I beat the pandemic. While a lot of people were struggling, I was in school, which was helpful, and I just graduated in May of 2024 with my doctorate from University of Michigan, and then I promptly moved to Dallas, Texas for the summer to be with my fiancee, and was singing down there. So I sang professionally in Boston, New York, and Dallas, and was chosen to be the new director of vocal studies, and moved here in August.

Ron Klemm 6:28
What precipitated that move? Let me ask a sub-question because of that. Some people who are in cities like New York and Boston will get the sense that they're small fish in a big pond.

Did you have any of that, or was it just because, I want to be in the Midwest, I'm a Midwesterner.

Bethany Worrell 6:49
Well, I took auditions at many schools. Michigan was my dream school because it just has a fantastic vocal heritage, but also because maestro Martin Katz was there. And I worked with Martin at Songfest in 2011, right after grad school, and I found him so inspiring.

And ever since 2011, I knew I wanted to go to Michigan if I could get in. And so that was my dream school. I got in, and I got to work with him a lot.

And he told me when I graduated, I could call him Martin and not Mr. Katz. That's why I'm saying Martin. I felt like I had arrived.

But going back to the Midwest, I knew that after being for about 15 years away from home, pretty far from my parents, I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could land a teaching job in the Midwest? And it might be helpful to go to a school in the Midwest to make connections in the Midwest. And so I was open to everywhere, but I'm really happy I ended up in St. Louis.

Ron Klemm 8:03
Well, we're thrilled to have you. Tell us about your first musical memories. When did you start singing?

And when did a light bulb go off and say, oh, wow, I really like this?

Bethany Worrell 8:16
I started singing really early. I did children's musicals in Macomb, actually, where I grew up. And when I was in seventh grade, my parents put me in voice lessons.

And I remember it just was organic. It was like drinking water. You know, this just made sense to be singing and taking lessons.

And so I've taken lessons since I was in seventh grade for a really long time of my life. When I was in high school, I feel like for most musicians, there's a piece of music or a few pieces of music that that was the turning point. I was always serious about it.

But I remember we sang Morton Lordson's O Manu Mysterium. And it was just beautiful, right? Beautiful.

And I loved every minute of rehearsal. And I thought, OK, this is what I want to do. And it was a very internal feeling.

Yep. Like that was it. It's interesting that it wasn't solo, it was choral.

Ron Klemm 9:30

So who had the greatest impact on you? Was there an individual or a group of people or something that really made a major impact in a turning point in your life to move into music? Is mom listening?

Bethany Worrell 9:46
Of course she's listening. So I have to start with my parents. No, my parents are both avocational musicians.

So there was a lot of singing in the home. My dad played guitar, played trumpet, was a song leader at church. My mom was also a song leader at church, played piano, played a lot of other instruments.

So from as far back as I remember, there was always singing. When there's just so many people in my life, and I'm trying to think of an early person, my first, actually my third teacher, but my first teacher that I was with for a long time is named Terry Chasteen, and he is still a professor at Western Illinois University. And I mean, he has a glorious tenor voice.

He actually, as a young singer, he was kind of brought up here. He sang many seasons with St. Louis Opera Theater. But his joy for the craft and joy for music and openness to everyone who would come into the studio, no matter if they wanted to be a performer, educator, just wanted to sing for fun, that made a big impact on me.

And now as a performer, it made an impact on me growing up. But now as an educator, he's one of the people that I just find inspiration from. Because while we want to train up great singers that go on to sing or are music educators or working in the field, we also are inspiring artists that are engaging with art in any way.

And I feel like I learned that boots on the ground from him being a junior in high school when I started working with him. That's really a really special experience that I don't think everybody has from working with somebody like that.

Danielle Feinstein 11:44
I'm curious, what brought you over to the stage? Because I know you've sung quite a few roles. Was it just a product of, you know, I'm in this classical music program, so I have to audition for these shows.

Or, you know, you talked about starting this singing actor program. It seems like you're also very passionate about the acting side of it. So what was the draw there?

Or is there, what was your first role?

Bethany Worrell 12:08
So first role, my first opera role, let's start with that, was at Western Illinois University. I was a sophomore. For some reason, I didn't audition my freshman year.

And you can ask Mr. Chasteen about that. I don't remember. We will.

You'll follow up. But I auditioned, they were doing Candide, because we had this amazing tenor, this amazing baritone, and this amazing soprano who was a senior. And I was, I knew that I would not be cast as Cunégonde.

I was a sophomore and I'd never been in an opera. I knew that. But I have a lot of tenacity.

And I learned Glitter and Be Gay as a sophomore for the audition. And I did it. And they cast me as Paquette.

So that was my first role. And, you know, I was cast alongside a lot of upperclassmen and they all just took me under their wing. And it was really fun.

But the impetus for that, like, I just loved singing and storytelling. And I, at that time, I just wanted to be singing as much as I could sing. It didn't matter what I was singing.

I knew I wanted to sing mainly classical, though, at that time, I also was singing a lot of jazz. And so they let me dabble as much as possible at WIU, which was, I think, that's actually really helpful. And I want my students to be able to do that here.

But I just knew I wanted to be part of the show and I wanted to challenge myself and sing harder music, I think. Oh, I do want to say about a fulfilling opera role. The last opera role I did, I got to sing Don Anna in Don Giovanni.

And earlier in life, I was a soubrette. Now I'm more of a lyric. And that's what...

Ron Klemm 13:57
What's a soubrette? Is that a tiny soprano?

Bethany Worrell 14:05
Maybe, vocally speaking. Maybe not physically speaking. So a soubrette is, it's a lighter voice. So you wouldn't necessarily be singing over a lot of tubas because the carrying power is a little different.

But light and frothy. And a lot of times a soubrette is really fun and funny. And I enjoy being comedic.

But now my voice is more darker and more mature. And that happens as the voice ages. So I'm more of a lyric soprano now.

And so Don Anna is not a funny character. She is a very serious character. I had played Zerlina earlier in that opera and she's a very funny character.

But Don Anna helped me figure out more of my dramatic self. And I got to prepare it with Maestro Katz conducting. And it was the last opera he did at Michigan before he retired.

And so that was incredible. It was very artistically fulfilling. So concert repertoire.

I think my gateway into concert repertoire was Art song. I think if you asked me what my biggest love is, is actually doing Art song and Art song recitals. And then there's kind of this gateway of chamber music and concert repertoire.

And there's something very satisfying with collaborating with so many people with a conductor, but making music that, yes, it has drama. I mean, there's definitely drama in the Brahms Requiem, right? But it is also intimate like Art song, I feel like, but on a very big stage.

But the feelings are intimate. And I feel like I get to bring out a lot of myself in it, maybe even more so than opera. And I really, really enjoy that.

Ron Klemm 16:44
The fifth movement, Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit. You now have sorrow, aber, but. But I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice and your joy no one will take from you.

Comforting words from a German Requiem by Johannes Brahms, sung by soprano Bethany Worrell, along with The Bach Society of Saint Louis Chorus and Orchestra, Dennis Sparger conducting. The concert took place March 22nd, 2025. More about that and a bevy of other topics with our guest today, Dr. Bethany Worrell, straight ahead. Along with Danielle Feinstein, I'm Ron Klemm. This is Bach Talk. I want to talk about the soprano role, which is limited to the fifth movement.

After sitting there for, what, 45 minutes, better part of an hour. And then you have to come in and your first entrance, after basically sitting around, goes up to a high A. Pianissimo, right?

Okay, what's your secret?

Bethany Worrell 18:03
There's several parts to the secret. One is to be very warmed up before the concert, right? You just, you need to be very warm, very flexible.

I work on my technique being really flexible. As I work on the piece now, several weeks before the concert, I'm working it every day to make sure it's really in my voice. There's a point where you get something in your voice and you feel like you can just get up and sing it.

That's what I'm working towards for this. The secret, and this would be good for all students, I think, is that while you're sitting there during loud sections, you can very quietly make noise.

Ron Klemm 18:49
You are revealing secrets.

Bethany Worrell 18:52
Very quietly. You're not going to take away from anything. It's during that brass or timpani.

When the whole choir is singing forte, you're not taking anything away, but you can kind of just make a little sound. If they allow me to have water, that's helpful, have a little water on stage to be doing that. If for some reason you wouldn't be allowed water, you're hydrating all day anyway.

I will also say, this is the voice teacher in me, water helps just the inside of the mouth, but it takes two hours for when you drink water, for it to actually hydrate your muscles. I'm hydrating all day. You want your mouth to not be dry, but if I've had a lot of water, I should be okay.

The other thing, and we talked about a mentality issue, is that really connecting with the text, but also I am constantly, while I'm sitting there, I'm listening to everything around me for those first 45 minutes. I'm trying to be completely in the moment and enjoying the music just like the audience is. I feel like that settles me in a way that can help the singing as well.

Now you have all my secrets.

Danielle Feinstein 20:16
Since you were talking about your tips and tricks, I'm curious if you have any, what I'm going to call, Worrellisms, any phrases, key ideas, tips, pieces of advice that if we asked one of your students, they would say, oh, this, this is what she always says.

Bethany Worrell 20:36
Oh, I wish we had them here. There's a lot of things, I think. The one thing that is really big that I'm trying to impress upon the whole vocal area, not just my private students, is that we're, anybody that's auditioning you, anyone that's teaching you, we are not concerned with perfection.

We are concerned with a growth mindset. Several years ago, I actually came to St. Louis to do a audition bootcamp at Winter Opera St. Louis, and Kostis Protopapas was here, the conductor, and he worked with us, and he said, we do not care about perfection. Every time I hear you, I want to hear you getting better, and you need to be concerned with raising your average constantly, this growth mindset.

And so I try to impress this upon my students, that if you're doing the work, if you're practicing every day, if you're putting in the work, and if you look back on where you were a month ago, you're probably going to be farther down the path. It might vary from week to week, because sometimes it's two step forward, one step back, but growth mindset is the biggest thing. I think that, I hope that they would tell you that right away.

Ron Klemm 21:46
Well, I'd like to get into teaching a little bit, if you don't mind. Sure. Because either you said this, or someone said it about you, but you talked about, or we heard about you and teaching as being kinesthetic.

What does that mean, and how does that manifest itself in your work?

Bethany Worrell 22:08
Great. So kinesthetic learning is body learning, basically. And so how do you connect with your body, be aware of how your body is while you're singing, because our body is our instrument.

I feel like a lot of people say that, and I try to help my students manifest that throughout all of their singing. So I help them cultivate a very deep awareness. I ask them a lot of questions, like, what does that feel like?

What does it feel like here in your body? What does it feel like in your soft palate? What does it feel like in your ribs?

Take your mind's eye and put it there. Now do it, what did you notice in this area? I use a lot of tools.

So I use TheraBands, they're stretchy bands, and that can help students feel what support does in the body. When you stretch actually from side to side, and while you're singing, the core engages, but it doesn't overly engage. It engages, I like to call it the baby bear principle.

There's not too hot, not too cold, just right from the three bears. And so if you over engage, you're going to be locked up vocally. If you under engage, you're not going to have any power, and it's going to sound really kind of wimpy.

You need the just right engagement, and using TheraBands can actually help you find it right away. So I use lunges, I use squats, there's lots of tools in the studio. And I also do a lot of straw learning to like sing through a straw, because that can help regulate how well the vocal folds come together.

So teaching them how their body actually is their instrument. And I guess I'll say one more thing about that. I feel like it's unfair that a lot of singers don't understand their instrument until they're in college, because that's maybe the first time they have private lessons.

And, but you know, if you're in seventh grade, and you take up the clarinet, your teacher tells you how to clean the clarinet, put the clarinet together, you understand what a reed is, you understand the instrument. And so one of my passion projects is working with high school and junior high choir teachers to how can they to work on how can they explain anatomy to their students in a way that works in the corporate setting, because it's not a private lesson. But how can everyone understand what their how their ribs work, how their diaphragm works, how breathing works.

And I do believe if we dissect a frog in high school, we can understand how our ribs work. And so kind of working with teachers to embolden them in working with groups, because it is different than one-on-one.

Ron Klemm 24:58
But you don't dissect any frogs?

Bethany Worrell 25:00
No dissection of humans or frogs.

Ron Klemm 25:07
Well, maybe. But what are the issues that you find most often with college age singers? What are the things that you go, ah, that's why I'm here.

I'm here to correct this or that or impress on them this or that? What is it? What are those things?

Bethany Worrell 25:28
So I'll get to technique in a second. But taking up physical space that actually deals with technique, but also performance and also confidence. If you actually take up physical space and you kind of sit in that or stand in that, you will actually feel more confident.

Is it on Grey's Anatomy where they do the hero pose? It's that same concept, right? And so how do you stand when you sing in a way that is not because my professor told me so, but because I want to take up space and be an artist and send this out?

It dovetails with technique, but it's that performance training and confidence training. Because say they get a degree from here, but then decide to do something completely different with their life. All of that singing and confidence training will show up very well from them in them for whatever they choose to do.

The other thing is how do you breathe in your body? That's the main thing. And I think that's the main thing across the nation.

It's not just here, but it's really cool to see when they start to take, it also goes with taking up space in your body. And what's very cool to see when they start to do it. And we have a weekly studio class where I workshop with them in front of the students in front of each other.

And we do that for the entire vocal area. So I work with everyone in that instance. And we ask them, what do you notice what your colleague is doing?

And almost all the time when somebody has changed their breathing, they're like, oh my gosh, look at the ribs, look at the low breath. And so they're beginning to get it. It's really cool.

Ron Klemm 28:17
We never planned on a rendezvous. It's just the way of the world. Lauf der Welt by Edvard Grieg.

From his opus 48 set of songs, Bethany Worrell, joined by pianist Muse Ye, recorded live at Bethany's second dissertation recital at the University of Michigan's Britton Recital Hall, December 2023. Just ahead, more with soprano Bethany Worrell, along with Danielle Feinstein, today. I'm Ron Klemm.

This is Bach Talk. Teaching is a vocation. Is it more than that?

Do you feel like it's a means to an end? You want to do that so that you can perform? Or is it some sort of obligation or responsibility?

Is it a calling? How do you view your work?

Bethany Worrell 29:20
I would say it definitely falls into the calling category. It's interesting, ever since being an undergraduate student, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher. I knew that I did not want to be a choral director.

Like, I didn't want to be with a whole group as my main thing. I actually love working with choirs now as a clinician about how the voice works. But I wanted to work one-on-one with students.

And one thing that motivates me in that is that I see progress constantly with them. And it doesn't matter how fast it is.

I think that they should progress at their own pace. I mean, I try to get them to invest, but if they're investing and they're progressing, I'm really excited for them. And so I knew very early on I wanted to work with solo voices, and I actually gave lessons while I was an undergraduate student at WIU.

I'm better now. You know, it was good. I think I did good work, but now I know so much more, and of course I do, but learning about the voice is a journey.

I can't wait until I'm 80 and teaching voice and what I know then, right? The calling part, like after I graduated and I went to Boston, I was teaching voice students there. For me, teaching and performing they go hand in hand.

When I, as a teacher, as I get better as a teacher, I get better as a performer and vice versa. I can't imagine a world where I wouldn't do both. Yeah, I love sharing music with others, and I think that that is the basis for both.

That's the foundation that's the same. I recently performed a house concert, and afterwards several of the audience members came up and they said, we love the educational things you shared. And I think that's great.

I did not realize that I was educating them. I was just sharing things that I thought were really neat about the piece. And so I think that's interesting too, that I think it's in my bones, this education, and I'm thinking maybe I can make it a little more fun next time in the house concert.

But, you know, the history of Brahms Requiem, or like what the words mean, it impacts me so much as a singer and an artist. I want, if I have an opportunity to talk to an audience member, I like to tell them what this word means, because it's so profound. Like, we don't all speak German, right?

Or all these languages. But part of the study of the singer is to learn these things, so you can do justice to the piece, of course. But I would say Brahms Requiem, what I'm thinking is the word aber, it is the hinge point of movement five.

And aber means but.

Ron Klemm 32:26
It's the connector. Right?

Bethany Worrell 32:28
Yep. It's the conjunction, right? But the conjunction, but it's in real terms, in very real terms, like, but I will be with you.

Right? Like, you do not need to be sorrowful anymore. It completely changes what the piece is about.

And if the audience knows to listen for aber, ooh, you know, they'll just, I think they'd get more out of it, because I get more out of it. But yeah, I think education and singing and performing, they just all go together.

Ron Klemm 33:00
You already talked a little bit about some of the lessons that you've learned. What about those do you pass on? That is one, you know, as you're sitting there in that studio, and you're working one-on-one, as you said, you'd love to do, working one-on-one with someone, and all of a sudden, that thing comes in the back of your mind, that thought, oh, you know, I remember when I was told that, what are some of those things?

Stand up straight is a good start.

Bethany Worrell 33:32
That's great. I think the thing, the thing about taking up space is a big thing. And, and I do, I know I already shared it, but what Maestro Protopapas said about, we're concerned with your average growing, not perfection.

I think a lot of us singers, and I see this in the students today. I'm definitely a perfectionist. I'm a recovering perfectionist.

There should be a society for us all.

Ron Klemm 33:56
Do you ever fully recover, however?

Bethany Worrell 33:58
I'm working on it. But you know, the audience, while I am going to sing diamond and crystalline sounds on this, the audience, as long as you are invested, and you are completely in the moment, and you are open with your artistry, the audience doesn't know what the perfection in your head is. The perfection that we think about is only in our head.

Obviously, if notes and rhythms are wrong, that's just, that's basal, right? Like, but if I sing it, and it's beautiful, but it's 1% away from what I had in my practice, that's a perfectionism that's not helpful, right? If I'm committed in the moment, and making music with the ensemble, and singing my best in that moment, that's all I can do.

And if I judge myself against some idea of what I could do, it just kind of, it makes everything crumple, because also singers were artists. And so it's just strange, the perfectionism and the artist don't always work well together. So I try to teach the students a lot about, let go of the perfection, just do the work, and trust the work, and be fully in the moment.

And that's a big thing to work on. That's, we work on that every lesson.

Danielle Feinstein 35:19
Creativity is a language of vulnerability. And I love the language of manifestation that you used. You said, I am going to sing this crystalline. Is there a single phrase, word, that you tell yourself before every performance, anything to get in the zone, or even a physical action?

Bethany Worrell 35:37
Yeah, I definitely find a way to just sit, you know, alone, and sometimes I'll have my eyes closed, and think through singing. I also really try to feel my weight deeper in my body. I've been told that I rev high, which I love.

And it's because I get excited about things, which is great. I am a soprano. It's good.

But to be like, my energy does not need to be up here, especially for something like Brahms. It needs to be very low. This is more maternal.

This is this beautiful oration of comfort, right? And so I need to feel that kind of thing. What I do think about is feeling the, whatever I have determined to be the main emotion of the piece, and breathing in that.

So the few bars before I come in, I will be breathing in this serene, calm, but hopeful feeling. And I work in my practice to be like, what does that feel like in my body? And it goes back to that body connection.

And if I breathe in that way for those bars, and for my first entrance, it will be those things. Being an artist is very cool. Yeah!

Yeah. You know, what I just said, it sounds so, I mean, it sounds so creative, right? But at the same time, it's really real, like you can actually feel these things.

It's very exciting.

Ron Klemm 37:11
Thank you so much for spending this time with us. This has been, this is special. So thank you.

Bethany Worrell 37:17
Thank you so much for having me.

Ron Klemm 38:11
Perdono, Forgiveness, from Seven Songs for Soprano & String Quintet by the late 19th, early 20th century composer, Rosario Scalero. Bethany Worrell, soprano, from a recital she gave at the University of Michigan in October of 2023. This set of songs was never published, Scalero died in 1954, and Dr. Worrell conceived this edition of the score from the composer's handwritten parts. Recording engineers for these recordings of Bethany from U of M included Nelson Walker and Nelson Gast. The Bach Society's recording engineer is Paul Henrich. Take a moment right now to contact us with your questions or comments.

Just go to bachsociety.org and click on Bach Talk. On that page, there's a simple form that you can use to ask your question, or if you prefer, send me an email directly, bachtalk@bachsociety.org. We look forward to hearing from you.

The associate producer of Bach Talk is Scott MacDonald. Promotional and other assistance provided as always by Andy Murphy and Carissa Marciniak of Wright Relations. Special thanks today to Danielle Feinstein for her assistance and of course to our guest, Bethany Worrell.

We leave you today on a very sad and personal note. In its storied 85-year history, The Bach Society of Saint Louis has had fewer piano accompanists than conductors. The organization's most recent accompanist began in 1993.

The pride of Ireland's County Cork, Sandra Geary, was more than a great accompanist and collaborator. She was a beacon of light, a bright, shining personality that made all of us not only better singers, but better people. Unassuming and fiercely private, we feel immensely privileged to have featured her on this podcast.

Check out episode 11 of Bach Talk from last year. Also, go to the Bach Society's Facebook page to get just a hint of how many lives she impacted and to see the last picture of Sandra taken at last month's Bach Talk Live episode with Leonard Slatkin. That's where Sandra played her final notes with the Bach Society and she played what she told me was her favorite piece by Bach.

And so to conclude today as she plays that piece recorded by our Paul Henrich, here is Sandra Geary in her own words.

Sandra Geary 41:00
Yeah, my role as rehearsal pianist, I guess, it's really fun for me. I sightread really well, so sometimes I come into the rehearsal process and I get the music right there and then I do my best on the first rehearsal and then I go home and practice for the next one. But I feel like, yes, I do read Dennis's mind on occasion.

Yeah, and where he wants to go back to. And that saves a lot of time because Dennis is very time oriented, which is fabulous. We always get out on time.

Everything is to the minute. And so I feel like I need to really concentrate for that two and a half hour rehearsal or however long it is to be right there when he needs me and to hear what needs to be helped at a particular time. If the tenors are missing a note here or there, I'll bring that out a little bit more subtly without them even knowing maybe at times.

Yeah, it's a really enjoyable time for me to rehearse.

A. Dennis Sparger 42:01
It's really quite a different job from being a concert pianist.

Sandra Geary 42:06
Absolutely. And when I first came over here, I thought I wanted to do that. But then during the process of my degree at the conservatory, I got, as I call it, the accompanying bug.

I feel like I am a helper. It's a responsible job. I don't need to have the limelight.

I need to support whoever I'm playing for, whether it be a singer or an instrumentalist, even a chorus. I don't need the glory. I'm there to support as much as I can and be musical and inspire them to be more musical by how I play.

A. Dennis Sparger 42:50
So you're not just playing the notes, you're playing really the music.

Sandra Geary 42:54
I'm singing along with them.

A. Dennis Sparger 42:55
Yes, yeah.

Sandra Geary 42:57
It's not about the notes. It's about making music, having something to say, which is more important. They often say, oh, what if I make a mistake?

It doesn't matter. Make music.

Ron Klemm 43:13
What are some of the memories that you hold dear? What are some of those moments that stand out for you?

Sandra Geary 43:20
Yeah, well, one of them is, and I love the piece so much, and I'm glad we got to do it twice, the Ubi Caritas. I just love that because I think I find something new every time. I mean, it's probably selfish of me because I get to play a lot on that and the chorus doesn't have to sing too much.

It's a wonderful piece. I mean, I love playing the Bach rep, but I don't get to play that in the orchestra. So it's nice for me to sit out and just listen to what we've worked on in the rehearsal process.

Ron Klemm 44:03
Bach Society accompanist Sandra Geary, who died last month after a brief illness. She was 59 years young. Bach Talk is a registered trademark of The Bach Society of Saint Louis. I'm Ron Klemm.

About Episode 22

In this special live episode of Bach Talk, recorded at the 2025 Chorus America Conference, host Ron Klemm sits down with legendary conductor Leonard Slatkin for an intimate conversation spanning his remarkable career. The six-time Grammy winner shares captivating stories from growing up during Hollywood's golden age, where Rubinstein and Stravinsky played on the family piano, to his current projects and passion for the arts. He reflects on conducting techniques and the challenges facing the arts in America today. Plus, this unscripted conversation features live audience Q&A and performances by The Bach Society Chorus, capturing Slatkin's passion, wisdom and his rallying cry: "Let us be. Let us grow."

Transcription

Ron Klemm
This is Bach Talk. From the grand ballroom of the Hyatt Regency at the Arch in downtown St. Louis, I'm Ron Klemm. Welcome to this special edition of Bach Talk.

We're proud to be a part of the 2025 annual conference of Chorus America, and we're conducting today's episode in front of the esteemed conferees from across the country, as well as special guests of The Bach Society of St. Louis. We just heard from The Bach Society Chorus under the direction of music director Dennis Sparger, and we'll hear more from them a little bit later. If you're a regular listener to Bach Talk, you know that we feature a wide range of guests, conductors, singers, instrumentalists, authors, even music publishers.

Today, we have a great privilege because today I want to introduce you to a neighbor and a friend, an internationally renowned friend who, for 16 seasons, was music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. He later held that same post in our nation's capital, in Lyon, France, and in Detroit. He has had and continues to have relationships with orchestras and opera companies around the world.

As a matter of fact, in a few hours, he's going to take a little drive to Webster Groves, Missouri, where he is in rehearsals preparing for a production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at Opera Theatre of St. Louis. It opens one week from today. On his shelf, six Grammys, countless other awards, but he asked me, please don't read my whole bio, so I'm just going to stop right there.

Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming conductor, composer, author, educator, and fellow St. Louisan maestro, Leonard Slatkin. 

Leonard Slatkin
Hi, Ron.

Ron Klemm
How are you?

Leonard Slatkin
I'm good. Oh, you've never lost your announcer's voice. You really...

Ron Klemm
It's like old times.

Leonard Slatkin
It's like old times.

Ron Klemm
We used to do this together a lot.

Leonard Slatkin
We did. We sat in that little studio at KFUO. We had Symphony Preview. 

Ron Klemm
We did.

Leonard Slatkin
We had lots of interviews.

Ron Klemm
Now, wait a minute. You started Symphony Preview before I even came to town on some other place.

Leonard Slatkin
Yeah, I did.

Ron Klemm
Tell us about that.

Leonard Slatkin
Well, I started, actually, my first year as assistant conductor in 1968. I had a weekly radio show on KDNA. This is before there was NPR, so this was underground radio, pushing the boundaries of the FCC and getting our station raided a couple times. I had a program.

Ron Klemm
Oh, yeah.

Leonard Slatkin
They came in, drug busts, all that kind of stuff.

Ron Klemm
Are you serious?

Leonard Slatkin
It was great fun. Absolutely. What would happen there is most of the people working at this station lived in the house where the station existed, and they came on the air in the morning with whoever got up first and turned the transmitter on.

Ron Klemm
Because you had to have the transmitter.

Leonard Slatkin
No, no. It was great. Exactly.

Ron Klemm
That's great.

Leonard Slatkin
But that's where I learned about speaking to the public. I learned that radio is still the best way to do it. 

Ron Klemm
And, now I'm jumping into another section, but you're still doing radio.

Leonard Slatkin
That's right.

Ron Klemm
Tell us about the Slatkin Shuffle.

Leonard Slatkin
I have a program here which is basically something similar to what I did in those days, except this time it took its cue from what I do on airplanes when I have long flights.

I have now about 45,000 tracks on my iPad, and I just put the headset on and I put the shuffle mode on. I don't know what's going to happen in the show, what it's going to play. When it begins, I say, hello, everyone, this is Leonard Slatkin.

Welcome to another edition of the Slatkin Shuffle, the program where not only do you not know what we're going to play, I don't either. I'm here with our iPad curator, Betsy, and Betsy, what do you have up for us today? That's kind of how the show works.

It's a two-hour program. We're into about 210 episodes of it now, so we've been doing it a long time, and I'm about to record, I think, six more next week. It's a lot of fun to do.

Ron Klemm
Well, let's clarify, though, it's not all classical music.

Leonard Slatkin
Oh, it's everything. You just never know. I just have to stay within certain boundaries that are proprietary to certain interests.

Ron Klemm
Well, but you've already revealed to us that you have eclectic tastes. Is that fair to say?

Leonard Slatkin
That's more than fair.

Ron Klemm
Well, I'm sorry that I'm about nine months late, but I do want to wish you a happy birthday. And the reason I want to do that this late is because this was one of those where that left digit changes, you know, and we all…

Leonard Slatkin
And you're not sure if I'll be around for the next left digit to switch.

Ron Klemm
But instead of going out and buying more candles, you decided to make a whole season worth of celebration. 

Leonard Slatkin
And what I did, I thought that the celebration would be more about my family, which have a rich musical tradition going back at least three generations.

So I played music, not only that I wrote, I played music that my wife wrote. I played arrangements my father made. I also was able to begin to present the music of my son, Daniel Slatkin, who writes primarily for film and television, but has also entered the concert world.

So we presented his work, Voyager, which is about the spacecraft that's up there, a marvelous piece. We've done it five or six times now. And I'll be at the end of the birthday celebration in July at the Hollywood Bowl.

And the interesting thing about that is that makes four generations of my family who've appeared at the Hollywood Bowl. No one else can say that.

Ron Klemm
Well, let's go into that a little bit. Tell us about your father and your mother and the role that they played in Southern California.

Leonard Slatkin
My parents were highly diverse musicians. My dad was a violinist. He was born here in St. Louis. And when he was 12 years old, he gave a full violin recital at the Sheldon Auditorium, a beautiful theater we have here. He eventually went to the Curtis School as the youngest student, then of Ephraim Zimbalist, went on to return to St. Louis, asked the then music director for a $5 raise, was not given it, and he went out to Hollywood and did really well. My mother was born in New York, a whole family of musicians. Both sides of the family had Russian roots, one half in Belarus, one half in Ukraine. My parents met at the Hollywood Bowl in L.A. So they became, in one portion of their life, half of the famed Hollywood String Quartet. Another part of their lives were as film studio musicians. My father was the concert master at 20th Century Fox. My mother was the first cellist at Warner Bros.

Yes, I met Marilyn Monroe, and we were very good friends with Frank Sinatra. And then the other part was in the popular music world. So it was quite an eclectic background.

Myself, my interest really ranged for all musics, but especially jazz. I loved and always have loved jazz. I would hang out at a club called the Manhole, run by the great drummer Shelly Manne, who had the most marvelous quote.

I will tell you what it is, and you'll go, that's funny, but we don't know what it means. Here it is. When he was asked about jazz, he says, my group, we only play, sorry, we never play things the same way once.

Ron Klemm
I get it. Takes a moment to not figure it out. I remember you used to tell stories of the visitors that you had in your house growing up. Oh, would I love to hear those.

Leonard Slatkin
What I like so much is that through all these years, I inherited the piano that was at our home. And that's a very interesting instrument.

Not so much for the instrument itself, although it does have a beautiful sound, but Archer Rubinstein played on it. Heitor Villa-Lobos played on it. Schoenberg played on it. Stravinsky played on it. Art Tatum played on it. And the list went on and on. All these visitors to our house. 

Ron Klemm
And how old were you in these times?

Leonard Slatkin
Well, obviously from when I was very little, because I would be able to hear my parents' quartet rehearsing every day.

But also the film composers, whether it was Korngold, Steiner, Tiomkin, all those great names, they were resident in our house over for dinner all the time, playing piano, doing chamber music, discussing the next projects they'd work on with my folks. So it was quite a way to grow up. I didn't know it at the time.

In fact, when I met Marilyn Monroe on the set of How to Marry a Millionaire, I thought, well, this is a nice lady. I didn't know. The hormones had not kicked in yet.

Ron Klemm
The studio orchestras were a big deal in those days.

Leonard Slatkin
There were 11 of them. Each studio had its own orchestra, its own writers, its own actors, and its own musicians and composers.

And if you really listen closely to the great films of the 30s, 40s, early 50s, you're going to hear a marked difference in the way those orchestras played. One example is to actually watch the opening of How to Marry a Millionaire, which you can see. And what you're going to get there, because this was the first time that stereophonic sound and a new process of cinema was introduced, you'll see the 20th Century Fox Orchestra playing Alfred Newman's street scene.

It's remarkable. You see all the violins using the whole bow. It's a great sound. And then you go to the Warner Bros. Orchestra with an incredible precision and clarity. And then there's MGM for all the musicals. They were all great orchestras with, indeed, individuality. Orchestras that not just rivaled but surpassed the concert ones that we had in this country. 

Ron Klemm
So did the studio, or let me put it this way, did the film or films that the studios were doing, did that dictate the style that the orchestra played?

Leonard Slatkin
No, because the studio...Well, the musicals, I suppose you could say, but within each film there was always different music. So if you're at MGM, for example, and you've got Nicolás Rocha writing El Cid on one hand, but then he's doing another one that could be a murder mystery or a drama, they have to adjust the music to what the story requires. It's a lot of work, and it was an amazing time.

It's not like now where you have these computer-generated scores that pop up. Maybe a composer would write maximum two films a year. They would write the music, usually sketch it out. They had orchestrators. The orchestrators would pass it on to the copyists. The copyists would write out the parts, and with the ink still wet, they would pass it up to the orchestra who would then sight-read it for the films you all see.

Ron Klemm
Wow. Amazing. The quartet was largely classical music.

Leonard Slatkin
They were all trained that way.

Ron Klemm
And tell us what the quartet did in those days. 

Leonard Slatkin
The quartet, the Hollywood String Quartet, first of all, it was criticized heavily for using the name Hollywood, because back then, there was not crossover. You didn't think about it that way.

If you put Hollywood on it, it meant one thing and one thing only. But the idea of the quartet was that my parents and the other two members earned their living. They couldn't have had the quartet if it wasn't for the studios, so they wanted to acknowledge it.

What they brought was the kind of old Russian school sensibility of playing to the quartet style. So if you go and listen to anything they performed and recorded, you're going to hear a very different kind of playing than you hear now. It is full of rubato, lots of portamentos, lots of beautiful phrasing, lots of breathing, not quite as rigid as we generally hear these days.

So yes, the influence of both the Russian school of training and the film studio itself, because there was big, big playing, and that actually imbued the quartet to perform in that manner.

Ron Klemm
And how did all of that influence you? Where do you think it had the most impact on you, all of that?

Leonard Slatkin
I think a lot of people would say that my inclinations when I'm working with orchestras is to primarily address issues in the strings. After all, what differentiates an orchestra from a band? A string section.

So having that background of hearing that and being a string player as well as a pianist in my youth, a lot of what I do is centered on that string sonority. Everything else has to fit into that. Obviously not if it's a solo passage.

But even with a chorus, I'm going to make sure, for example, if that orchestra that I'm working with is sitting with the violins split, meaning the first violins on the left and the second violins on the right, what's the equivalent in the chorus? Sopranos, altos. So I'm going to put the altos in the chorus on the right so they parallel what the orchestra is like.

So there's a sonic similarity between all these sounds. So for me, it's string-oriented. And I was fortunate in these years in St. Louis to have had some of the very best woodwinds. I think we had the best woodwind section in the country. It was astonishing.

Ron Klemm
When I first came, my first concert, and George Silvers played that solo in Mendelssohn's Italian, I thought, I'm home here.

Leonard Slatkin
Or Jake Berg's Afternoon of a Fallen Heart. Or Dick Woodins and Peter Bowman playing beautiful oboe solo in George Berry and the Bassoon. It was just amazing. I was so fortunate. 

Ron Klemm
Well, we're fortunate to have you at Chorus America. And since we're in a room full of chorus experts and enthusiasts and fans, we should talk about choruses for just a little while.

One of the things about these people is they are, you know, they concentrate on one chorus all the time. And they work with them rehearsal after rehearsal after rehearsal and then do a concert and keep going. In your case, you probably don't see the chorus until performance week, right?

Leonard Slatkin
No, I usually try to show up for first rehearsal about two weeks before so they have an idea of what I want to do if it's a place where I am in residence. So whether it was here, whether it was in London, Lyon, Detroit, Washington, I would always do a preparatory rehearsal and then I would do another one the week of the concert before we got them together with the orchestra. And usually, depending on the work, it was going to be two, sometimes three rehearsals.

Ron Klemm
Well, that means that with the less amount of time that you had, you had to have a lot of trust in the people who were prepping.

Leonard Slatkin
Absolutely. And not only that, but I would usually speak with the choral masters and choral directors before they began rehearsing the works just to give them some ideas of tempos, phrasings, overall stylistic thoughts. So that's kind of the way I did it. 

Ron Klemm
Have you ever gotten to that first rehearsal with everybody and say, well, wait a minute, this isn't what I was thinking?

Leonard Slatkin
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that has happened. And then we have to work really hard. And it becomes a matter of compromise, really. You have to decide what can you accomplish in a short amount of time? Where are you willing to concede? And where are you going to make your points? Same thing with the orchestra. We don't have a lot of rehearsal time these days with orchestras.

Ron Klemm
Right. I don't think everybody realizes, but you had a very important role in the early development of the St. Louis Symphony Chorus.

Leonard Slatkin
They wanted to start a chorus here. They weren't sure whether to look for a chorus director.

I, at the time, was the director at Grant Park in Chicago, and I was able to have an incredible gentleman named Thomas Peck, and he agreed to come and form the chorus. It didn't start during my tenure, but it continued from that time. So I brought Tom, and then while I was music director, I was able to bring in Amy Kaiser. And these two people served as the only chorus masters up until last year. And they were wonderful. I'll tell a Tom story in the next segment.

Ron Klemm
Oh, okay, good. Well, we'll look forward to that. Why don't we leave on that note and take a quick break here?

That's conductor, composer, author, educator, and friend Leonard Slatkin from the 2025 Conference of Chorus America in St. Louis. I'm Ron Klemm, and this is Bach Talk.

Melissa Payton
Hi there. I'm Melissa Payton, executive director of The Bach Society of St. Louis. As a presenting partner for the 2025 Chorus America Conference, we were both thrilled and honored to perform as a featured ensemble during the opening night concert held right here in St. Louis. As St. Louis' oldest continuous chorus for nearly 85 years, and with J.S. Bach as our inspiration, we strive to connect our community through uplifting and soul-filled music-making. Whether you're here with us live at the Chorus America Conference or tuning in later, we'd love for you to discover what we're all about. Explore upcoming performances, special events, and more at bachsociety.org.

And now, let's get back to Bach Talk.

Ron Klemm
The Bach Society Chorus, conducted by music director Dennis Sparger, singing Praise the Name of the Lord, Movement 8 from the Vespers, or All-Night Vigil by Sergei Rachmaninoff on this edition of Bach Talk. And I wanted to make sure they sang some Rachmaninoff, because Rachmaninoff had a very important place in your early conducting years. Go ahead and rhapsody a bit on Rachmaninoff.

Leonard Slatkin
My family, from the grandparents' point of view, came from Russia. One half from Belarus, the other half from Ukraine. And they were all musicians for at least four generations.

And that early generation knew Rachmaninoff not only from the time in Russia, but at his time in the United States. The Russian tradition was passed on through my family. And one of the first projects we ever did here in St. Louis, in recording, were the complete works of Rachmaninoff. The orchestral works, the piano orchestra pieces, and the choral works, including the Spring Cantata, which nobody really knew, but a beautiful piece. So the choral aspect became very important. We took this course to Carnegie Hall several times.

We made many, many recordings together. It was really important. So I still, to this day, always love to do this composer.

But fortunately, at 80 years old, I only get to do pieces I love. I don't have to do that other stuff anymore.

Ron Klemm
You don't have to apologize.

Leonard Slatkin
No, absolutely. Do you know we gave the first live performance of Jesus Christ Superstar here?

Ron Klemm
I think so. I think that's right. Let's move from that to your work with Opera Theater of St. Louis. Because you are going to leave this place and move over there here in a few hours and do some rehearsals.

Tell me about your work with Opera Theater. Opera Theater started 50 years ago under the direction of Leigh Gerdine and Richard Gaddis. It was a dream, and they made it happen.

They patterned it a little bit after Glyndebourne, in that there are tents for people to enjoy refreshments and meals, both before and after the shows. All the operas are done in English, and it is a thriving organization. My first production was, I think, in the third year of the Opera Theater. We did Ariadne of Noxus.

Ron Klemm
Remember that.

Leonard Slatkin
Then we did Barber of Seville together.

And then during COVID time, we did two operas, Januskyki and Highway USA by William Grant Still, in the parking lot at Webster Groves. That was fun. One night, it was so cold that the orchestra couldn't play, so we did it with an electronic piano.

Another night, it was so hot that the orchestra couldn't play. We did it with an electric piano. And now we're doing Britten’s A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is an extraordinary piece to do.

Nineteen separate solo roles in this opera. Gorgeous. The chorus is made up of children.

They are fantastic. The opening night, as we're talking, is a week from today.

Ron Klemm
That's correct.

Leonard Slatkin
I'm so looking forward to doing this. I don't do a lot of opera, but the ones that I do mostly fall within a category which I consider to be intimate operas, where there's a feeling of not so much spaciousness and grandeur, but smaller scale. The Midsummer Night's Dream falls in that category.

Ron Klemm
And so does Opera Theater of St. Louis. It's a very intimate type of place.

Leonard Slatkin
It's almost in the round, really.

Ron Klemm
Almost is, yes.

Leonard Slatkin
They still do operas in English. I'm not a big fan anymore of this idea for operas that are mostly in the Romantic and 20th century era, because the composers are so careful about how the words are placed with their music.

And sometimes in a translation, we lose what the composer's idea was.

Ron Klemm
The syllables don't match up.

Leonard Slatkin
Well, not only that, but opera singers are trained in Italian, then French, maybe a bit of German. Our language is consonant-oriented. Italian, every word ends with E, I, or O. And this affects how we sing in English. It makes it very difficult. We're working very hard on our pronunciation. But when you start vibrating on a note right away, and it's a consonant, it's lost.

Same thing with the ending of the words. So maybe these composers who really didn't have an intention of English in a translation.

And translations are getting better, that's true. But the old ones were terrible, just awful. Remember, one for the Barber of Seville was something about the dishes, and there was a line, I think it was Figaro, who says, what happened?

What happened to the china? And then somebody says, the china, nothing could be fina. Oh.

At that point, we had the whole orchestra groan. So anyway, I'm delighted to be back with them, and it's just such a marvelous piece to do.

Ron Klemm
But you've worked with other opera companies as well.

Leonard Slakin
I did most of the major ones.

Ron Klemm
Tell me about the difference. The difference in discipline between working with an orchestra and working with an orchestra plus everything else.

Leonard Slatkin
It's not as complicated as you think. It's just more people, and the distances are further, so you make adjustments with your technique. Yes, you have to know a little bit more, you have to figure out where they're placed, give the cues in the proper place.

If you're in an opera house that has a prompter, you don't worry about that. Then you have to consider the balance of the singers, not only to each other, but how they're projecting with the orchestra. So there's all these little things that come up.

But basically, the conducting technique itself, although it has to be larger at times in terms of your beat, it's not all that different.

Ron Klemm
Do you have to make more compromises?

Leonard Slatkin
Well, what you have to do, as you would do with a great soloist, is adjust to what your singers and pianists and violinists want to do.

Our job is in some operas, you can lead it with your tempo. Salome would be a good example of that. But still, you have to be mindful of what they can and can't do.

And one of the interesting things my teacher, who was a Frenchman named Jean Morel, one time, I had to conduct for the first time for ballet. Ballet is the hardest thing to conduct, by the way. You do not know. When they go up and you have to give a downbeat, it's really confusing. I asked him, what do I need to know about the difference between conducting for ballet and conducting for opera? He said, it is really almost the same thing.

The only difference is when the singers go to the top, they have to come down. Oh, sorry, the other way, sorry. When the dancers go to the top, they have to come down. Well, I'm 80, you know. 

Ron Klemm
Your successor, Hans Vonk, would always tell a story because he married a dancer and they would have these domestic arguments because she would always say, too fast, too slow, because the dancer, I mean, you know, it's a physical activity. They have to match the music.

Leonard Slatkin
That's actually the opening of the Brahms' Fourth Symphony. You don't know that. Too fast, too slow, too long, too short. That's how it starts. You didn't know that? That's what Brahms intended, but more syllables.

Ron Klemm
Well, I'm younger than you, so I'm still learning things. I want to talk about your journal here pretty soon, too, but I've been thinking about how in the world, in fact, I laid awake thinking about how to ask you this question because we don't go into politics in Bach Talk. We don't talk about it.

I mean, it's not a deal, but you spent many years at the Kennedy Center and you know the winds that blow in Washington, D.C., and we know that there's been a tornado and a windstorm here recently. I don't know what to ask. Let me just kick it to you.

Leonard Slatkin
So this is where I can tell you the other story that Tom Peck was involved in. There are a lot. In 1991, Tom had never conducted at a subscription concert with his chorus, and I asked him to do that, but I wanted him to do an a cappella work, and he selected the Four Penitential Motets by Francis Poulenc. Beautiful pieces. I didn't think much about it.

It was a gorgeous performance, and the next week, I got a letter from a rabbi because this was the old text where the Jews were responsible for the killing of Christ. And the rabbi said, why did you put the translation in? That shouldn't be there, you should have left that out.

And I said, well, I didn't think we could change the text and people need to know what's being said here. He said, well, we really didn't care for it. I said, then you're really going to not like what we're doing next year.

Because this was 92, and we were to perform William Balcombe's massive Songs of Innocence and Experience based on almost the complete poetry and text of William Blake. One of the poems, called A Divine Image, says in English, so we couldn't translate, that God was merciful, all forgiving, forgives even the heathens, Turks and Jews. And the rabbi said, I'm going to have to think about that.

A few days pass, the rabbi calls me and he says, I met with many of my colleagues and we've come to a decision. If the heathens and Turks don't object, we won't. Now, let's flash forward to our time.

I can do it with the opera we're doing. In the opera, In A Midsummer Night's Dream, there's a reference to Ethiopians and Jews who were just not considered particularly kind. Not going to hear that reference in our production.

Some of you are going to go through in the choral world, in the vocal world, more and more of this, because it's the time in which we live. We are altering history. We're changing greatness.

But that's only a small portion of what's going on. I won't go through the whole story of what's happening at the Kennedy Center. You all know this.

The last piece of news this week, subscription sales for next season at the center are down 38%. How does that affect you and Chorus America and listening all over, whoever is listening to this? Because there is a trickle-down effect.

Anything that's going to happen in the arts in Washington is going to affect each and every one of us. Your NEA grants are gone. That's going to affect small organizations, which really depend on them.

The big ones don't. You're going to be under scrutiny from your boards of directors about the repertoire you do, what you sing, what you play, how you present it. You know, you can't really say, oh, choruses, we don't have a problem. We don't have any gay people in choruses. Of course not. There's no people who are of color. None of that. That is being systematically wiped out of the artistic culture these days. It's awful. It is not just a threat anymore.

We're seeing it every day in reality. I was on an interesting visit to Las Vegas where I served to help them find the music director. I'm walking down the street. I see all these people from all kinds of backgrounds. It's wonderful. Everybody's getting along. It's great. Why? Because there's a fiscal benefit to Las Vegas, not to exclude anybody. It works there. It works in New Orleans much in the same way. Yet, here we are, the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, and we can't figure out why the arts are being subjected to this.

I started at the Kennedy Center. It was a safe haven for artists. We could do what we wanted, and if people didn't like it, all they had to do was not go and not support it with their money. That's all. There is no place in our nation's capital for government intrusion into what we play, what we create. We are artists. That's what we're supposed to do. So how do we combat this? Can we?

I actually thought for a while that I would form a group and we would just go and really fight for the center. No, I'm not happy that Hamilton pulled out for two months, but not for the reasons you might think. Think of what that's going to cost for all those stagehands, the choruses, the actors, all these people who now have to fight for two months of work, much less of all the shows that could have made a statement right there and then, and they were the ones who walked away.

So you've got this combination. People are walking away from the center and the people who are being thrown out of the center. We are in Pride Month here. The National Symphony was going to have three events about Pride Month, gone, absolutely gone. And was that the decision of the government? No, they were frightened.

They pulled out of that. They said, this is going to be too tough and we're getting a lot of criticism and we're going to lose donors and we're going to lose money and we're going to lose the possibility of presenting anything in the future. People are looking at programming now about, oh, is this going to offend anybody? Are we going to get in trouble? What can we do? How do we combat this?

I think, frankly, on this day that we're talking, I think the Kennedy Center is a lost cause. I do not think it will survive this. I don't think what you put in it is going to be able to replace the revenue, much less the artistic content that exists.

I don't know what will become the home to the National Symphony or the opera. They'll figure out a way, but it'll be a long time and they may not come back in the same way at all. Now, you just go, okay, this is Washington, but it does have an impact on everything in the country. You can see it. You feel it. Our job, one, is to stay strong.

We have to do that. We have been in a profession which values individuality as well as coming together of groups. Each of you trained as singers in this room, in a way, and you came together as a group and you create one ensemble, but you still are individuals. People who create the work are individuals. That's what the Kennedy Center was. That's what this country is and should be.

So, what do we do? We make sure that when you go back to your homes, wherever you are, you keep on your congresspeople about that. It's not a political statement I'm making. It's just to really reinforce the value of the arts, why it is important, why you have to keep fighting for it now. Mostly, get the arts education back into the public schools. This is where it starts. You have to do this. Go to those Board of Supervisors hearings. State the case. Don't be afraid to do that. 

I'm lucky. I'm 80 years old. They're not going to fire me anymore, and if they do, guess what? I'm going to wait to be fired. Why? Because then they have to pay me. You walk away from it. No, you're walking away from that as well, and yeah, I still need money once in a while. It's okay. 

I have come up with a rallying cry for us. I'm going to ask you to all do it together after I give it to you a couple times. Let us be. Let us grow. Shall we together

Audience
Let us be. Let us grow.

Leonard Slatkin
One more.

Audience
Let us be. Let us grow.

Leonard Slatkin
And that's the message we have to get to everybody.

Ron Klemm
I wish I could draw you out of your shell a little bit. Yeah.

Leonard Slatkin
Go ahead. Follow that. Time for a commercial break? Yes. I thought so.

Ron Klemm
That's conductor, composer, author, educator, friend, and a stirrer up of trouble, Leonard Slatkin from the 2025 Conference of Course America in St. Louis. I'm Ron Klemm, and this is Bach Talk.

Christopher Eanes
Hi. I'm Christopher Eanes, President and CEO of Chorus America, and I'm here to talk about something amazing happening in communities across our country, the extraordinary art of choral singing.

Did you know that more than 55 million Americans sing in choruses? This uniquely participatory art form inspires us, connects us, and celebrates our common humanity.

If you are drawn to rich harmonies and emotionally expressive music, there is a chorus in your community ready to welcome you as an audience member, volunteer, or singer. Chorus America is the advocacy, research, and leadership development organization that advances the choral field. Learn more at chorusamerica.org.

Now, let's get back to Bach Talk.

Ron Klemm
The Bach Society Chorus, conducted by music director Dennis Sparger along with brilliant accompanist Sandra Geary. The opening section of the Gloria from the Mass in B Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach. You know, a guy gave me a call a couple of months ago, a friend of mine.

A guy said to me, you know, I discovered a great recording of Bach conducted by Leonard Slatkin, and I knew exactly what he was talking about because that's the kind of music that I, those orchestral transcriptions, Ormandy, and tell me about that. 

Leonard Slatkin
I used to think Bach Tchaikovsky was one person. You have to remember that for people of my age and probably the generation after, we didn't have organs in concert halls, and people got to know Bach principally from transcriptions.

They could be for piano, they could be for guitar, whatever it happened to be, and there's some of them are just absolutely stunning, especially those who take it to an extreme like a Respighi, or Skowroczewski, or sometimes Tchaikovsky, of course. I love doing them. The problem I've got, though, is that I'm of a generation that grew up listening to this music, as well as other music of the time, a certain way.

Let's say the Robert Shaw version, that would be the fair way to say that, and for me, it's difficult to lean into the historically informed movement, or as Neville Mariner told me, if Bach had had a modern toilet, he would have used it. So, I admire the research, but it's something I can't do, and therefore, like many of my colleagues, especially within my age group and the generation that came after me, we just don't do this music anymore. I'd love to get up there and do Messiah again, but I'm too concerned about I'm not doing something the right way anymore, and that it's going to not be the right approach.

So, it's sad, but you see that now. It's really almost specialist type stuff. It's even happening with Haydn. It happens with Schubert, happens with Mozart. Now, even Gershwin gets played in an authentic style. Music moves forward, everybody.

We might try to imitate how it might have been, but we no longer arrive at the concerts and rehearsals by horse. We don't read the music by candlelight. We're playing in venues that are six, seven times larger than anything else these composers would have had. We have to make these adjustments.

Ron Klemm
Well, this is the time in our episode where we turn it over to you. So, I've asked Andie Murphy from Right Relations to go around with a mic, and whoever has a question, raise your hand, and we'll get to you, and we want to go through as many as we can before we have to break. I have one I want to ask you right away. Is there one there? No. And that's your journal. When do you have time to journal? People go to leonardslatkin.com. You write a journal every week.

Leonard Slatkin
I write a journal. I write books. I'm writing three more books now. I write music. I'm not perfected, but I'm perfecting my skills as a chef. You find the time. You just do.

I think the good news really would be these days I'm only primarily conducting music that I've done quite often. I'm out of the premier business unless it's a composer I know very well. So, the restudy effort is not quite as extensive as it used to be.

So, I do find myself more time to do these projects.

Ron Klemm
Good. All right. We got somebody?

Leonard Slatkin
I've answered everything.

Ron Klemm
Give me your first name and where you're from, and then your question.

Vicki
Hello. My name is Vicki, and I'm from the Washington, D.C. area. So, thank you for all your comments on that.

I know you as a huge advocate for American music and American composers, and I'm wondering if you could share your thoughts on how you see the general fabric in both choruses and orchestras in terms of representation by American composers these days. 

Leonard Slatkin
It's an interesting time for composers. Starting in 1976, we began to change direction in how music was going in general. Up until then, for about 25, 30 years, there was an academic formalism. You know the composers we're talking about here. And with David Del Tredici's final Alice, the world changed.

All of a sudden, tonality came back. Minimalism was growing. All these slightly more accessible, is the word they use, styles were going. We didn't see a lot of growth in the choral music field at that time. But today, we see more because the language of the music itself is changing. I think it is a very good time, not just for choruses, but for orchestras.

The problem is how do we identify the composers who are really unique? We only have in mathematic combinations in which they work. So finding those people who are able to put them together in unique and individual ways. Ways that you say, okay, I see where they came from, but I also see how they're presenting themselves. To me, that's the trick. Every choral director needs to just get together with publishers, find those composers who speak to you, and make sure your choruses not only present the great music from the past, but continue to move it forward.

And particularly with those composers who are pushing boundaries, but at the same time reaching their audiences. More important than the first performance is the second performance. So you want to make sure you're doing a piece, if you can, that you believe will have a life afterwards and many places are doing that now.

Ron Klemm
Yes. Oh, good. Lots of questions. Go ahead.

Marshall
Marshall from New York. How will AI influence music composition?

Leonard Slatkin
It already has. AI is here. It's been around for quite a while in the film industry. My son will be happy to tell you about that at some point. It's influencing us in so many different ways. The question is, how are we going to deal with it? How are we going to deal with technology in the first place?

We lost a great opportunity during COVID. With everything shut down, this was the time to be adventurous. It was the time to see how could we expand our reach for the time when we come back. We didn't do it. We had the concerts in masks. We had stuff that had been recorded years ago.

Not really new content, and not content created as a video component to what we might be doing in the future. So what do we do now? Well, I think we need to be creative.

I think we need to use AI, particularly to help promote what we might be doing live, with the understanding, very much like recording was, that it's a different medium. The live performance, you can't substitute for it. You have to make sure that people understand.

If you hear the Bach mass by this chorus, but then you hear an electronic representation, these are two different things. It's a different thing if they were to record that and you heard it a second time exactly the same way. But if they sing it live, it's going to be different the second time around.

Live versus recording, that's essentially the conflict of AI. Are we going to be replaced? No, I don't think so. There's still too much freedom and flexibility in the world of music. That's why we got in this in the first place. So I don't think we're going to see that, but we're going to see more supplementation of electronics and technology into the performance workspace.

And we need to use it. We need to be smart about this. We need to figure out how can we balance it.

How do we reach those people who are under 45 years old to come to performances using the technology that they know? We live in a visual society now. It's not a society governed by our ears that all of us grew up in. It's governed by your eyes. You listen with your eyes now. Figure out ways to make that work and then we'll be fine.

Drew
Hi, my name is Drew from Chicago. I want to come back to your comment about the Kennedy Center. And how do you think the artists and the employees working there now should process those works?

Leonard Slatkin
That's a really good question. What is the Kennedy Center current staff and employees doing?

I know because I'm in touch with several of them. They are scared to death every day they go to work. They don't know if they're going to have a job, if their pay is going to be decreased, what restrictions they're going to be put under.

Many of them don't want to use the entrance to the stage of the concert hall because there are photographs of politicians there now. They just don't want to be associated. They want their art to be separate from their politics.

We all do. You may or may not know that the staff of the center, not all of them, but a majority of them have unionized. It's something I don't really advocate in general for administrations, but here they have to because they have to protect their job security being as a unit, I know that a lot of people are looking for work elsewhere, and I know unfortunately that some people are interviewing for jobs at the center who are completely unqualified for the jobs they're being interviewed for. They're being interviewed on the basis of their political and faith beliefs without thinking about are they really capable to do this job.

So what do they do? We've all got to try to make a living, but we all have to be able to feel our freedom as artists. I wish I had a ready answer for this. If I was back in D.C. as the music director, I would have spoken out right away, but I can't do that now. I'm just a guest with other orchestras, and when you're a guest in the house, you don't want to rock the boat too much. But the next time, if I get back, and I have been been invited back to conduct a year and a half from now. I was there last in November, so nothing had happened yet, and I couldn't address it.

But if I go back there now, and if I somehow sneak in, you know for sure I'm going to say something. Leonard has nothing to worry about anymore. He's not going to be fired because I'm self-employed.

Ron Klemm
You'd have to fire yourself.

Leonard Slatkin
I have to fire myself.

Ron Klemm
Right, exactly.

Leonard Slatkin
And this is going to be the, I hope that people who are in my position, those of us who've achieved our career goals, will just get out there, speak up, primarily by advocating for education. I really am afraid the Kennedy Center, at least of today, is just maybe a lost cause now. It's going to change a lot, but we have to work just to make sure that our young people have access in the schools, and that they become the force that drives it.

So we're three generations now where we've seen funding for education go downhill. When I was a student in Los Angeles, my high school, public high school, three choruses, two bands, an orchestra. Peter Schickele was the composer-in-residence in my high school.

Ron Klemm
That's amazing.

Leonard Slatkin
Public high school. The arts in California were absolutely incredible. And you remember who ruined all that? Ronald Reagan as the governor. The person who was in the arts. So this is a, it's a battle. It's a fight. And as I said, just stay strong. Let us be. Let us grow. Back there. In the back. 

Ron Klemm
In the back. All the way to the back. Yes. Go ahead, Andie.

Leonard Slatkin
Oh, getting some exercise today. Look at that.

Ron Klemm
Move, move. Go, go.

Brandon
Hi, I'm Brandon from New Jersey, and I'm wondering if you could speak about one of your biggest pet peeves that you see from choral conductors. And if you could also share some advice for choral conductors, especially those who don't have the opportunity to work with an orchestra and then they have that grand opportunity.

Ron Klemm
I think he's asking for a friend.

Leonard Slatkin
When I was a student at Juilliard, they started a program where one of the orchestra conductors could go and also work with the choral conductor. Jean Morel was my orchestra teacher and Abraham Kaplan was the director of the choruses. And I was the one in the first year who got to do the choral one as well. I learned so much how different it is.

I really didn't know. You guys speak a whole different language. You got words and stuff that I never heard. So I figured it out. But the actual conducting itself is also different, but it's different for a reason. The difference is choruses have a huge advantage over orchestras because you see what everybody else is doing.

You see what your colleagues who are singing are doing, and you see, usually, not always, but most of the time, what the orchestra is doing, albeit in a keyboard version. Orchestras don't do that. My job as a conductor is to say, in bar 72 clarinets, you have this, but the strings are doing this at the same time.

So I have to spend a lot of time informing people about what to listen for. In a chorus, you don't quite have to do that. So as a conductor, therefore, your technique can be a little vaguer. You don't have to be quite so clear about one, two, three, four, when you're just working with the chorus, because everybody sees what's in front. They know who's coming in next, and they know who's singing with them. 

Now when you get to the first, it's easier for an orchestra conductor to go to a chorus than the other way around, because orchestras do not like to be confused. They want to know where one is. Choruses don't seem to mind. 

Ron Klemm
You just made some people very happy.

Leonard Slatkin
But I would suggest that all choral conductors, the best book on conducting is by Max Rudolf, called The Grammar of Conducting. I have a series of videos that I did in Detroit, which actually show you pretty much the basics of what you need to know to conduct. I haven't done anything now which combines chorus and orchestras.

I have two books out about score study, which are doing well. Now I'm writing three more. And I will probably get around eventually to writing a book about works with chorus and orchestra and how we approach it.

The concept of the books was what conductors need to know before they ever step foot on the podium, so you're prepared to deal with every question that can come up, every one of them. So maybe that's the answer. Take a look at basic orchestral conducting technique. See how it fits to yourself as a conductor. 

Other piece of advice, and there are a lot of them, but I'll give you one. Do not go outside what your physical body allows you to do. Don't try to imitate anybody else. You're all different. Everybody's physiognomy is different. Don't try to imitate, because then you're just imitating. Be you. Find a way to incorporate the little technical things you need to have to navigate both worlds, and you'll be fine.

Ron Klemm
Good advice, right? I thought so. One more.

Ben
I'm Ben from Kansas City, and staying on the music education theme, and we have a shortage of conductors in our country. And so what advice, actually let me say it this way. If you could time travel, what would you tell your younger self that you wish you knew about conducting and about being an educator?

Leonard Slatkin
In fourth grade, twice a week, Mrs. Otto would come to Wilshire Crest Elementary School. We would sing. We would play instruments. She had the auto harp. Remember the auto harp?

Ron Klemm
Oh, sure.

Leonard Slatkin
And even though I grew up in this incredibly musical household, incredible background, those times with Mrs. Otto were life-changing. Every so often, when I go back and conduct in Los Angeles, somebody might come backstage and say, you don't remember me, but I was in Wilshire Crest. Do you remember Mrs. Otto?

None of these people went into music, but that made the impact. Time travel for me actually is going back to the early 1950s, and just to say hi to Mrs. Otto, but I got to about seven years ago. She was still alive, and she came to one of my concerts, and I just thanked her so profusely.

That was the most inspirational person for a young person. I would say that to me, the most important role in music are those people who teach it, and teach it with a passion. Teachers in general.

Just, you know, these are the people who need to have the high salaries, but it has to be done with that passion, because if you have that, if you have that one person in your life that inspires you to move into music, whether you go into it for a career or not doesn't matter. When you have that, you have something so special. I now tell orchestras, when I finish my rehearsal period time, it doesn't matter if it's New York Philharmonic or Poughkeepsie, where I haven't been by the way, but I'm open.

I will tell an orchestra, what we've accomplished over the course of these few days has been wonderful, but please remember why you got into this business in the first place. Always go back to that, because when you lose that passion for the music, and you're doing it just for the paycheck, you've had a part of you ripped out. It's the passion and love of what we do that keeps us doing it, and always needs to be on the front burner.

Ron Klemm
Thank you for your passion, and your love, and your time with us. We are so incredibly grateful.

Leonard
I have one more question.

Ron Klemm
Oh, okay, one more. 

Leonard Slakin
What's the score?

Ron Klemm
What's the score?

Audience Member
0-0 in the sixth inning. 

Ron Klemm
Oh, really?

Leonard Slatkin
Whoa, okay. I've got to run out to the stadium now, and see the game.

Ron Klemm
Ladies and gentlemen, conductor Leonard Slatkin.

Today's episode of Bach Talk has been part of the 2025 Chorus America Conference. The associate producer of Bach Talk is Scott MacDonald, who also directed today's episode, assisted by Danielle Feinstein.

Special thanks to the Bach Society Chorus and to Dennis Sparger, entering his 40th season as music director and conductor. Thanks to the pride of County Court, pianist Sandra Geary, who's been the accompanist with The Bach Society since 1993, our technical director, a Grammy Award winner in his own right, Bach Society recording engineer Paul Hennerich. Paul was assisted today by Rachel Madison. House sound at the Hyatt, provided by Jared.

Special assistance today from our friends at Chorus America: Christie McKinney, Karyn Castro, Casey Cook and Liza W. Beth. Additional assistance provided by The Bach Society’s Melissa Payton and Zach Singer. As well as Andie Murphy and Charissa Marciniak of Right Relations.

From the Grand Ballroom of the Hyatt Regency at the Arch in downtown St. Louis, I’m Ron Klemm. Let us be, let us grow. Once again, give it up for our guest Leonard Slatkin.

Bach Talk is a registered trademark of the Bach Society of Saint Louis.

About Episode 21

Tune in to Bach Talk as host Ron Klemm and Music Director and Conductor A. Dennis Sparger sit down with one of today’s leading music publishers. Mark Lawson, President of ECS Publishing Group, also serves on the Bach Society Board and is the current Chair-Elect of the Chorus America Board. From growing up on a farm in rural Missouri to collaborating with some of the world’s top composers, Mark shares his unique journey through the world of music publishing. Hear how he’s helped bring new music to life and his hopeful perspective on where the future of music is headed.

About Episode 20

What makes Bach’s music move us so deeply, whether we share his beliefs or not? In this episode of Bach Talk, host Ron Klemm and The Bach Society’s Music Director and Conductor A. Dennis Sparger chat with scholar Michael Marissen about how Bach’s faith shaped his powerful compositions. Michael, author of "Bach & God" and "Bach Against Modernity", challenges modern assumptions about the composer. He argues that Bach was fundamentally “pre-modern” in his outlook, with a seamless connection between his music and beliefs. Tune in for a fresh take on the emotional and spiritual depth of Bach’s work.

Transcription

A. Dennis Sparger
This is Bach Talk.

Michael Marissen
Part of the reason that Bach is so well followed now is that is this is the profundity of the joy and the profundity of the sorrow in it so that you don't even have to know what those are attached to in order to be moved by it. It's the sound of the happiness of. Joy that you're, uh, affected by. And if you happen to have a general idea what the words mean and you're a believer, then that can, that's all even better.

And if you're an, uh, unbeliever and you don't know what the words mean, um, you don't care because you just enjoy reveling in the profundity of intellect and fueling from the sounds of the music itself.

A. Dennis Sparger
If you are a regular listener to this podcast, you know that we love to introduce you to members of our St. Louis Bach family. Singers, instrumentalists, guest soloists. They all play a vital role in our mission and help tell our story. Every once in a while. We like to branch out a bit and get a different perspective.

Today is one of those times.

Hello and welcome to Bach Talk. I'm Dennis Sparger, music director and conductor of The Bach Society of Saint Louis. Michael Marissen is one of the leading Bach scholars of our day. He is Professor Emeritus of Music at Swarthmore College near Philadelphia. Dr. Marin holds a BA from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a PhD from Brandeis University in Massachusetts. He joined the Swarthmore faculty in 1989 and since then, has also been a visiting professor on the graduate faculties at Princeton and at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Marissen has taught courses on medieval, renaissance, Baroque and classical European music, and on a number of composers, including of course, JS Bach. Currently, Michael is neck deep in a huge project providing informed, annotated, historically based translations into multiple languages of all of Bach vocal and choral works. It's a much more complicated endeavor than anyone could ever imagine, and he talks about that and a bunch of other things in the moments ahead.

A few years ago, I found an article in the New York Times written by Michael Marissen. It talked about the religion and hidden theology found in of all things the Brandenburg Concertos. That piqued my interest, as you can well imagine. It led me to explore two of his books, both published by Oxford Press, "Bach & God" and his most recent "Bach Against Modernity". In both cases, Marissa's Insight did not disappoint. I shared all of this with my colleague, Bach talk host and producer Ron Klemm. Several weeks ago, Michael graciously agreed to be our guest on this episode of Bach Talk. Ron and I spoke with him from his apartment in the West Village of New York City.

Ron Klemm
The idea of your first book, which is titled "Bach & God", did you get into any trouble with anybody for not calling it God and Bach? You've got to get your priorities straight. I understand.

Michael Marissen
Well, funny you should say that because more than one person said to me, and I won't give any names here, they said they were very glad that I listed the loser second.

Ron Klemm
Well, I'm glad you didn't list any names.

Michael Marissen
Yeah, yeah. I think it's true though, that from a marketing point of view, "Bach & God" sounds better than God and Bach.

Ron Klemm
But the point is, it's a book about Bach, the composer and all of the other things that he is. It's not first of all a theological book, I presume.

Michael Marissen
No, no. It's about the ways in which the music itself sort of projects religious ideas or reflects them and promotes them and so on. I was trying to argue against the idea that music is just beautiful and proportioned, and I mean it's all those things, but I thought that there was more to what Bach was up to than what you might call just the aesthetic or just the musical.

Ron Klemm
And what background do you have that qualifies you to talk about that? Tell us a little bit about Michael Marissen and his upbringing.

Michael Marissen
Well, I never tired of telling people that I'm not German and I'm not Lutheran, but I don't think there's anything wrong with being Lutheran. I don't think there's anything wrong with being German. What turned out to be quite helpful to me is in my childhood, I grew up in a relatively conservative Protestant community that didn't integrate very well with the rest of the world, Dutch immigrants after World War II, and so there was a very, very strong parochial education and Bible, not in historical things and so on, but in the content of the Bible. And so I got a really good sense for, I had better idea than most of what the Bach vocal works, what they're about, because it's not always transparent what those librettos are referring to. And if you have a strong Protestant Bible background, that really helps a lot. So that was part of it, but it was very rare for people of my background to go to college as one of the only ones who did. And when I was in college, I took German, not because I wanted to or because I wanted to converse in German, but it was because I wanted to be able to listen to Bach church cantatas and understand what they were singing in real time. And that was the goal. So I have sort of idiosyncratic, there's basic words in German that I don't know, I'm trying to think of what the word for sidewalk is. It's not coming right to my mind, but I do know what the word for justification by faith is.

Ron Klemm
I'm sure that comes in handy in the coffee shop.

Michael Marissen
Turns out to be quite helpful if you do care about what the cantatas and the other vocal works are actually about. Not everyone does, but I did and I thought as a scholar I thought it was very important to know these things. And so I also read enormous amounts of Brother Martin. It's really nice that these wonderful editions of his complete writings, and as you know, you wrote hundreds and hundreds of books, they turned out to be quite valuable for understanding what's going on in the Bach vocal work. So that was part of what the book was about. But I also went further than that. I wanted to suggest more generally one that the instrumental music of Bach is really not fundamentally different from the vocal music, just happens to not have words, but that the, sort of spiritual and intellectual and emotional orientation of the instrumental works is very similar.

And another very important general point to me was that both Bach's repertory and Bach personally reflect a sort of pre-enlightenment way of thinking, such that there's a very skeptical attitude towards reason. Reason is something you can use, but you can't depend on it. And that it's biblical revelation is where you decide whether something is true or not. And so that put him very much at odds with what was coming to be the case in the 18th century and in Europe where people were starting to value reason much more highly. But both in the private Bach in the public Bach, I think the evidence for his being sympathetic to that is overwhelming that he wasn't sympathetic to it. And some people find that idea very controversial because it's unwelcome as far as so-called proof for such a view. I think the historical proof over is extremely strong. So that's what the book is partly about too.

Ron Klemm
You mentioned that it is intended to be scholarly but not devotional. What does that mean?

Michael Marissen
Again, I don't think there's anything wrong with taking a devotional approach to something as long as you're upfront about it and say that that's what you're doing. But, I often been accused of sort of what I was saying at the beginning. He said, oh, you're just a young German Lutheran, so you're defending your guy Bach. So I said, well, actually I'm not that young and I'm not German and I'm not Lutheran. I wanted to sort of fight against the idea that especially popular these days, that it seems almost impossible for people to believe that you could not have a specific agenda. That whatever view you take of Bach is sort of your own politics and your own religion. And actually my own attitude towards politics and religion is quite different from Bach, I think would've found him quite disagreeable to talk to about religion and politics.

Ron Klemm
Well, and I'm sure he would've had a good argument with you too.

Michael Marissen
Yeah, yeah. No exactly. And I've actually been asked if you could go back in time talk to Bach, what would you talk about? I said, I don't think I would talk to him. I would say, oh man, can you please play for me the Well-Tempered Clavier, I'd love to hear how you play it.

A. Dennis Sparger
Yes, exactly.

Michael Marissen
That would be fantastic. I'm not so interested in hearing more about his views than I already know from his music and from the documents that survived.

A. Dennis Sparger
Yeah. And our unending search is trying to find out how he really approached the music.

Michael Marissen
But I guess with generalization, I would say, for example, as you know, the Bach had a large personal library of devotional theological books, and that list was made for tax purposes when he died, and it ended up being divided up between the spouse and children so that they could get the money from. But the only actual physical copy of any of those books that we know about where it's is in St. Louis, Missouri at Concordia Seminary Library. And that 17th century theologian Abraham Calov printed the entire Luther in large print and then in between each of the verses

Ron Klemm
Added his commentary.

Michael Marissen
He scoured through Luther to see what Calov's favorite comment on that verse was. If Luther hadn't said anything about a particular passage, then Calov said, more or less, this is what Luther would've said had he got around to commenting on this.

A. Dennis Sparger
Yes.

Michael Marissen
The reason I bring this up is an extremely valuable biographical document because people often complain about the fact that we have so little documentation of Bach. Unlike Mozart, for example, we have hundreds of letters and some biographers complain that we have too much information about some composers, but there's hardly any about Bach. It's like two-sentence letters of recommendation where he says, yeah, this guy's a really good singer or a good organist or whatever, you should hire him. Or it's a complaint to someone, you promised me that you'd pay me this and keg of beer, where's my keg of beer thing? So there's, there's not much to go on. But this Bible is really fantastic because it contains a large number of underlinings and it contains a fair number of marginal comments that are clearly in Bach's handwriting. And some physicists in California determined that the chemical content of the ink and the underlinings was similar or identical to the ink and the annotations of Bach.

So it shows that he's a very close reader of scripture and very close reader of Luther. And where this is really relevant, and ironically people say that it isn't relevant, is that a lot of the conservative ideas that are put forth in the vocal works are also things that similar things are underlined and commented on the margins by Bach. And some people say, well, this is only valuable if that stuff preceded his actual composing of the vocal works. And I take the exact opposite view in "Bach & God" in "Bach Against Modernity" and say that I know that what the folks would say if those marginal comments had proceeded, the would say, oh, he's just doing due diligence to please his conservative employers, but he's really a liberal modern thinker, and so on and so forth secretly. And so as I said, the exact opposite is true, the fact that in this public music and in his private musings, way after he's written the works, it shows that those private musings that he really does agree with what it says in the cantatas.

Ron Klemm
Consistently.

Michael Marissen
It's consistently. So that's enormous biographical significance. And someday, maybe a Bach biographer will really fully examine that in great detail. I talked a bit about it in connection with specific pieces in "Bach and God" and in "Bach Against Modernity." But I doubt that I'll ever get around to writing a full-fledged Bach biography. I don't think I have it in me, but God bless someone.

Ron Klemm
Well, you're young, Michael. Sure, you can. So this concept of Bach writing to pay the rent, of Bach being a vocational figure, it's true, but it's just the surface of it. Is that kind of what I'm getting?

Michael Marissen
Well, what's the great irony is that we use the word vocational. It's sort of disparaging these days, but vocational comes from the Latin word vocare, to be called. Bach and his contemporaries were good Lutherans who thought that if you were following what you were supposed to be doing, that was a calling, a calling from God. So I think Bach did think that what he was doing was a calling. And maybe you said you weren't sure that you knew much German, but it, it's interesting how the German language even nowadays has holdovers from what Luther brought into it. Germans nowadays often refer to what we would call a job. They call it a beruf, B-E-R-U-F, and beruf, which means to be called. And it's sort of a semi-dead metaphor now, but that word came from the idea that it wasn't just a job, but it was a calling. Anything that you do is a calling. You being a director of The Bach Society of Saint Louis is a calling. You doing podcasts is a calling, working as a church musician is a calling. So there's no doubt in my mind that Bach thought of his writing music for the court and for the church, whether it was liturgical music or secular music, that it was all part of a God inspired calling.

Ron Klemm
There's that Dutch Calvinist reformed background coming through.

Michael Marissen
No, but that's Luther, too.

Ron Klemm
Yes, I know. I know. I just wanted to give you a hard time. We're talking to Dr. Michael Marissen, who is Professor Emeritus at Swarthmore College, and of course the author of "Bach & God" and "Bach Against Modernity" and many other things which we'll talk about straight ahead, along with music director Dennis Sparger. I'm Ron Klemm, and this is Bach Talk.

A. Dennis Sparger
By the way, our guest, Michael Marissen was talking about the Bach Bible or more accurately Bach's own copy of Abraham Calov's Bible commentary in which Bach wrote numerous notes and corrections in the margins, revealing much more about the man and his thinking. These volumes are here in St. Louis in the special collections library at Concordia Seminary. Ron and I have both seen them, and we want you to know that we have been in touch with the curators there and are planning a special episode on the Bach Bible in the months ahead. Meanwhile, next month, our guest on Bach Talk will be music publisher Mark Lawson. He brings an entirely new perspective to our conversations and then a very special event, our June Bach talk episode will be held in front of a live audience at the annual Chorus America Conference held in downtown St. Louis and our guest, internationally renowned music director and conductor, conductor emeritus of the St. Louis Symphony, Leonard Slatkin. That's an hour you can't miss, for the insight, the stories and the unpredictable laughter and fun that Maestro Slatkin can bring. Leonard Slatkin, live and unscripted coming in June to Bach Talk. Now, back to our conversation with author and Bach scholar Michael Marissen. We spoke to him from his apartment in New York City.

Ron Klemm
Words matter. You are an author. You must live by that mantra, but words exist in various languages. So tell us about the problems that we experience in terms of understanding what texts mean, understanding what intentions are in music and so on, because of this problem with translation.

Michael Marissen
Yeah, my colleague, Daniel Melamed and I are in the middle of a massive project to make historically informed translations of all the librettos that Bach set to music and provide them with theological, linguistic and historical annotations. Because, to put it bluntly, a number of people have tried to translate them before, and have done a pretty good job. But our feeling was, as obnoxious as it may sound, that it wasn't quite good enough. It's no fault of those other folks. The problem is you really need to have a pretty good knowledge of the Bible, which many don't have, and you need to have a sensitivity to the fact that German words from the 17th and early 18th century that looked like they're the same as words that are used nowadays don't necessarily mean the same thing. That's true in English too. We constantly run against this thing.

Someone will say, oh, we've got someone in the choir as a native speaker, so we're all covered. I said, well, a native speaker actually is going to be almost the least useful person to have around because they're going to think that they know what it means already. And in fact, they're all the less likely to understand because they won't take the time to really go through it really slowly and be careful about it, not to be abstract about it. Let me give a really simple example. In the St. John for example, it says that one of the chorals that's commenting on the story refers to the fact that he uses the adverb milde, M-I-L-D-E, as an adver to describe the way that Jesus is bleeding on the cross.

So in modern German milde means gently. So when your CD booklets and it says that Jesus gently bleeds on the cross, and it sounds like that could be right, but in fact, it's counter to the very essence of the gospel of John where Jesus dying on the cross is a great moment of triumph. There's nothing gentle about it. And so our intuition is as translators is that that can't be right. And so you look in historical dictionaries, and the wonderful thing is that there's some central place in Munich that's made this fantastic website where you can search a word and it'll search all 28 historical dictionaries.

Ron Klemm
Wow. Who needs AI.

Michael Marissen
No, exactly. And it's brutal to read because they'll have a 30-page-single-space thing with abbreviations explaining what this word means. But if you dig around, oh yeah, milde in the 17th century is used as a theological term to mean copious or generous.

A. Dennis Sparger
Quite the opposite.

Michael Marissen
And Luther uses the word that way in his translation of the Hebrew Bible in the Psalms in some cases. But when you buy a Luther Bible, now those are updated because it's too confusing to people. So they put some other, or they'll substitute a word like that, which means generous, in order to make it clearer to later readers. So we felt it was very important to be not only sensitive to the Bible, but specifically sensitive to the Bible in the form that it was in Bach's day. Yes. And in the way that the words were understood in Bach's day.

A. Dennis Sparger
Sure. Well, I found it fascinating when I was reading "Bach & ,God", that there were so many examples of cantata text where you would not only show the original German, but then offer translations that you would find in half a dozen or more recordings where the author would provide a translation for us and how different they could be.

Michael Marissen
Well, yeah. I mean, sometimes they are legitimate differences of opinion or something, but sometimes they're just frankly just wrong. So it's important, I think, to at least know what the range of plausible things might be. But just a few weeks ago, we were doing one and struck me over the head as we were looking at the new Bach edition, and you know how the closing chorales in the original scores of Bach, often he doesn't bother to provide the text in the closing choral. He just provides the harmonization. It's only in the separate performing parts afterwards that the scribe will write in the words. And for this particular cantata, those performing parts are now lost. So all we have is Bach's score with no text for the final movement. And so someone had provided one in the 19th century, and that's the one that's in all the recordings and that's on all the booklets and so on and so forth.

And it said very, very straightforward. He said, you have to earn God's salvation. I go, oh my God, that's not right. Are you kidding me? Day one in catechism, they hammer into you. The most significant thing probably in the entire Lutheran Reformation is that's not the case. So I thought, what are people like asleep here? And so I looked into, oh, of course, that's what I discovered this had actually been added in the 19th century. And so we just said, this can't be right. There's absolutely no way that Bach even use this text. And so we provided it with the proper stance from a hymnal in Bach's day. So my point is that isn't always a matter just of translating correctly. You have to be really paying attention to what's in front of you too, to see whether the thing that you're translating is in fact even plausible in the first place. And so that was a particularly good example of that.

Ron Klemm
Obviously, if you want to sing these in English, which is we don't do much anymore thanks to supertitles and subtitles, you have to have some sort of sense of meter and rhyme. And so this must be where a lot of the problems happen.

Michael Marissen
Yeah, those are the most severe ones because no matter if you're Shakespeare himself, it's absolutely impossible to translate into another language where you maintain the rhythm and the rhyme scheme.

It's actually absolutely impossible. So I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. We didn't want to do that because we were concerned with what it actually meant. If you care about what it means, you won't do that. But if you want to provide a good experience for people where you change the meaning of it, but at least they understand what they're singing. I'm not knocking that, but I would say that's more of a devotional. Again, there's nothing wrong with being devotional, but that's a devotional exercise. If you want to sing what Bach actually set out what he was actually up to, then I think you just have to do it in German and provide a decent translation.

A. Dennis Sparger
Sure. Let me ask, are you doing all of this to provide performing additions for the marketplace or just to prepare performances?

Michael Marissen
They're made available for free to performers, to people teaching classes, to people making booklets. We put them on the web as something, or you can even look at on your phone in a concert with the dark setting and so on and so forth. But we also provide a, you can download a Word document that you can then reformat it into your printed program if you want. And we even made a so-called JSON e-version of it that's machine-readable. So we're trying to make it just as available to as many people as possible for free. And we've been very delighted, for example, that, I dunno if you know this series in the Netherlands, All of Bach, where they're recording all 1200 works of Bach on videos, they've done about four or 500.

Ron Klemm
Is this the Netherlands Bach Society doing this?

Michael Marissen
Yeah, exactly. And they've been using these now as much whenever they're available. And if they're not available, then they go to someone else. So we're very happy about the fact that for decades people have been studying so-called historical performance practice. What kind of organ did they use? If you played the note A, how many times did the air vibrate per second when you do that? Or how many people were in the choir and should you play with vibrato or not? And what kind of oboe is this and what is an oboe da caccia nd so on and so forth. And enormous amounts of historical research has been done on that and has been incorporated into some performances. But what's been really weak actually, is the actual content of the text. So that's, we're trying to provide that little, or big, I should say, missing piece.

Ron Klemm
That's the voice of Dr. Michael Marissen, professor emeritus at Swarthmore College. He's an author and we're talking to him about "Bach & God" and a whole lot of other things along with music director Dennis Sparger of our Bach Society. I'm Ron Klemm. This is Bach talk.

A. Dennis Sparger
It must have been almost a year ago that I found some type of an announcement about your book "Bach and Modernity", maybe covered in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. I thought I should get a copy of this. So I ordered one and read through it, and it was interesting to find that right off the bat, you're defining what the three words mean in "Bach Against Modernity". Would you like to say something about that?

Michael Marissen
Yeah, well, I mean, people have very strong feelings about Bach. I hardly need to tell you that.

A. Dennis Sparger
Sure.

Michael Marissen
And people don't like being, don't like their hero to be talked about in a way that's different from what they're accustomed to. I mean, this came up in the first place. I think it's talked a little bit about in the preface that I joke with all my colleagues, you suddenly get old when you get invited to give the keynote address at conferences. I was asked to do a keynote address at a conference, a wonderful conference in Massachusetts that was on Bach and global modernism and postmodernism and whatnot. I was going to turn it down. And then my spouse, a wonderful novelist, she said to me, oh, well and said, why are you going to turn down? I said, because as you know, I don't think that Bach is a modern figure. I think he's an anti-modern figure. I can't justly accept such an invitation to speak there. I don't think. She said, why don't you tell them that you'd like to talk about Bach against modernity?

Ron Klemm
There you go. See, that's why our wives are always right.

Michael Marissen
Which was a brilliant idea. And so I was a little apprehensive about, but I thought, well, I'll give it a shot. And they were a little bit taken aback, but that sounds really interesting. And at the very least, that ought to generate a lot of discussion. And so that's what I did. But as you were starting to allude to that, all three of those words, you could have a fist fight about what exactly they mean?

A. Dennis Sparger
Yes.

Michael Marissen
By Bach, do you mean Bach the man, or do you mean his music, or do you mean both by against, do you mean just in contrast to, or do you mean

Ron Klemm
Vehemently opposed?

Michael Marissen
vehemently opposed to, and modernity. What does modernity mean? That's the hardest one of all, too.

Ron Klemm
Yeah, well explain that one. What do you mean when you use modernity? What are you talking about?

Michael Marissen
Well, I was mostly talking about what kinds of things have, if you took an undergraduate history class and they talked about pre-modernity and modernity, what are the things they most likely would focus on there? And probably one of the central ones that we alluded to at the beginning of our talking today, the extent to which you're willing to exalt the use of reason or not. That's a real, really strong marker of a modern thinker. Others involve things like the extent to which you think that humanity is necessarily perfectable, but at least whether they really can genuinely get better or not by applying themselves to their situations and so on, which was a kind of optimism that modern thinkers had. It seems very much not in evidence in Bach, with a very dim view of, not quite dim a view of human nature as Calvinists do, but the Lutherans in Bach's day had a pretty, the conservative ones had a pretty dim view of human nature.

And that makes them I guess, also I would say pre-modern, a little bit less clear is the attitude towards not only this particularly monarchy, but more specifically what Germans called rangordnun, which is a wonderful phrase, rangordnun has to do with hierarchies and the idea is that just to give, one society, of course, hierarchical, we have a king at the top and subjects underneath them, and then manual labor is beneath them. And Luther's own view was that it was foolish to promote equality among people on earth because inequality was a necessary evil in a fallen world. And that it's only in the afterlife that you're going to have genuine equality, but if you pursue it too heavily in the present world, you're just sewing chaos. And chaos is really a bad thing. Pre-modern thinkers tend to have a much more respect for social hierarchy, whereas modern thinkers tend to be more skeptical, although Calvinists are a little bit more tricky on that because they're skeptical of monarchy. Whereas the Lutherans were, Bach was a complete monarchist. The idea that he would've been in favor of modern equity and quality and so on. Again, I don't see any evidence of that either in the vocal works or in his annotations, in his Bible, and so on and so forth.

A. Dennis Sparger

Let me turn the page in your book, so to speak. One of the things that really struck me, and this is because as performers we're concerned about why our audiences come to hear performances of Bach or other great composers, what are they getting out of it? And you really bring up this concept of comfort and joy that affects both of Bach lovers who come for religious or spiritual enrichment, and those who don't have any faith at all, and the words may not affect them the same way, but they also get comfort and joy out of all of this, you Richard Russo saying, most people don't want to be entertained. They want to be comforted.

Michael Marissen
That's true. I think that's a very profound observation that Russo made, I think, and I think that does speak to why B has such a wide range of people who are interested in him nowadays. It's almost inconceivable to a lot of people why Bach wasn't the first choice among the Leipzigers when they were trying to get the director of music of Leipzig in 1723, but if you're a historian, you can understand it a little more. Telemann was their top choice, who is a wonderful composer. Absolutely wonderful composer, but part of the reason that I think that Bach is so well liked nowadays is a combination of things, because we have different values than people did in Bach's day. In Bach's day, there was no great value placed on originality. Bach can't help being original.

Ron Klemm
He can't help himself.

Michael Marissen
And as I never tire saying, he has an extremely original voice, so to speak, a voice in quotation marks, without actually, what he has to say though, however, is not personal to him. What he's doing with his very individual sounding voice is promoting and reflecting communal ideas, not personal ideas. So Telemann was very good at these things too, but Telemann and various other German composers, they didn't have quite as powerful idiosyncratic voices as Bach does and the depth of emotion with which they set the music, again, it's wonderful. I love their music, but it just doesn't have the depth of intellect and emotion that Bach does. And so I think that part of the reason that Bach is so well followed now is the profundity of the joy and the profundity of the sorrow. And it's that you don't even have to know what those are attached to in order to be moved by it. The sound of the happiness and the sound of the joy that you're affected by. And if you happen to have a general idea what the words mean and you're a believer, then that's all even better. And if you're an unbeliever and you don't know what the words mean, you don't care because you just enjoy reveling in the profundity of intellect and feeling from the sounds of the music itself. I would never say that Bach is actually universal, because I think not everyone loves him, but he, he's a very, very strong niche

in modern music making. I think because of the great skill in putting things together in such a way that intellect is powerful, emotion is powerful, and they're in a really good balance with each other. Some composers can be more emotional or more intellectual than Bach, but they don't have this sort of perfect balance of those things like he does.

A. Dennis Sparger
And so much of this, I think has become so much more possible in the last, what, 40 or 50 years because of better performance practice methods. I remember as an undergraduate, listening to Bach was really a dull experience. Everything was slow and dark and very heavy. Yes. And wow, now it dances.

Michael Marissen
Yeah, and it's fantastic that there are four or five really quite good complete more or less complete recordings of all the Bach vocal works. And I grew up in a fairly, I wasn't super poor, but it was basically in the low end that was describing before. I mean, my family is farm hands all the way back to the Middle ages. People say to me when I was in graduate school, oh, you got to go to concerts. Recordings are no good. You don't really experience music unless you experience a lot. Of course, a live concert is fantastic. I've come to love that. But there were lots of people like myself when I was younger, there was no concert to go to. And if there had been one, we wouldn't have been able to afford it. But with my paper money, you could buy a LP of Gustav Lionheart doing the cantatas, and you could listen to it a hundred times. And I mean, I got to know the Bach vocal works mostly from recordings first before it became wealthy enough as a professor and so on that I actually afford to go to concerts in London and Berlin and New York.

A. Dennis Sparger
It's kind of interesting that all three of us come from rather similar backgrounds with our families, and yet still have found so much joy out of, dare I say, committing our lives to the music of Bach.

Ron Klemm
As I looked at your background, I found that you spent a little time at a little place down the street here called Washington University in Saint Louis.

Michael Marissen
Indeed.

Ron Klemm
Tell us about that chapter in your life.

Michael Marissen
Yes. Well, right after I went to Calvin College for undergraduate from a bachelor's degree, and then studied for one year in St. Louis, really enjoyed it. Studying with a great conductor, Nicholas McGegan, musicologist Laurence Dreyfus, who's quite a good Bach scholar and several others. And I would've stayed there, but as it happened, nearly the entire music history faculty all left at the end of the year that I was there. And so one of them helped me switch to another school where he thought he was going to be continuing to teach. It. Turns out he didn't get that job after all. But I went to there and I ended up getting my PhD from Brandeis University in Boston. But I thought Saint Louis was wonderful. I really enjoyed living there and would've been very happy if the faculty had stayed there, then I would've stayed there too. And the faculty got very much back on its feet a few years later. But in the meantime, I had to keep going.

A. Dennis Sparger
I want to make sure we don't spin out of time without having an opportunity for you to talk about Soli Deo gloria. And quite often we're under the impression that Bach wrote that at the end of all of his pieces, and this is just not quite true.

Michael Marissen

Right? Well, in fact, I think the fact that it's not true is what makes the fact that he did do it more significant.

A. Dennis Sparger
Yes. And when?

Michael Marissen
Yes, exactly, because I was stunned to read. I mean, people would say he hardly ever did it, and other people said he always did. These are things that there are such things as facts. These are things that easily check is not a subjective opinion. You can just, so I think I was the first person in a long time to do this. I just went through the entire Bach repertory and just looked at every single Bach score in his handwriting, whether it was music by him or because he did this also in when he was copying on other people's scores and made a notation of whether he wrote at the beginning. The two things they usually did was at the very beginning of the upper lefthand corner of the first page you would write J dot J dot, which was a short form for Jesu Juva, Jesus help me as I do my vocation. And then when he's done, he writes Soli Deo gloria, sdg. So glory, the glory of this belongs to God alone and not to the composer that very anti-modern too. Of course.

A. Dennis Sparger
Yeah. I was just going to add that. Yes, you're right. Yeah.

Michael Marissen
If you line these things up chronologically, what you find is that towards the beginning of career, Bach didn't do it all that often, but he was familiar with the practice. He knew about it, and he did it very, very infrequently.

A. Dennis Sparger
And others did this. It was not unique to Bach

Michael Marissen
By all means. And I haven't studied in great detail the frequency with which it's quite possible that some people who did it were insincere about it or that you can't really draw any significant conclusion from it. But in Bach's actual practice, it seemed pretty clear that there was a rise and fall to it, and there was a strong pattern to it. And the more personal trouble he was in, the more likely he was to write JJ at the beginning. And the more he actually accomplished, the more likely he was to write in. Soli Deo gloria at the end, so I thought I really saw this as just one more sort of marker of the genuineness of Bach's religious commitment to the reper. And this idea that I love, it's a phrase I think I borrowed from Dickens, probably won't remember it now, but in one of the footnotes, an article called The Lutheran Credo in Bach's Mass in B minor.

A. Dennis Sparger
Oh, wow. Oh yes, I did read that.

Michael Marissen
And I made a crack in one of the footnotes about it. As far as we know, Bach was never wrapped in contemplations of this future glory. I think he's thinking about Friday or Sunday morning. He's not thinking about in 2025, they might be doing 30 of his cantatas at the Leipzig Bach Fest. I think he would've been appalled at the idea that these Bach church cantatas were being, here I totally agree with my teacher Cal Stapert who said things like, why don't you write your own cantatas and why are you doing my stuff?

Ron Klemm
Talk about the, you alluded to it earlier, but specifically where we see Bach's faith, his world and life view as it's expressed in solely instrumental music, you have already made it pretty clear and put down this idea that Bach'sC goal was to write purely instrumental music. And so we can get past that. So where does this show up? How does it show up? And what's the significance of it?

Michael Marissen
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that some of these Lutheran patterns of thought are the kinds of thing that cause you to generate similar kinds of music. So probably the best example, this is the Brandenburg Concertos, if I can maybe oversimplify a little bit. The traditional biographical view has been that the absolute apex of Bach's output, both for us and for him, were pieces like Brandenburg Concertos and the church cantatas were written just to pay the rent. And the church cantatas, what the church cantatas essentially are Brandenburg Concertos with unnecessary words added to them.

And my view is exactly the opposite, which is that the Brandenburg Concertos are essentially like church cantatas, but they lack words, so they're harder to read. And so what I mean by that is that, just use one really simple example, like in Canata 70 of Bach, there's a really bizarre scoring thing that happens where you've got the right hand and left hand of the organ playing this twisty chromatic line that if you were just looking at a score and didn't know what instrument was supposed to be playing, you would never guess that it was an organ part. You would assume that those are violin parts. And then below that is a very simple baseline that's actually being played in the treble, in the soprano range by violins. And so what's happened in this piece is that the role of the violin, the role of the organ has switched places so that the organs pretending like it's a violin wood, and the violins are pretending like the pedals on an organ. And this is what in Bach day they was called, or the perverted world, the upside down world. And the idea was that if you represented things the opposite of the way that they were supposed to be, it would be so striking to you that would make you question the necessity in eternity of this hierarchy that we're, it's sort of like a Mardi Gras where servants dress up as kings and vice versa. You're allowed to do that for a day, just as a way of reminding you that the current situation is one that's ephemeral and that kind of Lutheran thought is then expressed in the cantata with that scoring. And the text actually talks about the word fahart even appears in the German of that aria. And then similarly in the Brandenburg concertos, you have instruments doing exacts like in the sixth virtuoso violas, the viola, the slag heap of the orchestra. And it's playing these wickedly virtuo things while the viola de gamba, which is the most very sophisticated French Barque instrument with highly virtuous music written for it in the 18th century. And it's just going in the background like violas often do in music by other people. And so I see that as a sort of instrumental world upside down without words, but it's basically projecting similar kind of ideas what the cantatas was. There's a trumpet motive that appears in about 10 or 15 church cantatas. It's probably the most significant example of it's in this magnificent cantata 75 watch and pray, pray and watch. You never know when he's going to come back.

A. Dennis Sparger
Right? Yes.

Michael Marissen
It's terrifying opening movement where that trumpet call is played over and over and over again, and all the times in the Bach cantatas taught us when that happens, the text is talking about what Lutherans called the third coming of Christ but, which all other Protestants called the second coming when Jesus comes back and is going to lead his followers and destroy the cosmos and make a new Jerusalem and so on and so forth. If you look up in trumpet signals from the 18th century, the nickname for that tune is, which means get on your horse.

But how does that have to do with anything? Well, it's because the idea is you're supposed to get on your horse in order to go into battle. And so the trumpet call is supposed to be terrifying. So that sort of evocation of that final battle. The reason I bring this all up is that there's a wonderful orchestra suite Bach wrote for the Calvinist court where he didn't have church music for reasons that we won't dilate on. That's another episode. But there's a bizarre, with this wonderful, elegant thing where oboes are going, you can just imagine the aristocrats with their wigs on and their lead paint and beauty spot making these gorgeous, but in the background, the string instruments go there and there's what the theologian called the eschaton. The end times I hear in this orchestral suite, people play it really softly because they think it doesn't fit with what the oboes are doing, but there's nothing, there's no indication in the music that you're supposed to play. You should be able to hear it much more prominently. It should actually sound like a weird sort of clash. And the point, and the reason is because it's evoking the same thing that's being evoked in the cantatas is the end times. Sometimes there can be quotations of Lutheran chorales and so on in instrumental music that will evoke textual content. And that's interesting. But I think the most interesting thing are these more general things like the world upside down business where it goes beyond specific words, but has to do with the actual structure of the music itself as opposed to quoting either words or melodies. But I don't know. I wouldn't say it all sounds the same to me, but I guess what I'm trying to say is it doesn't sound to me like the instrumental music is from a different world than the vocal music is from, from the same world as far as as I can see and hear.

Ron Klemm
Two sides of the same coin.

Michael Marissen
Exactly. Exactly.

Ron Klemm
Well, you have been a real joy to talk to and to get to know and to surprise and a comfort. Yes. Thank you so much for spending time with us. Been marvelous. We appreciate it.

Michael Marissen
Yes, great pleasure. Thank you for having me.

(46:15) A. Dennis Sparger
The Bach Society Orchestra playing the opening of Bach's Brandenburg concert number one from a concert in 2022. We also heard earlier from The Bach Society Chorus from Organist Philip Rowland. And pianist and box society accompanist. Sandra Geary, the recording engineer for all of these musical samples is Paul Hennerich.

We want to answer your questions, whether you have a question for me, for Ron Klemm or for any of our past guests. Take a moment right now to contact us with your questions. Just go to bachsociety.org. And click on Bach Talk. On that page, there's a simple form that you can use to ask your question. Or if you prefer, send us an email directly, bachtalk@bachsociety.org.

We look forward to hearing from you.

And again, as a reminder, next month our guests on Bach talk will be music publisher Mark Lawson, and in June. Leonard Slatkin Live and unscripted as Bach Talk will take place in front of a live audience at the annual Chorus America Conference in downtown St. Louis. Maestro Slatkin is an internationally renowned music director and conductor with keen musical insight.

He has a lifetime of behind the scenes stories, sure to bring copious amounts of laughter and fun. The Bach Society Chorus will perform live as well. That's Bach Talk Live with Leonard Slatkin, coming in June.

The associate producer of Bach Talk is Scott MacDonald. Special thanks to our esteemed guest today, author and Bach scholar, Dr. Michael Marissen. Additional assistance provided by Benita Walters Fredlund, Keith Fredlund, Andie Murphy and Charissa Marciniak, along with Ron Klemm. This is Dennis Sparger.

Bach Talk is a registered trademark of The Bach Society of Saint Louis.

About Episode 19

The conversation continues with internationally acclaimed soprano Christine Brewer! She’s sharing more stories from behind the curtain, including the reality of on-stage mishaps, her perspectives on teaching young artists and how our life experiences shape the way music is both performed and felt. With many accolades including a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame, she is a true star in every sense. But it’s her humility and kindness that shine through most in this heartfelt conversation. Join Ron Klemm and A. Dennis Sparger for another glimpse into the world of one of the greatest sopranos of all time on Bach Talk.

Transcription

(00:00) Ron Klemm
This is Bach Talk.

Soprano Christine Brewer began her career singing in the choruses of the St. Louis Symphony and Opera Theatre of St. Louis. After winning the Metropolitan Opera auditions and the Richard Tucker Award in 1989, Brewer performed with the top symphonies and operas around the world. Oh, by the way, I didn't write this.

As a matter of fact, I'm reading from the sidewalk, from a plaque that lies embedded on Delmar Boulevard, right alongside a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. And on that star, the name Christine Brewer is blazoned in gold. It's an honor bestowed on only a few of the most influential, most significant, preeminent St. Louisans, who have made a national impact on our culture and our history. Artists, performers, sports figures, entertainers, our region's most recognizable figures, past and present, are permanently celebrated on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. But I digress. Let me skip to the bottom. A meticulous, yet down to earth artist, blessed with a golden voice, Christine Brewer was named one of the greatest sopranos of all time by BBC Music Magazine in 2007, end of quote.

Hello and welcome to Bach Talk, I'm Ron Klemm. One of my greatest joys in life, I have to admit, is to know and have friendships and conversations. With some truly remarkable people. And recently I had a chance to sit down with two such friends. Bach Society Music Director and Conductor Dennis Sparger invited soprano Christine Brewer and me over to his Belleville, Illinois home.

We had a cup of coffee and a wonderful extended chat. We talked about music and singing, of course, and about Christine's amazing international career, including her many appearances with The Bach Society of Saint Louis. But we also talked about family, about relationships, and about life itself. I hope you've had a chance to hear our previous episode of Bach Talk, when Christine shared thoughts about her musical beginnings, her small town upbringing, her many travels, and a bevy of other topics.

We want to pick up today where we left off last time, and it will become clear almost immediately that Christine owes a lot of her concert career to Maestro Sparger himself. 

(03:16) A. Dennis Sparger
So many of these places you were spending a lot of time, especially in preparing for an opera. In the concert work, you were probably there for a much shorter period of time and didn't get to spend as much time with conductors and that.

Have you still built up a lot of long-lasting relationships? 

(03:33) Christine Brewer
Yes, yes. That's, that's good to bring that up too about the concert repertoire because, and you were a big part of that, Dennis, when, um, I was sort of trying to start out and figure out what, what I was going to do. I remember I called you and said, can I come and audition for you?

Um, and you very kindly.

(03:53) A. Dennis Sparger
I probably said, no.

(03:54) Christine Brewer
Who are you? 

(03:57) Ron Klemm
You wouldn't be here today if he said no. 

(04:00) Christine Brewer
And so you took a chance on me and hired me to start doing concert work. 

(04:06) A. Dennis Sparger
Oh, I had to. 

(04:08) Ron Klemm
What do you mean you had to? 

(04:11) A. Dennis Sparger
Well, at that time I was conducting the Masterworks Chorale and had a wonderful tenor, Tom Sturgis.

And his wife buttonholed me and she said, there's this young lady who sung at our church and she's just terrific and Dennis, you've got to hear her or else. So you came over

(04:30) Christine Brewer
That's good. 

(04:30) A. Dennis Sparger
to my house. I was living on the east end of Belleville at that time and you brought along Elizabeth. She sat underneath the piano while I accompanied and you sang for me and I said, okay, let's do this.

And, um, and you sang with us that following fall and you did a Bach cantata and was the soloist in the Brahms German Requiem. And that started it all. And uh, when I finally moved on to take the position with The Bach Society, you had already sung five times with The Bach Society with two of my predecessors, but, uh, but you sang in my first concert with, with The Bach Society, uh, doing a Bach's cantata 51, which was a big work for soprano.

(05:17) Ron Klemm
It's a tour de force for a soprano. 

(05:19) Christine Brewer
It is. I loved it. Oh my gosh. But that's the kind of stuff, and I would often, and I still, when I hear a young singer who is probably going to have a big voice, I tell them, if you can get into doing concert repertoire and learn concert repertoire, this is a way you can, you know, keep your voice healthy as you're preparing your Strauss or whatever, and you can earn a living. And I said, that for me was huge. And I've kept the concert repertoire up all through my career and because first of all, because I love it, but it also is a way to keep your voice and I'll quote Birgit Nilsson because she was a big mentor for me, healthy and youthful. Those were her two favorite words. And every time she heard me sing or she would write me a note about something she heard on BBC, well, your voice sounds healthy and youthful. This is good. But she said for her one of the reasons she thinks her voice was, you know stayed so strong was because when she was performing She said we didn't have this you could sing in Berlin one night the next night.

You're gonna be in Los Angeles or New York. She said I took the train to the next and I would study my music quietly and I didn't, you know, so she said try not to have your managers book you so many back to back things or put in a concert thing before you do another opera. And I really did. I mean, I'd say probably 80 or 90 percent of the time was able to do that. There were some times I thought, Oh, I can't get rid of this. I got to do this, you know, but um, but she was so right. So because you took a chance on me and we started doing concerts, it was like, I love this repertoire, you know, and I think that's what kept my voice healthy.

(07:18) A. Dennis Sparger
Oh, that's terrific. 

(07:19) Christine Brewer
Yeah. 

(07:20) A. Dennis Sparger
Wow. 

(07:20) Christine Brewer
I think. 

(07:21) A. Dennis Sparger
But having been around the world, there's so many different places. Are there some favorite halls that you love to sing in? 

(07:28) Christine Brewer
One of them is Wigmore Hall. 

(07:30) Ron Klemm
Oh, sure. 

(07:30) Christine Brewer
And it's in London. 

(07:31) Ron Klemm
Well, you've recorded there, too. 

(07:33) Christine Brewer
I have. I have. And I, I had my London manager, Peter Bloor, who was, he was not just an agent.

He was a manager. He would really, we would sit down and he would say, okay, where do you want to be in five years? And how do we want to get there? And as I knew that the Wagner was starting to come, and I started working on it. With Miss Nilsson, in my early 30s, I would say, 32, 33. And, um, and she said too, she said, the Wagner will come,

the Strauss will probably come before that. So I sang a lot of Ariadne's, you know, but she said, um, just, just take your time with the Wagner and, and, you know, let your voice develop. So I remember sitting down with Peter and I said, I would love to sing Isolde. Um, Here's how I'd love to do it. And at this point, I had been working with Donald Runnicles on, we had done, um, excerpts from The Ring, from Valkyrie.

We did, um, some concerts with the BBC Symphony. And, um, And I, in Berlin, I did the second act of Tristan and Isolde. That was, you know, so I had a little taste of it. But I said, I'd love to do the whole opera, but if it's possible to do it in concert the first time and to do it with Donald Runnicles, that would be great. And 

(08:59) A. Dennis Sparger
That's all. 

(08:59) Christine Brewer
They figured it out. They did. 

(09:02) A. Dennis Sparger
They did it, wow. 

(09:03) Christine Brewer
And Donald said, why don't we do three concerts and one night we'll do act one. And the first half we'll do something else. And then we'll do, next night we'll do act two, then act three. And, um, and I was 40 when I did my first Isolde and it was broadcast on BBC radio and, um, someone from Warner Records, Was listening, I guess it was, I don't know, maybe it was the second act night. And he, he called my manager the next day, he said, I was driving home from somewhere, and he said, I had to sit in the car to hear who the soprano was. And he said, um, we'd like to have her record this.

And so they ended up, Warner, well then I had another offer too, to sing it with Placido Domingo. And, um, it conflicted when they were going to do the recordings that conflicted with something else I was doing. And I said, I, I never wanted to just, you know, break a contract. I just didn't do it. 

(10:09) Ron Klemm
Well, that's part of your upbringing.

(10:11) Christine Brewer
I know, it is, it is. So, um, my manager said, well, okay, you missed that opportunity, but Warner Records is going to buy the recording from BBC. So they, they released it. So. We've got it at least, you know, recorded, but, um, but I think having, oh, but anyway, so, um, the Wigmore Hall, how did I get off on that one, Ron? 

(10:35) Ron Klemm
I know, I know.

(10:36) Christine Brewer
I'm sorry. 

(10:37) Ron Klemm
It's a good thing I could edit. 

(10:39) Christine Brewer
Yeah, really. I told you I was going to be long-winded. Um, but Peter Bloor would make a list so that whenever I sang, and I sang at Wigmore Hall several times. Um, Several times. And he made a list by composer, and we put what I sang by Harold Arlen, what year I sang it, what I sang by Samuel Barber, Berg, Bolcom, Britton, John Carter, Aaron Copland, Celia Storti, Foster, Richard Hundley, Charles Ives, Marx, Menotti, oh yeah, um, Gian Carlo Menotti wrote And Um, a song cycle for Soprano, and he wrote it for, um, did he write it for Beverly Sills?

I think he wrote it for Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, I think. Anyway. I met Gian Carlo, um, because I sang at the Spoleto Festival down in Charleston. And, um, again, Elizabeth was on the trip with me. And my pianist, um, and the three of us.

(11:48) Ron Klemm
Who was who? 

(11:48) Christine Brewer
Kurt Pabot. 

(11:49) Ron Klemm
Oh, sure. I remember Kurt. 

(11:52) Christine Brewer
And, um And we did a recital and so Elizabeth was with us, so she just sat up and I said, can you get her a comp ticket?

I didn't know where she was going to be sitting, but she was seated next to Gian Carlo. And, um, Oh my gosh. In the first 

(12:09) Ron Klemm
You're blushing. 

(12:10) Christine Brewer
Oh my gosh. As I recall some of this. Now, why is it? that we remember the, the, the bad things, the mistakes we make. Oh, that's what we

(12:20) Ron Klemm Don't get me started. 

(12:21) Christine Brewer
It's like, really? But I did a big, it was a big recital. I did a lot of, I want to say probably the Wagner Wesendonck Lieder and some Strauss songs, and maybe some Joseph Mark songs in the first half. It was, it was a heavy first half, second half we were doing, we started out with some Irish folk songs and 

(12:43) Ron Klemm
lighten up a little bit.

(12:44) Christine Brewer
Yep. Yep. And, uh, we're going along and I started singing. Um, it was one that was had, it had like seven verses and I, 

(12:56) Ron Klemm
you mean a Bach Chorale? 

(12:58) Christine Brewer
Yeah, right, right. And I, I got lost after like the fifth verse. And poor Kurt, I could see his, I could still see his face of horror as I just stopped and I, and of course, I started laughing.

I said, I said, Oh my gosh, I said, I looked over at Kurt and he's just like, Oh, no, tell me. And it had a real accompaniment that was really difficult. Yes. Yes. 

I said, okay, here's the deal. You all have the gist of this so far. He's been there. He's danced there. He's dead. We're going to just pick up on the fifth verse, if that's okay.

And we just went on and finished it. And he just looked at me and he said, the thought that went through my mind was, okay, that was fine for this. She cannot do that again in this concert, and I didn't. I made it through, but the first thing Elizabeth said, she was about seven. She walks in the dressing room after and she went, Ah, what happened?

She said, and I'm sitting right next to Mr. Spoleto. I said, Monati is his name. And she said, I was just so embarrassed. I was so embarrassed. I said, well, honey, I said it happens and you just pick up and keep going, you know, but 

(14:15) Ron Klemm
wait a minute. It happens?

(14:17) Christine Brewer
It does. 

(14:17) Ron Klemm
To the top 20 sopranos of all time. I'm serious.

This is something to talk about. In fact, why don't we, why don't we take a quick break here and come back and talk about that and many, many other things that is the healthy and young voice of Christine Brewer. Along with music director Dennis Sparger of The Bach Society, I'm Ron Klem. This is Bach Talk.

I want to take a moment to remind you that we plan to spend some time in our next episode and beyond answering your questions. Whether it's a question for our music director and conductor Dennis Sparger or any of The Bach Society staff, a question for me or for any of our previous guests, we want to answer it for you.

And we have an easy way for you to send us your question or comment. Just go to BachSociety.org and click on the Bach Talk page. There you'll find a simple form that you can use. Or if you'd rather, shoot me an email directly. BachTalk @bachSociety.Org. I look forward to hearing from you. And now, back to our conversation with internationally renowned soprano Christine Brewer.

We were talking about, I believe the phrase is, train wrecks. These happen in life and also in your line of work. What is the best way to Approach that type of thing. Do you, do you just forget about it and move on or do you embrace the moment? How, how does that work? 

(15:54) Christine Brewer
Probably a combination of all things.

Um, I do, and I remember this Dennis, and I'm sure you do too. When we did the Bach B minor mass, this is what the Masterworks Chorale. 

(16:09) A. Dennis Sparger
Oh, okay. 

(16:10) Christine Brewer
And I remember one movement when I just, I don't know if I turned the page too soon, too late, didn't 

(16:17) A. Dennis Sparger
Or turned two at once. 

(16:18) Christine Brewer
Turned two at once. I don't know what happened. I got lost. And I just remember that deer in headlights look I was giving you like, Oh my God. And why do you remember that stuff? You know, I mean, it's just. It's like, Oh, come on, Chris, get over this. 

(16:32) A. Dennis Sparger
Well, thank goodness. I've forgotten that. 

(16:33) Christine Brewer
Oh, good. Oh, well, now you've got it. 

(16:36) A. Dennis Sparger
I must have the recording somewhere. 

(16:37) Christine Brewer
Oh, no. No. 

(16:40) Ron Klemm
And we'll dig it up. 

(16:41) Christine Brewer
Oh, great. Yes. But yeah, it, it does happen. And for me. It happens if I'm doing an opera and you've got several performances and it usually happens about the fifth performance and sometimes you get a little bit over, you know, just kind of autopilot and all of a sudden I remember one time doing Fidelio and I'm, you know, I'm acting my guts off, you know, and, and I'm hearing this music and I'm thinking, somebody's supposed to be singing right now.

And I'm looking at them, the conductor and I'm the you know yeah, are you going to, and I'm like oh it's me, shoot!

So sometimes, and I just keep, you know, acting like I meant to do that, um, sometimes I make up words, you know.

(17:33) Ron Klemm
Watermelon, 

(17:34) Christine Brewer
Well, no, no, no, really, really words that are, and I had a French, um, coach when I did Alceste at the Santa Fe Opera. And that's one long opera. And Alceste is only off the stage for 15 minutes in the whole opera.

(17:51) Ron Klemm
Holy smokes. 

(17:52) Christine Brewer
Yeah, yeah. And, um, I had two children who were my children in the opera. They didn't sing, but they were always around me. I go to hell in the third act and, you know, and that production I was lying on the floor at one point and the devil was on top of me, this six foot seven guy is on top. And, um, sometimes I would just sort of forget.

You know, but I would sing something that meant what I was supposed to say. And so she would give me my notes. So she'd go, I know that you, you meant to say this, but I just want to correct that this is the phrase. But she said, you sang it in French. What you're saying was the word, but let's just try to get the right words.

I said, I'm shooting for that. I'm shooting for the right words, you know, but sometimes, you know, when I forgot the words on, on the. little Irish song, you just have to have a little bit of a sense of humor.

(18:44) A. Dennis Sparger
Of course.

(18:45) Christine Brewer
You know, um, you can't quite, you can't do that, you know, in an opera where you've got the, everybody's, you know, doing their thing.

Um, one scary moment I had, um, It was in Tristan and Isolde and it was with the San Francisco Opera and we had a prompter. And I don't, and when we work with prompters in rehearsal, they always will ask you, What do you prefer? Do you want me to say the first two words of your phrase? Do you want me to, you know, they're always.

It's a little bit ahead of the beat. They have a little video camera so they can see the conductor and then they've got their stand with their music. And um, I usually just say, if I look at you, it means that I need you to say the first word. Um, but I don't usually, I don't really have to use it. 

(19:41) Ron Klemm
You haven't depended on it.

(19:41) Christine Brewer Not too much, you know. But we were in the middle of 

 Tristan and Isolde and in that second act, you know, with Tristan and Isolde, it's like, I'm the light, you're the dark, and it's singing all this. And, um, and again, it was like maybe the fourth performance, and I am just singing my heart out, you know. And I see, I see the prompter put his hand up.

And like, like press, like stop. Yeah. Stop, stop. Do you think I responded to that? I just assumed it was the tenor that he was. I know.

(20:19) A. Dennis Sparger
A good assumption. 

(20:20) Christine Brewer
I know that's really rude. 

(20:21) Ron Klemm
Yeah, that's, no, that's, no, that's perfect. 

(20:23) Christine Brewer
But I just thought.

(20:25) A. Dennis Sparger
You know what the tenor is thinking. 

(20:26) Christine Brewer
Oh my gosh. Why is he so, and then I see conductor giving me one, uh, doing this sign. So again, 

(20:36) Ron Klemm
just for, for our nonvisual listeners, you're putting your hand up like a patrolman. 

(20:42) Christine Brewer
Yeah. Yes. Like a patrol. 

(20:43) Ron Klemm
Okay. I'm sorry. Go ahead. 

(20:44) Christine Brewer
Like a traffic stop. Right. 

(20:46) Ron Klemm
Yeah. 

(20:47) Christine Brewer
And I'm like, for God's sakes, what's going on? Then, when I got close to the prompter's box in my staging, you know, the prompter pulls himself out of the box and leans over to me and goes, Stop singing!

And so I stopped and I realized then that I was about four bars ahead of everybody. But you know, when you're singing Wagner and you've got, you know, big tenor singing, but you don't hear the orchestra. 

(21:17) A. Dennis Sparger
You can't. Yes. Yeah. 

(21:19) Christine Brewer
And so then I got back on track. Okay. So. Finish the act. All's good. And, um, I was in my dressing room at the end of the opera and, um.

Donald Runicles was conducting, and he came in and he goes, Bloody hell, Christina, what were you doing? Do you know what that sign means? I said, I know what that sign means, but he said, You never get, I never get the snap, snap. If they do the snap, that means you're slow, you're dragging. Sure. I never get that sign.

Hmm. He said, Yeah, because you're usually rushing. He said, So he said, If you see this sign again. It's for you. It's like, okay. All right. All right. All right. Anyway, and it all worked out. And I don't think that the audience probably noticed it. I don't think I don't know. 

(22:10) Ron Klemm:
But you can't look back. 

(22:12) Christine Brewer
No.

(22:13) Ron Klemm:
It's done.

(22:13) Christine Brewer
It's done. And that's the thing. I try to tell students to, um, And especially if I'm doing a master class, I try to keep a little humor in and I can tell when sometimes a student has something that's got a high note or something and they, they kind of tense up and I said, well, you know what, let's just, just sing it.

Just let it loose. Just sing it. Tell that story. Oh, I don't know. I'm kind of nervous about that high A. Okay. I said, well, what's the worst thing that could happen? Well, I could crack on it. Huh, I said, will anybody die? Well, no, no. I said, you know, my daughter's a nurse. And if she would give the wrong medicine to someone, there, there's a possibility that the patient could be injured or die. But I said, in our profession, nobody's going to die if you crack on a high note. And sometimes it helps the student kind of loosen up. 

(23:12) A. Dennis Sparger
Some of these things can just happen.

(23:13) Christine Brewer
They happen. 

I, I was sitting one time, I wanted to, I was in San Francisco and I wanted to sit in on a dress rehearsal of Capriccio or something, something that I wasn't in.

I was there doing something else and I was sitting there and it was a lot of their patrons were sitting there, allowed to come into the final dress. 

(23:31) Ron Klemm:
Open rehearsal. 

(23:33) Christine Brewer
And there were a couple gentlemen behind me. Not really whispering, they were talking before it started and they got to talking about Jesse Norman and I thought, Oh, no, not Jesse Norman, Leontyne Price.

(23:45) Ron Klemm:
Oh yeah. 

(23:46) Christine Brewer
And I thought, Oh gosh, I love Leontyne Price's voice. They start talking about, well, I was at Carnegie Hall in 1965 when, and I thought, Oh, they're gonna tell some really cool story and she cracked on a high note. And the next one, Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And then they start just grousing about that. Okay, do you think that I could have just minded my own business.

(24:12) Ron Klemm: No.

(24:12) Christine Brewer No. So I turned around and I said, I'm sorry, you gentlemen are talking loud enough that I heard what you said. And is that all you've got to say about that wonderful Leontyne Price, probably one of the best singers ever. That is, I said, that is really shameful. And then I turned around. And then I could hear him going, Oh, that's Christine Brewer.

And so I thought, well, they're probably going to be talking about me now, you know, but I just thought really? So really, I don't think people really remember those moments, and if they do, get a hobby. 

(24:48) Ron Klemm:
Yes. That would be a nice way of saying it, but yeah, if that's what you focus on, I feel sorry for people like that.

(24:58) Christine Brewer
Yes.

(26:11) Ron Klemm:
From The Bach Society archives, the duet From Bach's Cantata 63, Christen, ätzet diesen Tag christine Brewer, soprano, along with bass baritone David Berger. Taken from the radio broadcast of the Bach Society's Christmas Candlelight Concert in Powell Hall back in 1990. By the way. You want to hear something funny?

Listen to the announcer.
The Bach Society of St. Louis presenting Bach's  Cantata No. 63, Christians Mark You All This Day. The soloists, soprano Christine Brewer, mezzo soprano Rhonda McPhee, tenor William Burden, and baritone David Berger. Dr. A. Dennis Sparger led the Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra. This cantata probably composed for Christmas in 1714 when Bach was still in Weimar.

Sounds a lot like my much younger brother. Anyway, more with Christine in just a moment. This is Bach Talk.

(27:40) A. Dennis Sparger
You were talking about your work with students. Since we're both subscribers to BBC Music Magazine, we both have been reading over the last few years some of the editorials about what's happening with music education in England. That apparently an incredible long running history of music in the schools now is beginning to disintegrate.

And, of course, we see some of this happening here, um, yet you still are able to find very fine young students in your work, especially at Webster University. Um, do you have some comments to make about what's happening with our music programs in this country? 

(28:24) Christine Brewer
I, it's very sad. I mean, I only taught one year.

I taught K through 12 music down in Marissa. There were three schools, two elementary schools, and then the high school. And, um, and then I did a program called Opera Tunities, the students named it that. Well after I had taught there, their sixth grade teacher invited me to come. Well, she actually invited me,

she said, we're doing some geography, and I wanted to just, she said, I read your travelogues that you send, you know, and I thought this might be fun for the kids. Where in the world is Miss Brewer? And I was gonna put a map up and I said, well, could I come and talk to the kids? And this developed into about a 15 year thing, you know, um, and it wasn't a music class.

She was a sixth grade teacher, but those kids got to come to rehearsals at the symphony, you know, whatever I was singing, that's what we would discuss, you know? Um, but it is, it is a shame. I know some of the school systems, I don't know if their budget, they can't afford to have music. I don't know. Um, a lot of schools will sort of have a little tiny music department or, uh, and then some schools.

My, my grandson Oscar is in the Afton schools and they have band and orchestra and choir and you know. 

(29:46) A. Dennis Sparger
Wonderful. 

(29:47) Christine Brewer
So that's good. But I don't know. I don't know how to address it I I think a lot of people don't think that it's important, but those of us who know Music know that if you study an instrument and study and learn to read music It will help your reading skills. It will help your math skills. 

(30:06) A. Dennis Sparger
Yeah. And, and a lot of those reports have been available for 35, 40, 45 years.

(30:11) Ron Klemm:
It's out there. 

(30:12) Christine Brewer
Yes. 

(30:12) A. Dennis Sparger
The information is there. 

(30:14) Christine Brewer
Yes. 

(30:14) A. Dennis Sparger
And, and still the people who make these decisions in schools don't see that their students can benefit so much from having a musical background.

(30:24) Christine Brewer
Yeah. I, I, I will tell you one little story. That happened with the Opera Tunities group. And as we grew, I started bringing a couple members from the St. Louis Symphony to play and talk to the kids about their, you know, growing up in music and David Robertson became involved. Um. And he allowed the kids to come to one closed rehearsal.

And when we did, um, the War Requiem by Benjamin Britten, I thought, Oh man, I hope the kids will get this. So I had recorded it in London and I gave a recording to my friend, Nancy Wagner, who was a sixth grade teacher, and she said she would just play one movement a day when the kids were in the classroom just so they kind of got used to the music.

(31:11) A. Dennis Sparger
And the sound of it. Yeah. 

(31:13) Christine Brewer
And I would always before, you know, before I did Fidelio with the symphony or before I did, you know, War Requiem, I would go to the school a couple days before they were going to come to the rehearsal. And just, if you have questions. Ask me now when you go to the rehearsal. It's not like a performance.

They may start at the end. They may start here. You can't applaud, you know, it's just a rehearsal So anyway, so I get there and she had all and it wasn't a big class. There were two sixth grade classes, maybe 50 kids. We're in a big circle and They have their little questions. And this one boy, I will never forget this, he raised his hand and he said, you know that one part of the War Requiem, where, um, Abraham and Isaac, do you know that part?

I said, yeah. Well, you know that's not the real story that's in the Bible. I said, yes, I do know that. I do know that. I said, why, why do you think that the poet decided to write it that way? Now, I'm, the whole time, I'm watching Nancy, you know, she's just standing behind these kids, and this boy says, well, we were talking about it at lunch the other day.

(32:22) Ron Klemm:
Great! 

(32:23) Christine Brewer
And I'm like, oh, okay. And then he said, now these are 12-year-old kids, and I asked him why he thought Wilford Owen Who wrote the text had changed that story. He said, well, we were talking about it at lunch the other day. And here's what we thought. We thought that Abraham was supposed to represent the old men who start the wars and Isaac represented the young men who were killed in wars. And I thought these kids get this and at that time, there were a lot of these kids whose siblings. We're in, um, fighting in Afghanistan and, you know, and I always gave them my email address and, um, and one girl wrote me an email one night, and she said, I can't sleep.

My brother's, you know, he's fighting in a war and I don't know what to do. And I wrote her back on the email and I said, do you have his email address? Because you're such a good writer. I bet he'd love to just hear from you, you know, and those kinds of things happen when kids are involved in music. If we say, oh, well that, oh, we're not going to take that kid to see the War Requiem when they won't understand it.

(33:35) A. Dennis Sparger
They won't understand. 

(33:36) Christine Brewer
You know? And I think sometimes we underestimate what the kids are available, you know, able to do. 

(33:44) Ron Klemm:
You did an interview with somebody and I don't remember the context, but you said something that we will often say when it comes to great music and why it's important to go, just as you said, to go to hear a piece, whether you think you are in love with that particular composer or that piece or whatever.

Someone will be hearing this piece for the very first time, right? And, and so we get it, of course, that's why it's so important to do what we do. But then you added this and someone, and someone may be hearing it for the last time. 

(34:24) Christine Brewer
Yeah, yeah. 

(34:27) Ron Klemm:
Does your perspective change as you as we get older? 

(34:30) Christine Brewer
I don't know. 

(34:31) Ron Klemm:
I'm sorry.

(34:33) Christine Brewer
Thanks, Ron. I didn't know I was gonna cry on this. Actually, I first heard that. Um, when I sang. Uh, with Robert Shaw, he said that to me before we walked on stage and he said it to the other soloists and it just stuck with me. And I try to think about that every time, whether it's, Oh, I'll tell you another Four Last Songs or it's another, whatever.

(35:05) Ron Klemm:
You can't phone it in. 

(35:07) Christine Brewer
No, no, no, no, no. And, and I say this to students too. I, I, I've, I'm such a nerd. Um, I've, I've kept track of every time I've sung Strauss' Four Last Songs in the front cover of my score and I've passed a hundred performancesa couple years ago. And I did my last ones I did were up at the with the Elgin Symphony for their 75th anniversary.

It was a couple years ago. And, um, and I say this to students, I said, you know, sometimes we sing pieces that we love. And, um, but you don't ever want to just let it become automatic or Oh, yeah, I know how this goes. Because your life changes every day. And Your life experience informs how you're going to tell the story and I still remember I wanted to sing the four last songs. The first time I heard him was at St.

Louis Symphony with Heather Harper. Oh sure, and I just was blown away It was so beautiful. And so I went to my next voice lesson I was about 18 and I had bought a score and I brought it in to Mr. Freiner And, and I will never forget, he looked at the score and he said, yes, these are beautiful, beautiful songs and you will sing these someday. He said, but you're not ready to sing them now. I would suggest for the next 20 years, you study the poems and, and then perform them. And I almost, it was not quite 20 years. Cause I was about 18 when I was 30. However many years that would have been, I did sing them first time in Bournemouth.

And he was so right because my, my whole view of those songs changed over my life and they're different now than they were when I was 30, you know? And so that's the exciting thing about making music. You bring your life experience each time you sing it. So it's not like I want to make sure I sing that high G like I sang it last time. You know, that's boring. That's boring. But make it Fit what your life expresses now, you know? 

(37:21) Ron Klemm:
You're doing what you were called to do. What is your thought about calling? Whether it's being a broadcaster or nowadays a podcaster. 

(37:32) Christine Brewer
Right, right. 

(37:33) Ron Klemm:
Or what, what, why is calling important? Or what's your, what's your sense of what that means?

(37:42) Christine Brewer
Well, as my mom would say, You were born with this talent, whatever you want to call it, gift, but how you use it is so important. And, um, I guess I feel responsible. Do you know, I feel 

(38:01) Ron Klemm:
To whom? To me, to an audience, to God? 

(38:06) Christine Brewer
To all of the above. Yeah. So that I'm not just casually, you know, Oh yeah, I got another gig on this.

It's no big deal. Do you know, every, I try to get to a point where everything is really meaningful and special for me. And for me, I usually, if, if I'm planning like a recital or something, I really go through the texts. I'm most, um, drawn to the poems that I really like. And then, then it's like, oh, how did Schubert set that?

Oh, how did Joseph Marx set that? You know? And does it fit me? Does it? And there are some things that fit and some things that don't. And You know, um, I was offered a lot of things early on in my career, which I just didn't feel like it would work, you know, and, um, And I guess I've said this thing about, you know, this is my mom's, you know, this is your gift and you have to use it a certain way.

I heard Oscar, my grandson when he was about seven, tell somebody, he said, you know, I think God blessed me to be an athlete to be a first baseman and a slugger. I mean, he's telling us, and he said, but you know what? It's on me to be, to practice and to make it work or whatever. I mean, and Ross said, he's just heard you say this a lot when you lecture your students or whatever.

But you know what? I think we all do have certain gifts that we're given and I don't know, I think it's important to find those gifts. I think one of my gifts is also, I like to communicate. Well, I can communicate through singing, but I can also communicate with people, chatting with them, talking, you know, um, I helped start a community dinner in our town.

We're on our third year. We thought we would just get like, you know, we'll do it for the summer. You know, we had like 25 people the first one. We're serving like a hundred people and, and we have different themes and people are like, no, wait, when is the taco night? Okay. What night is the, you know, whatever.

So I mean, I think we have to find gifts and, and, and then live them. I really do. 

(40:26) A. Dennis Sparger
And we can bring people together so much through our musical performances. 

(40:31) Christine Brewer
Yes! Yes! 

(40:32) A. Dennis Sparger
That, uh, they're all responding to the same stimulus. 

(40:37) Christine Brewer
Yeah. 

(40:37) Ron Klemm:
Even though they come from different places. 

(40:40) Christine Brewer
Well, and have you found too.

(40:41) A. Dennis Sparger
And they're drawn together closer as a community.

(40:44) Christine Brewer
Have you found when people have heard a performance you've done and they'll say something that they thought was so amazingly spectacular and it was, and then you think, wow, and maybe you didn't feel that same way, you know. I love that because each person is experiencing it with their life experience, you know, and yeah, it's, it's really, I love it. I love it. 

(41:12) Ron Klemm:
Well, I wish we could have gotten you out of your shell just a little bit more. 

Thank you. Thank you so much for just opening up and just chatting with us. Thank you. This is fun. Do I have to stop the tape? Because we're going to talk for hours. 

(41:28) Christine Brewer
I know. And you made me feel 

(41:31) Ron Klemm:
I said tape. Can you believe how old I am?

(41:33) Christine Brewer
Well, I know. And I knew what you meant. But, but just, you both made this very easy and relaxed. And that's Thank you for that. 

(41:44) Ron Klemm:
That's one of the top 20 soprano.

(41:48) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes. 

(41:48) Ron Klemm:
Okay, never mind. I'm off on that now. 

(41:50) Christine Brewer
Oh, whatever. 

(41:51) Ron Klemm
That's my friend Christine Brewer, and along with Bach Society music director and conductor Dennis Sparger, I'm Ron Klemm and this is Bach Talk.

From a Christmas Candlelight Concert at Powell Hall in 2017, Mack Wilberg's arrangement of Oh Holy Night, Dennis Sparger leading The Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra, the soprano Christine Brewer. You can download that and all the other tracks from The Bach Society's album Joy to the World. Go to BachSociety.org and click on watch and listen. Remember now, we want to answer your questions for me, for Maestro Sparger, for any of our past guests. Take a moment, right now, contact us with your questions. Go to BachSociety.org, click on Bach Talk. There's a simple form that you can use to ask your question. Or if you prefer, send me an email directly, BachTalk@BachSociety.org.

The associate producer of BachTalk is Scott MacDonald. Special thanks, of course, to Christine Brewer and Dennis Sparger, The Bach Society's recording engineer for our performance excerpts. is Paul Henrick. Additional assistance provided by Andie Murphy and Charissa Marcinia.

Bach Talk is a registered trademark of The Bach Society of Saint Louis. I'm Ron Klemm. 

About Episode 18

Grammy Award-winning soprano Christine Brewer takes us on a journey from her roots in Southern Illinois to commanding the stages of the world's most prestigious opera houses and concert halls. Join Ron Klemm and A. Dennis Sparger on Bach Talk as they chat about her influences, her commitment to storytelling and the role family plays in her career.

Transcription

Ron Klemm (0:00)
This is Bach Talk.

Christine Brewer (0:16)
I was fortunate that I had a teacher who didn't push me vocally and just taught me how to tell a story, and this is what I try to do with the students. I said, your job is to tell a story, whatever song you're singing, whatever language it's in, you better know it well enough that you can tell the story.

Ron Klemm (1:08)
The town may go by a different name, but the similarities are striking. The beauty, the calm, the smiles and the voice of the town's storyteller is unmistakable.

Christine Brewer (1:39)
I'm not saying disregard your technique, but when you're actually performing, you don't need to be thinking about technique. You need to just be thinking about how I'm gonna say this story.

Ron Klemm (2:11)
Hello, I'm Ron Klemm. Welcome to Bach Talk. Sometimes, when we sit down for these conversations, we know only a little about our guest, and over the course of the conversation, we learn much more about them, about their lives, their work, and as the case may be, their connection to Bach and to The Bach Society of Saint Louis. Other times we know the person well, extremely well in this case. Soprano Christine Brewer has sung with The Bach Society no fewer than 10 times by our count, and that is no accident. The girl from the quaint, small southern Illinois town you've never heard of became an international sensation with performing credits in major opera houses and concert halls around the globe. The Grammy Award winner is featured on more than two dozen recordings, many with the world's finest orchestras and conductors. But perhaps even more impressive than all of that is the way Christine Brewer gives back to the community she loves. And so it was a genuine joy for Bach Society music director and conductor Dennis Sparger, and me, to sit down with Christine in the Sparger's breakfast room. We talked for hours about old times and new. Let's eavesdrop on some of that conversation right now.

The Bach Society makes a big deal about something that appeared in BBC Music Magazine, when someone from London came here and heard our Christmas Candlelight Concert, and then not too long after that, proclaimed The Bach Society's Candlelight Concert, Christmas Candlelight Concert, one of the top 20 Christmas events in North America. Is that right? Do I have that right?

A. Dennis Sparger (4:08)
That's correct. Yes, you have that right.

Ron Klemm (4:09)
And we just think that's the best. Now, if we were to go back in the BBC Music archives a little farther, we would find a list of the top 20 sopranos of all time. And lo and behold, right on that list with all these incredible names, is our neighbor, Christine Brewer, wow. How did that happen?

Christine Brewer (4:32)
I don't know. I got a call from my manager in London, Peter Bloor, and he said, he said, you might want to, you know, and I subscribe to the BBC Magazine, you know, you might want to check out the next month's issue. And by the way, there's going to be a little program here in London. And he gave me the date, do you think you could come and maybe say something? And I said, well, what did I do? And he said, well, they've listed you as one of the time. Top 20 sopranos of all time. And of course, I thought he was just lying to me. 

Ron Klemm (5:05)
You thought he was pulling your leg. 

Christine Brewer (5:07)
I said, come on. Oh, come on. I mean, there were lots of times, though, that he would call me about something, and I would just say, okay, is this true? Is this really true? He called when the Royal Opera House had renovation, and when they reopened, he called, and he said, they would like for you and Placido Domingo also will be there to sing for the reopening of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. I said, Okay, April Fools, right? He said, no. I said, really, aren't they going to have some, you know, some folks from your country there? Yes, there will be some, but they want you there. And I'm like, really? I mean, it took me about 15 minutes to believe so, yes, quite often I was surprised by these things.

Ron Klemm (5:51)
Why do you think that is? Is it because of your upbringing, or is it just a natural reaction that, oh, I can't possibly be that good.

Christine Brewer (6:03)
I think it probably was partly from my upbringing. I grew up in a really small community. My mom was a fabulous singer, and she, she had me when she was a teenager. You know, she and my dad got married quite young, and she always sang. And the people in her little town of McClure, Illinois, population, I don't know, three or 400 people wanted to send her to some kind of music school, but she, she, she got married before she finished her senior year in high school. My dad was in the army, and she stayed home, you know, they got married, and she stayed home and finished high school, but she she didn't want to, and then she had three kids, all, you know, pretty quickly, but that voice was amazing. She thought that I sang a little bit out of tune when I was a little girl. So she talked to some man in our church about it, and he was a violinist and also made violins, and he said, she needs to learn how to play an instrument like a violin, because it will help her ear. So that's what we did. And I loved it. I loved playing the violin. And my brothers still joke about, you know, yeah, they called me Christy. Christy was always in her bedroom practicing that violin, you know, and mom would have to tell her to stop and go, go outside and play for a while. I loved it, but it was probably the best thing that could have happened. But having said all that, my mom never studied music professionally, didn't know how to read music, but she had this glorious kind of sound. And I used to, when I would do recitals in St. Louis, have her come up and sing a couple things, spirituals or something, with me at the end of the recital. And one time, my voice teacher at the time, was Stephen Smith. He was in the audience, and he saw me at my next lesson, and he said, you know, I have a lot of students who tell me, my mom sings, my dad's a singer, my uncle's a singer. He said, but, and he just was speechless for a couple seconds, and he said, I've never heard a voice like that. He said, if your mom would have chosen the path that you're on. I said, I know, I know she would already be there. He said, yes, but Mom always said to me, and we were we went to the little Southern Baptist Church in McClure, about 30 miles from where we live. Well, we lived in McClure for a while, but Grand Tower.

Ron Klemm (8:37)
Which is on the eastern banks of the Mississippi River, about what 20 minutes south of where we're sitting right now? Maybe a little farther?

Christine Brewer (8:45)
A little further, it takes about a couple hours to get there. 

Ron Klemm (8:47)
Okay, okay.

Christine Brewer (8:48)
But it's right on the river and but we went to this little church in McClure where my dad had gone. My dad was a deacon there. His brother was a Southern Baptist pastor. We had uncles who were Pentecost pastors. It was a very tight little religious community, but my mom would always say, she would point to my throat, and she'd go, you have nothing to do with that. She said, that comes from God. Now how you use it? How you use your voice is on you. She said that to me. It was ingrained in my head. And then she would go with me to these violin competitions, and I would, I would get a first place. But on the way home, she would comment on, do you know, in that second movement, I thought that you were, maybe you were a little nervous, but it didn't sound as clear as the first. I mean, she didn't talk about, you know, but it was just what she heard. And later on, when she started coming to see me in operas, quite often she would, you know, she came to London to see me. She and my dad came to London to see at Covent Garden, Marriage of Figaro, yeah. And after, you know, the next day, she said, Well, you sounded beautiful, but she said, I just didn't feel like you were always singing from your heart. And I remember just thinking, what? What? What is she talking about? And it really wasn't till she was dying. She had ALS sometimes called Lou Gehrig's disease, and she got it in her late 50s, so she was quite young, and we would sit and talk, because she was able to plan what she wanted done and what not done.

Ron Klemm (10:37)
Sure. 

Christine Brewer (10:38)
And one day we were just sitting chatting, and I said, Mom, why were you always so hard on me? You know about, you know, I didn't think you played that second movement the way it should have sounded, or you didn't sing with your heart and and she said, well, because I didn't know what to say, but I didn't ever want you to think you didn't have to keep practicing. And honest to god, I think that is why I am just, you know, whenever I've got an opera coming up, and I'm doing one in the spring at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, and I've sung Turn of the Screw. I've sung with Mrs. Gross before, but I've already got the score out, and I'm making sure that I've still got it in my memory. I mean, I think that instilled in me that kind of, you know, preparation.

A. Dennis Sparger (11:31)
The preparation, yeah.

Christine Brewer (11:32)
Yeah.

A. Dennis Sparger (11:32)
Just have to continue to do it. 

Christine Brewer (11:34)
And, and she was, she sang in a trio with two other gals that were, they all started it in high school, and they called it the Shawnee trio, because we all went to Shawnee High School, and they sang gospel and jazz, and I grew up sitting in on their rehearsals, and if one of them wasn't there, I'd sing their part. You know, yes, yeah, so I think that's a long answer to your question, but, but anyway, so when those kind of awards happen, I always feel like I feel blessed that they happen. But it's not like I think, yeah, I deserve that. You know, I don't think that.

A. Dennis Sparger (12:14)
It does come as a surprise.

Christine Brewer (12:15)
It does, it does. Yeah.

A. Dennis Sparger (12:17)
And I think another thing that this tells us is that you don't have to have all of these years of training in music and college degrees. Some people can listen very intently, and they understand what's going on, and they do have comments to make, they can help a performer improve.

Christine Brewer (12:34)
Absolutely, absolutely. And I didn't ever take a voice lesson until I went to college. I sang all the time. I don't remember ever not performing. Now, my family says the first time I performed at church, I was three, and I sang, Go Tell it On the Mountain. And I'm the oldest of the three kids and my brothers, when they started to get older, they said my mom would teach us songs that we would sing at church. Now, my brother Steve sang in his church choir for quite some time, and I think he still does occasionally. 

Ron Klemm (13:10)
Is that right? 

Christine Brewer (13:10)
Uh, Jeff, you know, sings for fun, you know, if we get together and, you know, maybe sing something but, but they didn't get the bug like I did, you know.

Ron Klemm (13:50)
My grandfather sang the blues like nobody you've ever heard. She says, so maybe it's in my genes. Christine Brewer talking about Come Rain or Come Shine from St. Louis Woman, words by Johnny Mercer, music by Harold Arlen, from a recording made in 1993 to benefit Opera Theater of St. Louis. Christine, our St. Louis woman was accompanied by pianist Kirt Pavitt.

I want to take a moment to tell you about some exciting news regarding Bach Talk. We're going to spend some time in the near future answering your questions, whether it's a question for our music director and conductor Dennis Sparger, for me or any of our Bach staff. We want to know what it is, and we will answer it the best way we can, and since we stay in contact with all of our guests, if you're listening today, or if you've listened to a previous episode and thought I wonder what he or she meant by that, or I wish those guys would have asked about thus and so just tell me what it is. I promise we'll get in touch with that guest and answer the question for you. We have an easy way for you to do that, just go to bachsociety.org and click on the Bach Talk page. There, you'll find a simple form that you can use to ask your question, or if you'd rather, email us directly, bachtalk@bachsociety.org. Your silence is not golden. I look forward to hearing from you.

More of our conversation with Christine Brewer, straight ahead with Dennis Sparger. I'm Ron Klemm and this is Bach Talk. 

Ron Klemm (15:34)
You brought up the fact that music is a gift, right, and that a talent is something that you are blessed with, but you have to do something with it in order to make it work. 

Christine Brewer (15:48)
That's right.

Ron Klemm (15:49)
Which is more important? Or are good singers born, or are they made? Or is it always a combination of both? Can you train anyone? Can you train me, for example, to be a world renowned top 20 baritone?

Christine Brewer (16:05)
I'm going to plead the fifth.

Ron Klemm (16:07)
Thank goodness.

Christine Brewer (16:09)
I did have, I graduated from college when I was quite young. I was 17 when I graduated from high school, and in this little high school that I attended, Shawnee High School down in Wolf Lake, Illinois, they ran out of classes for me my senior year because I'd taken all the, you know, trigonometry, physics, chemistry, I mean, so they had me. I was taking college courses. I would just sit in the math teachers class, and I took so many courses in psychology and math and science that by the time I started college, I was a second semester sophomore. And so when I graduated from college, I was 20, and my voice wasn't really developed very much, thankfully. And Dennis, you, you know.

A. Dennis Sparger (17:02)
I do.

Christine Brewer (17:02)
Dr. Glenn Freiner very well. He was the head of the music department, and he was a voice professor and the organ professor, and I was in the choir because I was going to go into music education. And he said, I think you, you know, should take some voice lessons. And I said, what's wrong with my voice? I mean, that's how ignorant this little 17 year old was, because I thought, well, maybe it was like because there was a problem he needed to, no he said, I think you might want to make that part of your major. Oh, okay, sure. So thankfully, he heard this small voice, and he knew that he said to me later, I always could hear that you would be singing Strauss and Wagner someday. 

Ron Klemm (17:46)
Wow.

Christine Brewer (17:47)
But he said I wasn't going to have you sing in arias when you were 17, 18, 19 years old. I sang lots of Mozart concert arias. I sang lots of Handel, Purcell, Schubert, Hugo Wolf, lots of art songs, lots of French melodies, stuff like that.

Ron Klemm (18:05)
Lieder and things like that. 

Christine Brewer (18:06)
Yes, absolutely.

Dennis Sparger (18:07)
And we know you sang a lot of Bach.

Christine Brewer (18:09)
And a lot of Bach. It was all that stuff. And then there were a couple students at McKendree when I was there who were singing arias, you know. And I remember one day I went into my lesson, I said, well, how come you're letting her sing? She's singing something from La Boheme and and she's not even a voice major. She's a science major, and she's just taking, he said, because her voice has developed a little bit sooner than yours. And this is a thing I tell students at Webster when I work with them, everybody's path, everybody's journey, is is unique, and many of us, especially the bigger voices, start out rather light, and then they grow. If you have a teacher that pushes you too soon to start pushing into those bigger roles, your voice won't hold up for it. And I've through the years, sometimes I go someplace and I sing, and they'll ask me, can you come and do a master class? Or can you teach? We've got a, my two least favorite words, a baby Wagnerian and and I had a young woman, and I would never say something like this in front of a master class, but it was just this young woman and her pianist and me, and she walked in the room, and she said she was going to sing Dich, teure Halle from Tannhäuser I said, okay. And she started singing, and I could hear already sort of damage in her voice, so I stopped her, and I said, do you have anything else you know, any Mozart or any, you know? Oh, no, my teacher says, I'm going to be a Wagnerian Verdi singer. I'm going to so I asked how old she was. She was 23 and I said, truthfully, I hear some some damage, and I think you probably need to see an ENT and I think you need to stop singing and get your voice healthy, and then maybe approach with some, you know, lighter things, some Baroque things, some you know, and I don't know what ever happened, but it's, it's something. I was fortunate that I had a teacher who didn't push me vocally and just taught me how to tell a story, and this is what I try to do with the students at Webster. I said, your job is to tell a story. Whatever song you're singing, whatever language it's in, you better know it well enough that you can tell the story. And I mean, yes, I'm not saying disregard your technique. But when you're actually performing, you don't need to be thinking about technique. You need to just be thinking about how I'm going to say this story.

Ron Klemm (20:50)
Just a portion of Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of Thomas Moore’s The Last Rose of summer from Groves of Blarney. Christine Brewer, accompanied by pianist Kirt Pavitt in a recording made in Powell Hall back in 1999. More with Christine in a moment. This is Bach Talk. 

Ron Klemm (22:23)
You still live in Southern Illinois, not too far from where you grew up.

Christine Brewer (22:28)
Yeah.

Ron Klemm (22:29)
I don't, I don't know. I don't want to be presumptuous, but it would seem to me that you could live anywhere in the world and you could be just fine. So that staying here, close to home is a choice.

Christine Brewer (22:42)
Absolutely.

Ron Klemm (22:43)
Tell me about that. 

Christine Brewer (22:44)
When I did start pursuing this career, and, you know, giving contracts to sing operas and being in London for two months, or San Francisco or LA or New York, a lot of times, my managers sometimes would say, you know, you ought to just move to New York. I said, well, that's not going to work for me. My husband's a teacher in Freeburg, Illinois.

Ron Klemm (23:11)
Give a shout out to Ross now, come on.

Christine Brewer (23:13)
Woot woot. But my voice, and Dennis, I mean, you, you met me when I was first starting out.

A. Dennis Sparger (23:20)
Sure.

Christine Brewer (23:20)
It did not really develop. I was in my late 20s when I had my daughter Elizabeth, and that's when I started to notice my voice getting bigger, right? So I really, up to that point, wasn't doing a lot of opera or anything, you know, and I was teaching. I taught in Marissa, Illinois, in a little coal mining town. I taught there for a year, and then I was a substitute teacher for, I don't know, seven years or something. And I sang as a soloist at St. Michael and St. George Episcopal Church in St Louis. You know. So I had little jobs at the St. Louis Symphony paid me as one of the section leaders, you know. So I had little gigs here and there, but because I waited till it was later and I already had a child, my husband was established in a job. My folks lived a couple hours away. His folks lived a half an hour away from us, and we had lots of friends in Lebanon.

Ron Klemm (24:21)
Lebanon, Illinois.

Christine Brewer (24:22)
Illinois, yes, yes. And so I just felt like I was pretty central. I could be in Chicago in an hour. I could be in New York in an hour and a half or two, be on the west coast in four hours. It felt like a good place to stay, and I knew that Elizabeth was in good hands with Ross and with our neighbors, and now she did travel with me, and even one of the trips I took her to London and we stayed in an apartment that I rented quite often that was right over a beautiful Indian restaurant. The food was so great, you could smell it, and it was about a 10 minute walk to the opera house, so it was really convenient for me.

A. Dennis Sparger (25:09)
Covent Garden area?

Christine Brewer (25:10)
Yes, yes. And there were lots of shops along the way. So on the way home from rehearsal, I could stop and, you know, pick up some dinner stuff, you know, well, Elizabeth got to know the area really well. She was eight. I can remember this so clearly. And there were some evenings we'd finish our dinner and stuff, and then we'd do her school work, and that's back in the days of fax machines. And I'd fax the stuff back home to Ross, and he'd drop it off at school for her, and then she'd say, could we, could I just go down and get some garlic naan, right now.

Ron Klemm (25:46)
That sounds good.

Christine Brewer (25:47)
I know. And she would just go downstairs, and they knew her. I mean, we were in there enough, and I knew she was safe. And she'd go down and she'd bring it back up, you know. And then my parents came to visit, and they rented an apartment that was a maybe a mile from us. And so there were days when I had rehearsal, they had things they wanted to do. It was their first time to London. They had things they wanted to see. And Elizabeth said, I can take them on the tube. I mean, I can take them around eight years old. I said, really?

A. Dennis Sparger (26:22)
And she knew her way around?

Christine Brewer (26:23)
She did. And she said, now one thing dad has told me, when you're traveling, you don't take your map out, because then people think you're a tourist. You figure it out before you go. And so I'm like, okay, so they would take off. They went to the Tower of London, they went to, I mean, they did all of this stuff while I was at rehearsal. I'd come home, my mom would fix some dinner for us, you know. And then once the performances started, she came with my parents to the one that they came to, and then they had to fly home, then they were on there for about a week or two. And then we had a long run. And it was a Marriage of Figaro with no cuts. 

Ron Klemm (27:05)
That's a long.

Christine Brewer (27:06)
Four hours long, right? 

Ron Klemm (27:07)
Yeah.

Christine Brewer (27:08)
So I had someone who could watch her. I had a nanny who could watch her, but she said, oh no, I want to see all the performances. I said, Honey, it's a long night. That's really a long time. She said, no, here's what I do. She said, each night I just look at one character, like one night, I will just look at Bryn Terfel. He was singing Figaro, just gonna look at him. One night. I just watched Susanna. That was Sylvia McNair. And then I just want you. I said, even if we're not singing, yes, because I want to see how you're reacting to I'm like, Really, okay. I said, Well, you don't have to go, oh no. So I would take her to the opera house, and the usher would take her up to this place where she always sat, and God love her. She she did that. She took my parents around. Then she came back one time. She was, I think, just out of college, and then we had a nice little apartment, and she would, we'd have breakfast together, and then she would just take off on the train and go to different places around

Ron Klemm (28:17)
By this time, you knew she was just, she was going to be independent.

Christine Brewer (28:21)
She did that all the time. And then Paris, the same thing. I do remember one time we were talking about this the other night, Ross said, what did we ever do before we had cell phones? And I said, Well, I'll tell you one story that was scary for me. He was in Germany with his students on a trip, and he was coming to meet Elizabeth and me in Paris. And I was singing at the Châtelet, which is right on the Seine River. And Elizabeth was, I think maybe she might have been still in high school, or close to graduation, 17, 18, maybe, and, and I was doing Ariadne for like, the 10,000th time, you know. And she said, Well, do you mind if I just, you know, wander around the neighborhood, you know, and I'll meet you back here, when do you finish? I said, Five o'clock. Okay, so I'm waiting for at the stage door at five o'clock. She's not there. She's not there. I didn't know, really, what to do. I thought I don't want to leave and go back to our apartment, because I'm not sure, she's supposed to come here.

Ron Klemm (29:27)
Be honest, Mom, did you freak out?

Christine Brewer (29:29)
A little bit, yes. And it was springtime, you know it was the weather was nice, thankfully wasn't raining. And she got there about maybe 45 minutes later. And I said, what happened? She said, I did not realize how difficult it was to navigate these streets, because, you know, they aren't straight

Ron Klemm (29:53)
The old cow paths, yeah, yeah.

Christine Brewer (29:55)
And the names change and she said, but I remember. Heard that if I could get to the river, I remembered that your opera house is on the and she said, so I just kept walking. And she knew a little French, so she did ask people, and so she just kept walking till she found it. But oh my gosh, I was I was so nervous. But you know what? It made her a very independent person. And there are times, and I talk about this with a lot of my other friends who are moms, there are times that I thought, should I be leaving for two or three months, leaving my daughter at home? Because at a certain point, she didn't want to go, yes? 

Ron Klemm (30:36)
Well, sure.

Christine Brewer (30:37)
You know, she had, she played in sports, she played in the band, you know, and, and in the summer, we all traveled together, which was really nice, but, you know, but I always had these doubts in the back of my mind, you know, I'm missing this, I'm missing that, or, or when I did turn down a job because I was staying I'm then I'm thinking, oh, should I have done that? Was that a bad move? And, and sometimes I'd have, you know one of my managers, and I won't ever mention the name, would say, well, you're going to ruin your career if you don't take this I said, Well, I only got one chance with my daughter, so.

A. Dennis Sparger (31:10)
Yes.

Christine Brewer (31:11)
Let it go.

A. Dennis Sparger (31:12)
And that's more important.

Christine Brewer (31:13)
It is.

Ron Klemm (31:13)
And that's what I heard out of all of that, which was family helped shape who Christine Brewer is.

Christine Brewer (31:21)
Totally.

Ron Klemm (31:22)
And, that, yeah, that means everything.

A. Dennis Sparger (31:24)
Well, what we didn't cover is, in all of these trips, do you have time to do the sightseeing?

Christine Brewer (31:30)
No, I mean, I do like, I mean, when you're rehearsing an opera, it's six days a week, so on the one day you're off, you find yourself doing laundry, you know, doing your errands that you need to do, or go through your score and, you know, making sure. Yeah, so And Ross, God love him. You know, being the he taught social studies. He never used a textbook. He taught eighth grade. He taught history through music and art and language. So the kids would read books, whatever they were studying. They would read novels about it. They would study the music that was going on and the art that was going on. He would bring in Holocaust survivors to speak to his eighth graders. He would bring in authors to come and talk about their books and that sort of thing. So when he and he always, I always had my schedule a year or two in advance, he'd look through and he'd go, oh, Madrid. Are you taking Elizabeth to Madrid? I said, Well, yeah, because school will be out. And so okay, he would start a little box by his desk at the office at our house, and he would just throw articles from, I don't know, National Geographic or different magazines.

A. Dennis Sparger (32:44)
He knew where to find them.

Christine Brewer (32:46)
And honest to God, if Ross were here, he could tell you where certain paintings are, which museum they're in. So he made a list of things that Elizabeth and I could do while we were in Madrid. Well, we did most of it, but I couldn't do it all because I said, actually, I'm rehearsing.

A. Dennis Sparger (33:03)
He'd have more than enough. 

Christine Brewer (33:04)
So she but then when he would go with us, if it was in the summer, then they would take off and go to mostly art museums they loved.

A. Dennis Sparger (33:13)
Wow. 

Christine Brewer (33:13)
And she's still like that now.

Ron Klemm (34:54)
A little bit of the Domine Deus, the fifth movement from the Gloria by Francis. Poulenc, something we pulled out of our archives. Christine Brewer singing the soprano solos with The Bach Society of Saint Louis Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Dennis Sparger at the Christmas Candlelight Concert in Powell Symphony Hall in December of 2010. What a legacy. Our conversation with Christine continued for over an hour, and we'll share more of it with you next time she talked about some of her favorite opera houses and concert venues in this country and in Europe, she relates what her mentor Birgit Nielsen always told her more about storytelling too, and the passionate message she gives to her students.

Christine Brewer (35:40)
And I say this to students, I said, you know, sometimes we sing pieces that we love, but you don't ever want to just let it become automatic. Oh, yeah, I know how this goes, because your life changes every day, and your life experience informs how you're going to tell the story. That's the exciting thing about making music. You bring your life experience each time you sing it. It's not like, oh, I want to make sure I sing that high G like I sang it last time. You know, that's boring, but make it fit what your life expresses now.

Ron Klemm (36:15)
That's next time on Bach Talk. Remember now we want to answer your questions for me or for Maestro Sparger or any of our guests. Take a moment right now to contact us with your comments or questions, just go to bachsociety.org and click on Bach Talk on that page, there's a simple form that you can use to ask your question, or if you prefer, send me an email directly. bachtalk@bachsociety.org. while you're at it, take a moment to rate and review our podcast on your favorite platform. Wherever you listen, Your feedback helps immensely. We'll leave you as we began with Mira from Bob Merrill's Carnival.

The Associate Producer of Bach Talk is Scott MacDonald. Special thanks, of course, to Christine Brewer and Dennis Sparger. Additional assistance for this episode from Ila Klemm, Melissa Payton and Keith Fredlund. The recording engineer for all our performance excerpts, as well as Christine's Powell Hall recording is Paul Henrich, and as always, marketing and technical assistance provided by Andie Murphy and Charissa Marciniak of Right Relations.

Bach Talk is a registered trademark of The Bach Society of Saint Louis. I'm Ron Klemm.

About Episode 17

Listen in as Bach Talk host Ron Klemm chats with tenor Gene Stenger about life on stage including his experiences with The Bach Society of Saint Louis. Gene shares stories from his musical upbringing, career highlights and a lighthearted anecdote about how his cat allergy almost disrupted a performance. Plus, enjoy featured samples of Gene’s performances throughout the episode.

Transcription

(00:00) Ron Klemm
This is Bach Talk. 

(00:04) Gene Stenger
Being on stage, performing with an orchestra, getting to express to an audience, there's just nothing like that. Getting to sing and having an orchestra behind you and blending the singing and the orchestration together, it's just really magical, very special.

(00:51) Ron Klemm
The voice of tenor Gene Stenger. You're hearing music from the Magnificat by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Deposuit Potentes. He has put down the mighty and exalted the lowly. Hello. Welcome to Bach Talk. I'm Ron Klem. Today, we introduce you to one of the frequent guest soloists with The Bach Society of Saint Louis. Tenor Gene Stenger is a native of Pittsburgh. He studied at Yale University School of Music and the Institute of Sacred Music at Colorado State and at Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio, which we'll hear more about in just a bit.

He has performed with The Bach Society since 2017, singing tenor roles in the Mozart Requiem, Bach Cantatas and the Magnificat, the Bach Passions, and of course, the B Minor mass. His youthful virtuosity seems effortless. And, as we discover often with a lot of singers, Gene traces his roots back to family and the church.

(02:36) Gene Stenger
My first introduction to singing was, my mom was a classically trained soprano, and actually used to take me to her voice lessons when I was much younger, so I used to sit in on her voice lessons when I was three-four years old. And I started singing at around age nine, was a boy soprano, and I started singing in the church.

I would canter masses at my Catholic church and would also sing in the church choir. 

(03:07) Ron Klemm
At age nine?

(03:09) Gene Stenger
Age nine, yes. 

(03:10) Ron Klemm
Hokey smokes. 

(03:13) Gene Stenger
Yeah, I think, I think when I was in second grade, I was in music class and My music teacher was the one that discovered that I had an ability to sing and mentioned it to my, my second grade teacher and said, I think that you need to showcase this talent.

And that's really where I came in. It had started. And, so continued singing in church for a long period of time, all through middle school, and even continued in the high school. And I would say in high school was where it actually really blossomed. I was involved in all of the high school musical productions and loved being a part of those.

And also participated in a lot of the Pennsylvania, district, regional and all-state choir festivals, met some incredible people, and being a part of those festivals. And I would actually say that it was in high school was when I really, wanted to pursue music. I actually thought that I wanted to do musical theater because of my involvement in the musicals in high school, but it was really my voice teacher at the time and my high school choir director that really encouraged me to pursue more of the classical musical music route.

They thought that that would be a better fit for me. 

(04:41) Ron Klemm
Do you sense that you made the decision on your own with encouragement, or do you feel like you were pushed into it? 

(04:48) Gene Stenger
I would say that I made the decision on my own. I mean, I was certainly open to their suggestions and was willing to see where it would take me, but certainly made the decision on my own too. 

(05:02) Ron Klemm
And then after high school, you went to? 

(05:04) Gene Stenger
Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music. 

(05:06) Ron Klemm
Which is not too far from home, a couple of hours maybe. 

(05:09) Gene Stenger
No, not too far, about two and a half-hour drive from Pittsburgh and, did my bachelor's in voice there. And I would say that was actually my introduction to singing Bach. Baldwin Wallace hosts the oldest collegiate Bach festival in the country. And as an undergrad, I got to sing in the chorus for all of the major Bach works every year, and also had opportunities to perform as a soloist in a couple cantatas for a couple of the festivals, which was really special.

(05:46) Ron Klemm
I have a friend who puts it this way. He didn't go searching for Bach. Bach found him. Is that a similar experience for you? 

(05:58) Gene Stenger
I would say yes. Yeah, I would say. It always has seemed like no matter where I've gone Bach has always followed. 

(06:09) Ron Klemm
People talk about, certain singers being Bach specialists or certain conductors being Bach specialists.

(06:17) Ron Klemm
In other words, Oh, here's Gene Stenger. We're going to put him in this pigeonhole. Do you, do you resent that? Do you love that? Or somewhere in between, or this whole concept of being a specialist in one particular area. How does that sit with you? 

(06:33) Gene Stenger
I certainly love it. I. Have always felt like Baroque music was something that I excelled in.

That was always my particular niche for singing, but of course, I'm open to doing opera as well. I'm open to doing, Mozart and bel canto and, and Britten. And I, I have done some of that and that's my goal is to continue to expand beyond that, but still keeping that Bach Baroque niche.

(08:06) Ron Klemm
I want to take a moment to tell you about an upcoming episode of Bach Talk. We're going to devote our time together to answering your questions. Whether it's a question for me, for our music director and conductor Dennis Sparger, or any of The Bach Society staff, we want to hear it and answer it the best way we can.

(08:26) Ron Klemm
And, I'll even raise the stakes. We stay in contact with all our guests. So, if you've listened to a previous episode and thought, I wish he would have asked about this or that, tell me what it is. I'll get in touch with that guest and get the answer for you. Now, we have an easy way for you to do that. Just go to BachSociety.org and click on Bach Talk. And on that page, there's a simple form that you can use to ask your question. Or if you'd rather, email me straight away. BachTalk@BachSociety.Org. Don't be shy. There are no dumb questions. I look forward to hearing from you. Getting back to my conversation with tenor Gene Stenger, I asked him about the issue of travel, something that all of our guest soloists must deal with, of course. How does he keep his voice healthy on planes traveling from city to city? 

(09:19) Gene Stenger
Well, I, I still mask when I travel. and I will say that certainly sleep. is top priority if I can try to get as much sleep as I can, that certainly helps hydration. I, I always carry Airborne with me, you know, even if I'm not feeling sick, I'll always try to take Airborne just because I do always have to stay healthy and in top shape, 

(09:51) Ron Klemm
Earplugs, I hope, because sometimes there's noise in the hotel. 

(09:55) Gene Stenger
Yes. Yes. Although

(09:56) Ron Klemm
I've got some extras if you need them. 

(09:59) Gene Stenger
Typically I'm always asleep very fast and I'm a pretty deep sleeper so. 

(10:05) Ron Klemm
What are the pieces that resonate with you and I know you try to do a variety of things and good for you, but at some point you have to kind of focus in on oh, yeah, this is this is my wheelhouse All right. What are those pieces that you really are getting more and more attached to? 

(10:25) Gene Stenger
Handel's Messiah, I would certainly say both of the Bach passions, both St. Matthew, St. John, the B minor, Christmas Oratorio. 

(10:36) Ron Klemm
Yeah. 

(10:37) Gene Stenger
I would certainly say that the major works of Bach. 

(10:41) Ron Klemm
Obviously, with some of these, major works and these, you know, difficult arias, you put a lot of thought into it.

(10:50) Ron Klemm
You put a lot of attention into it. You focus on it and you come to the rehearsal, the first rehearsal and you meet the conductor and he or she, has decided to do something a little different than what you were planning. How do you deal with that and how do you collaborate in that way? 

(11:12) Gene Stenger
Well, I would certainly start by being open to their suggestions or their ideas on their interpretation and seeing if it does work, because sometimes they may present an idea to you that you're a little hesitant about, and then actually you find that it does work.

(11:35) Gene Stenger
So I do think it's, it's open to it. It's good to be open to those suggestions while still incorporating your ideas. So it's really a matter of finding this, fine balance this, this balance between the two. and I would say that if you can execute that well, then I think that it will set you up for success.

(12:01) Ron Klemm
Talk to me about, Maestro Sparger and about The Bach Society. You've sung with us a number of times. How do you, how do you view that whole relationship? Obviously, we would, we view it very fondly. 

(12:16) Gene Stenger
Oh, Dennis. He's, he is wonderful to work with. He performs the music at such a high level. What I really appreciate about him is his attention to detail and how specific he is.

But also, very easy to work with and has made every experience an enjoyable, musically enriching experience. 

(12:43) Ron Klemm
Some of the things that we do are extremely difficult for audiences, but also for performers in terms of the texts, in terms of the subject matter. How do you deal with some of the most poignant, meaningful passages that you are now called upon to deliver? 

(13:05) Gene Stenger
Well, I think that you still, you can't lose your connection and the foundation to the technique. you know, I think anytime that you are conveying any kind of emotion. It's very easy to sing with a closed throat, clamp up, and we have to really think the opposite. So it's having the technique as the foundation while still conveying that emotion and following that, that emotion.

(13:46) Ron Klemm
Do you ever have a time when you say, I'm not going to think about this text now, I'm going to pretend that it's about watermelons or something and just come just so you can focus on your technique? 

(13:56) Gene Stenger
Yes, there are certainly times where that is the case. let's say if it's, a passage that is a very high, high tessitura, high range sometimes that is just simply thinking about technique. 

(14:15) Ron Klemm
So much of what we do, in with The Bach Society and, and with the other, organizations that you sing with are done in a foreign language. So now we're dealing with audiences who understand English, but they may not understand that foreign language.

(14:31) Ron Klemm
All right. How do you adjust what you're doing to communicate to that audience? 

(14:39) Gene Stenger
Well I think a lot of that is making sure that I thoroughly understand the text and knowing what emotion that I'm going to convey.

(16:01) Ron Klemm
The voice of tenor Gene Stenger, with a portion of Cantata 80, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. A mighty fortress is our God. Music by Johann Sebastian Bach. More with Gene in a moment. This is Bach Talk.

What's the weirdest thing that ever happened to you in a performance? What is the performance that you remember for all the wrong reasons? 

(16:33) Gene Stenger
Oh, actually, 

(16:35) Ron Klemm
Oh, oh, please don't tell me it was here in St. Louis. 

(16:38) Gene Stenger
No, no, no, no, no, it wasn't. No, this, I typically don't do this, but, I think this was an off day for me.

This was a, a gig that I had at home in Cleveland, and I arrived at the venue and completely forgot to bring my concert attire. I, I don't know what happened. I don't know why I forgot it. I think my mind was just in a million places. And so I got to the venue and, was freaking out and didn't know what to do and was mentioning this to other people, seeing if anyone else had an extra tux that could fit me.

And fortunately, someone was able to get, another tux for me that did fit. However, the person had a cat and I'm actually allergic to cats. So there was some cat dander on, on the suit, on the tux and, was hoping that I wouldn't have any kind of allergic reaction while I was performing and miraculously I didn't.

But yeah, I, I would say that that's probably the one of the weirdest things that's happened. 

(17:56) Ron Klemm
Well, I would guess that that would, that would, it'd be very hard to focus when your turn came up. 

(18:03) Gene Stenger
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But it took a lot of mental focus and concentration, but, yeah, that's, that was definitely a one-time ordeal.

(18:14) Ron Klemm
Let's talk about the opposite. What are those moments? And it's not necessarily a full performance, but it's, there are moments. Sometimes it's in rehearsal, isn't it? And you go, Oh, wow. That's, that I wish I could replicate that and have that the rest of my life. Where, when does that happen to you? 

(18:31) Gene Stenger
Oh, wow. I would say maybe not a specific moment, but I would say those, those periods in rehearsals where everything gels together and you, maybe you get to the end of a, of a piece and you just let it settle and it resonates in the room or in the hall, wherever you're rehearsing and you take a moment to experience that and, and take it in and think, wow, this is, this is beautiful. This is gorgeous. 

(19:05) Ron Klemm
What does Gene Stenger want to accomplish or are you living just for today? What are you thinking about for the rest of, you're a young guy, for the rest of your career? 

(19:17) Gene Stenger
Well, I think professionally I'd like to certainly continue in the Baroque world, but I'm also working on expanding beyond that into opera and would love to explore more Mozart, more bel canto repertoire, Britten, would love to continue to keep challenging myself vocally and seeing what, what I can do. I'm, I'm, I'm very thankful for this. Baroque niche, but would love to certainly expand beyond that. 

(19:54) Ron Klemm
What is it about singing that has this, and some people call it magic, but, but it's, there's some sort of connection that it almost It defies words.

(20:06) Ron Klemm
What is it about singing that makes that happen? 

(20:11) Gene Stenger
I would say for me, it's being on stage performing with an orchestra, getting to express to an audience. There's just nothing like that. Getting to sing and having an orchestra perform behind you and blending the singing and the orchestration together, it's just really magical. Very special.

(20:39) Ron Klemm
Well, we are thrilled to have you in St. Louis, and I hope you'll come back often and, perform with the Bach Society. 

(20:48) Gene Stenger
Absolutely. 

(20:49) Ron Klemm
Thank you. 

(20:50) Gene Stenger
Thank you so much, Ron. 

(20:51) Ron Klemm
Gene Stenger. I'm Ron Klemm and this is Bach Talk.

(21:27) Ron Klemm
You're hearing a poignant aria from the St. John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach. The tenor is Gene Stenger from a performance in March 2024 by The Bach Society of Saint Louis. Dennis Sparger, Music Director and Conductor.

Remember now, we're planning an upcoming episode devoted to answering your questions, for me, for Maestro Sparger, for any of our past guests. Take a moment right now to contact us with your question. Just go to bachsociety.org, click on Bach Talk, and on that page, there's a simple form that you can use to ask your question.

Or if you prefer, send me an email directly, bachtalk@bachsociety.org. I look forward to hearing from you. While you're at it, if you enjoy what you're hearing on this or any of our previous episodes, will you take a moment to rate and review our podcast on your favorite platform? Wherever you listen, your feedback helps us immensely.

The associate producer of Bach Talk is Scott MacDonald. The recording engineer for all of our performances is Paul Henrich. Technical and marketing assistance provided by Andie Murphy and Charissa Marciniak of Right Relations.

Bach Talk is a registered trademark of The Bach Society of Saint Louis. I'm Ron Klemm.

About Episode 16

Since 1951, The Bach Society of Saint Louis’ annual Christmas Candlelight Concert has drawn nearly a quarter of a million attendees, becoming a cherished holiday tradition. In this episode of Bach Talk, host Ron Klemm sits down with Music Director and Conductor A. Dennis Sparger to share lively stories, over a dozen musical samplings, and what makes this concert magical. Plus, enjoy a heartfelt holiday message from the chorus to cap off the holiday season.

Transcription

(00:00) Ron Klemm
This is Bach Talk.

Concerts can sometimes begin with a bang. Other times they start softly, with moments of tenderness and anticipation. The best concerts, the ones you're thinking about right now, contain copious amounts of both moods, carefully and sensitively balanced. That doesn't just happen. It requires keen skill, vast experience, sometimes significant collaboration, and always, a deep, rich understanding of the music and the audience.

Hello, I'm Ron Klemm. Welcome to Bach Talk. It's the holiday season and we're looking forward to another Christmas Candlelight Concert, part of a great legacy of The Bach Society of Saint Louis. Current Music Director and Conductor Dennis Sparger has provided the artistic vision for this event since 1986. No other singular annual concert has become more a part of the very fabric of our region.

When folks from Great Britain came to town several years ago, the next December issue of BBC Music Magazine proclaimed the Christmas Candlelight Concert presented by The Bach Society of Saint Louis is one of the top 20 live Christmas events in North America. I thought it was high time to talk about this important annual concert.

I invited Dennis over for a cup of freshly roasted Kenyan Double A Corundel coffee and a chat. As is often the case when I meet with my good friend, I learned some things too. 

(02:29) A. Dennis Sparger
The first Christmas Candlelight Concert was in 1951. The Bach Society had been formed ten years earlier. And during that time, Dr. William Heyne, our founder, was also conducting the St. Louis A Cappella Choir and they had been doing a Candlelight Concert that had been pretty successful. And I think they finally realized by 1951 that it was time for The Bach Society to also have a Christmas Candlelight Concert. So they planned one for Kiel Opera House for that very first concert.

(03:06) A. Dennis Sparger
Their soloist was the soprano Dorothy Maynor. Now that name may not ring a big bell today, but as we look back in history, she was really something. Two years earlier, she had sung at the inaugural gala for Harry Truman, the first African American soloist to be in such a prestigious position. Two years after our first Christmas concert, she sang at the inauguration of Dwight Eisenhower.

(03:36) A. Dennis Sparger
And this was one, you know, incredible singer, and she was our first guest soloist. In 1953, our guest soloist was a very young Beverly Sills, who went on to have just an amazing career, but these things also were topped by 1981 under conductor Donald Chen and then a few years later under conductor Pat Partridge.

Christine Brewer was a soloist and she was really quite young then. And at my first concert in 1986, Christine was my first soloist. So we've had these wonderful people and since that time, in 1972 David Gordon, our friend was a soloist. And we've had wonderful people like Mary Wilson and Sherzod Penthaki and gee Nathan Gunn and 

(04:34) Ron Klemm
Josefien Stoppelenburg.

(04:37) A. Dennis Sparger
Josefien Stoppelenburg, yes. So we've had, you know, these wonderful solo opportunities that to introduce them to the people of St. Louis.

(05:19) Ron Klemm
To have someone of that stature to come to St. Louis and be a soloist with The Bach Society of Saint Louis. To me, that's meaningful. And the Dorothy Maynor and all the others. It means, not that this needs to be legitimized in any way, but to me, it underscores the fact that it's, it's a big deal. 

(05:40) A. Dennis Sparger
It says something about the real quality of the program, and I think it, it also suggests why our audiences keep coming year after year.

It began with just one performance and a few years later they had to do two performances. There was several years where they had to do three performances. Now this is at Kiel Opera House which is now called the 

(06:02) Ron Klemm
Stiefel.

(06:02) A. Dennis Sparger  
Stiefel, yes, I almost said the Peabody. They've changed names a bit. But I think that holds about 3,500 people.

So they were doing three performances. When Powell Hall opened in 1968 the concert moved to Powell Hall, and the seating capacity at that time was 26- 2,700, and most of the concerts were given two performances. I know when I came in in 1986, we were doing two performances. For a while, we went back to just one, and we're very comfortable with that.

(06:36) Ron Klemm
It's a, it's a full house every time. And, I think that the one performance that sticks in my mind as being kind of a symbolic one was a comeback performance after the pandemic. We were all in masks, so we couldn't communicate. And you know, because you tell us that we need to communicate with our whole countenance, right?Our whole face. And we couldn't do it. And yet there was something, I don't want to say magical, but something special about being able to do that during the pandemic. Do you remember that?

(07:10) A. Dennis Sparger
It was a really special time. And, wow. Yeah. We had no idea if people would feel comfortable coming out and they really came out and supported that concert. It was very exciting.

Well, I do remember the joy of doing the Poulenc Gloria and with Christine Brewer as the soloist. It was just a very special time for me. And you know, I've heard some other recordings of her singing and I thought ours was pretty good. She was just lovely.

(09:01) A. Dennis Sparger
Now I could say something about the formula of this concert, and as I look back at the records of all the repertoire that have been performed since 1941, and what I could see is that all six of The Bach Society's conductors, they followed basically the same plan of including a minor major work in the first half of the concert, you know, something by a significant composer but also not terribly terribly long.

(09:30) Ron Klemm
And not always Bach.

(09:31) A. Dennis Sparger
And not always Bach.

Yeah, so there were some other composers involved as well. Now Dr. Heyne certainly stuck to a lot of Bach and his programming, but since his time you know, he retired in 72. And, you know, the following conductors have strayed a little bit from that. And then, of course, the second half would always open with that beautiful candlelight processional.

And we would go on from there with favorite carols some including the audience singing along. So it's just been a wonderful tradition.

We've done, you know, kind of more spectacular pieces like the Rutter Gloria and his Magnificat, which again has a lot of power, a lot of appeal.

(10:32) Ron Klemm
A lot of brass.

(10:33) A. Dennis Sparger
Yeah, a lot of brass, yes, yeah. Now, I realize that there's a part of our audience that loves coming to the Bach concerts, but there's a much larger audience that loves coming to our Christmas concert because it doesn't have so much Bach, if any, and they really enjoy pieces that are more familiar to them.

So that's something that we also try to bring in. I remember the first time we did Randol Bass's setting of Joy to the World, which is on one of our CDs. And, well, in fact, I was just listening to it while driving over, to get in the mood and what, you know, a spectacular arrangement and people are thrilled to hear such a special thing.

(11:40) Ron Klemm
There are other composers that have come to light in recent years. 

(11:56) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes. 

(11:57) Ron Klemm
That have really caught the attention of our audiences. A couple of names that come to mind. One is Barlow Bradford. 

(12:04) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes. 

(12:05) Ron Klemm
And you seem to love his arrangements. 

(12:08) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes. He really knows how to score for an orchestra and writes the, you know, the perfect notes for the choir to sing. They're always very exciting arrangements. You know, we've also done a lot of settings by Stephen Mager. St. Louis composer. And again, he just has a wonderful sense of color in the music and almost every year we'll have a piece or two or three by Stephen Mager. So we've really enjoyed being his champion.

We're beginning to find newer people. My assistant conductor, Stephen Eros, is quite fond of the music of Elaine Hagenberg and so we're doing another one of her pieces and we're doing another Howard Helvey piece, a Missouri composer. So there are just, you know, so many opportunities for finding, you know, new people to bring to St. Louis. 

(13:30) Ron Klemm
I think some of the most meaningful moments, touching moments, for me personally were arrangements by Mack Wilberg.

(13:41) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes, I thought that's where you were going. 

(13:45) Ron Klemm
Who has since become a friend. Which is, again, one of things that we always talk about is that life is about relationships, and one of the things that just was so wonderful to me is what, what an approachable guy he is.

(13:59) Ron Klemm
And he wrote something that was very, we commissioned him to write something very special for us. Tell us about that. 

(14:06) A. Dennis Sparger
That's right. Well, this must've been for one of my anniversary years. There have been so many by now.

(14:15) Ron Klemm
Well, it was for your 35th.

(14:17) A. Dennis Sparger
And the Bach Society commissioned a carol, in fact, a carol that Bach himself had set to music. So it made this all the more special. And because of COVID, we had to wait a year to perform it, but it was just a beautiful little setting. And I think by now he's performed it with, with the Tabernacle Choir of Temple Square. 

(14:56) Ron Klemm
From the 2021 Christmas Candlelight Concert in St. Louis’ iconic Powell Hall, a portion of the German carol O Jesulein süß, O Little One Sweet, arranged by Mack Wilberg and commissioned by The Bach Society of Saint Louis for the organization's 80th anniversary season, as well as Maestro Sparger's 35th year as music director and conductor.

(16:24) Ron Klemm
Also in the last few moments, we heard snippets from three different settings of the Gloria, John Rutter's to open then Josefien Stoppelenburg on a recent visit, wowing the audience with the fiendishly difficult Handel Gloria and from 2010 St. Louis area and internationally renowned soprano, Christine Brewer, with a few moments from the Gloria by Francis Poulenc. More of our conversation with a maestro and more music straight ahead. With Dennis Sparger, I'm Ron Klemm. This is Bach Talk.

(17:04) A. Dennis Sparger
You know, as I plan Christmas concerts, you know, I keep records of what I performed when, and I realize, you know, I do a lot of repeating of carols. You know, someone told me once, you could do exactly the same concert year after year after year, and people would be happy. Well, I try to find more variety, as I look back, you know, through our history, there's always been the repetition of wonderful moments.

(17:27) Ron Klemm
Speaking of something that happens every year. year. Give me a conductor's perspective on the tradition of the candlelight procession. Now, every seat is a front seat in the house because the singers are going all over the place, but you get to stare out and look at this whole thing. I wonder what that bird's eye view is like. 

(17:50) A. Dennis Sparger
I remember after my first concert, I told a board member that, you know, this was a great concert. If we can just do away with the candlelight procession, it would be perfect. And I was told, this is why people come. 

(18:03) Ron Klemm
Were they right? Or were you right? 

(18:05) A. Dennis Sparger
I was wrong, but the challenge was finding music that was appropriate for processing. 

(18:12) Ron Klemm
And what does that mean?

(18:15) A. Dennis Sparger
That means the choral parts could be a little too complicated, too involved. And that would be fine if you were standing on the risers and you have your music in front of you. 

(18:25) Ron Klemm
And the music was all coming from the same spot. 

(18:27) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes, if it was all coming from the same spot. But when you're looking at singers being scattered all throughout the hall, and you're looking at singers being scattered all throughout the hall, And they have to sing from memory and they have to walk at the same time.

Thank goodness they don't chew gum while they sing. But, but it almost feels like that. There are so many activities going on. So eventually after years of struggling with this, I started writing my own. So the parts would be a little simpler for the chorus, just a verse or two. So they could memorize the words very quickly.

In fact, in many cases, they already have the words memorized. And, very little harmony singing, unless there were dramatic moments, and then let the orchestra do more of the work. Of the,

(19:11) Ron Klemm
of the complicated and the harmonies, 

(19:13) A. Dennis Sparger
Right. Yes, yes. Yeah. And then, of course, I was able to drag you into this to be my colleague in arranging and it just turned out very well.

(19:21) A. Dennis Sparger
Yeah, I know last year I said, okay, this is my last one. All of a sudden I'm writing yet a fresh one for this year.

(19:28) Ron Klemm
One of the things that I remember from one of the processionals that we collaborated on was how important it was to include Bach. That Bach would be the centerpiece of it. And there we took that chorale from one of the cantatas featured in the Christmas oratorio, which had been done many years with Dr. Heyne and others, but made that as the centerpiece and as the focus. That was, that was a, people talk about that as being a moving moment.

Talk about audiences and audience participation. We have developed a kind of a tradition with The Bach Society. It started with the Christmas concerts, but now it's, it's spread to all of our concerts. 

(21:44) A. Dennis Sparger
We're doing it in other places as well. 

(21:47) Ron Klemm
And that is active participation. I think that if there's one thing that's changed over the years that has some significance to it, is people don't go to concerts now just to sit passively and you know, fold their hands and, and they want to in some way be Connected, they want to participate actively. And one of the things we've done with the Christmas Candlelight Concert over the years is made sure that the audience was actively participating. Tell us about that. 

(22:20) A. Dennis Sparger
Right. It's so important and you know, we've all been in situations where there should be audience or congregation participation in singing and you look around and very few people are singing.

They just don't get into it anymore and yet we're finding so many of the people in our audience love to sing and they look forward to the opportunity, especially singing with an orchestra and with 60 or 70 highly trained singers leading them along the way and it becomes such a wonderful experience.

So we always try to include this, well not try, we do include this in our Christmas Candlelight Concerts because we feel it's important for every audience member to feel a personal investment in what this is all about.

We haven't mentioned earlier, and I should mention now, that this is not a holiday concert. This is a Christ Christmas concert. It's music that celebrates the birth of the Savior. And all of the music is selected with that in mind. It's not really a religious experience. It might be a spiritual one, but we want it to be meaningful for what the season is really all about. 

(24:27) Ron Klemm
You know, that's very interesting that you bring that up. Because historically, Bach's music was written primarily, his choral music, or what was it that Cal Stapert said in one of our recent ones? Oh, the Essential Bach. 

(24:44) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes.

(24:44) Ron Klemm
Essential Bach was written for worship. For worship, was written for church service experience. 

(24:49) A. Dennis Sparger
Sure. 

(24:50) Ron Klemm
But a piece like Handel's Messiah was written for a more general audience. 

(24:57) A. Dennis Sparger
For the theater. 

(24:57) Ron Klemm
For the theater. Exactly right. We've come to make it such that of course it's, it's a performance, it's music for the theater as it were, but, but to bring that Bach dimension in, I think is something that is so unique to this concert. Wouldn't you agree? 

(25:16) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes. And even if we're not doing the music of Bach, we're following through with his ideas.

(25:21) Ron Klemm
The spirit of Bach.

(25:45) Ron Klemm
Christ was born for you, a message delivered by The Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra from a recent Christmas Candlelight Concert in St. Louis. Speaking of the chorus, they have another message for you. That's next. I'm Ron Klemm. This is is Bach Talk.

(26:47) Ron Klemm
We've heard from Music Director and Conductor Dennis Sparger, and you've heard some of my thoughts, too, about The Bach Society's annual Christmas Candlelight Concerts, a St. Louis tradition since 1951. Now, let's hear from the chorus. What are their thoughts? Not specifically about this concert, necessarily, but of the choral experience in general? Well, let's find out.

(27:15) Stephanie McSwain
We're all here for one common purpose. Sharing the music of Bach, and no matter where we're coming from, that's our, that's our goal, that's our mindset, that's our mission. 

(27:27) Rachel Jones
I absolutely love the people. It's very uplifting every week to see this group. 

(27:32) Theresa Flores
I really have had some, some great friendships blossom out of The Bach Society.

(27:37) Ellen Leaf
People are very friendly and very warm and welcoming, so it's not just a job, and it's not just a place to come and rehearse and then go sing. I think it's a community. 

(27:47) Rosalind Stevens
It's very inclusive and everybody has their own thing to bring to the mix. We have doctors, lawyers, teachers.

(27:55) Stephanie McSwain
I love that we are so diverse in age, in stages of life, in backgrounds.

(28:02) Tyler Sexton
It's people who, for probably no other reason in life, would ever connect, would ever meet. 

(28:07) Scott MacDonald
It's just such a really dedicated and passionate community of singers. 

(28:12) Jack McFarling
And everyone I think is here for the right reason. They're, they're here to make music. 

(28:18) Alison Neace
Even though it's a mix of volunteers and professionals, everybody has a very strong musical background.

(28:24) Shephali Wolff
The richness of sound and sort of the technique that the chorus has is unparalleled.

(28:30) Susan Niederer
I think it's the quality and the caliber of the music that we do. It's just music that I wouldn't get to do anywhere else. 

(28:37) Nichole Black
It is about the only group in St. Louis that offers the opportunity to sing these pieces, you know, with orchestra.

(28:45) Melissa Payton
There's no other organization that's really dedicated to preserving these oratorio works and those inspired by him.

(29:05) Theresa Flores
Getting to work with somebody like Dennis is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. 

(29:09) Rachel Jones
It's the dedication that Dennis has and his care for every programmatic decision. 

(29:15) Shawn Neace
There's a professionalism in the organization that doesn't exist in every group. 

(29:19) Susan Niederer
We have an outstanding board that is committed to the future of the Bach Society.

(29:26) Melissa Payton
The fact that we are over 80 years old, we have built relationships with so many people over the years. It's really our individual donors that are sustaining us and investing in our future by maybe giving through a legacy gift, supporting a concert series, or by making a one-time wonderful gift. 

(29:48) Alison Neace
We have such wonderful supporters and when you get to look out and see their faces and talk to them at, during the concerts and at events. It's just a wonderful group of people to share the music with. 

(30:01) Andy Greenwood
The choir is extremely active in the community. They have this wonderful program of outreach and education. 

(30:09) Melissa Payton
There's no other organization that is doing what we do. No other choral organization that is investing in young students and investing in music education. And so we have this unique opportunity to move this type of music forward and into our schools and remind students and our audience why it's so valuable and so important. 

(30:35) Tyler Sexton
To me, it's special because there's obvious dedication.

(30:39) Rachel Jones
It's the loyalty of the singers, first of all. It's the loyalty of patrons. It's the fact that people choose to sing with this ensemble for 50 years. 

(30:47) Ellen Leaf
The very first note of warming up, I felt like I was home. 

(30:51) Maggie Lowe
It's the love of my life. I don't know what I would do without it. 

(30:54) Andy Greenwood
I couldn't imagine a better group to get involved with.

(30:58) Katie Abraham
The ability to create not only music but experiences together is really special.

(31:52) Ron Klemm
Musical portions today featured selections from concert performances by The Bach Society of Saint Louis, Dennis Sparger, music director and conductor. Many of these performances are still available for digital download. Just go to our website, bachsociety.org, and click on Watch and Listen. There you'll find links to these recordings.

Bach Talk would like to hear from you. We'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to rate and review our podcast on your favorite platform. Wherever you listen, your feedback helps us reach more listeners, tell our story, and keep the conversation going. If you have comments, questions, or suggestions about Bach Talk for our team or any of our guests, we'd love to hear them.

You can fill out a quick and easy comment form on our website at Bachsociety.org/bach-talk. Or, email us directly, Bachtalk@bachsociety.org.

The associate producer of Bach Talk is doting daddy-to-be Scott McDonald. Our recording engineer is the fabulous Paul Henrich. Additional assistance today provided by a tremendous trio, Sarah Langworthy, Andie Murphy, and Charissa Marciniak. On behalf of the Board of Directors, Music Director Dennis Sparger, and Executive Director Melissa Payton, and the rest of the Bach Society staff, this is Ron Klemm wishing you a meaningful and Merry Christmas, and a joy-filled New Year.

Bach Talk is a registered trademark of The Bach Society of Saint Louis.

About Episode 15

Join us for an exciting conversation with The Bach Society of Saint Louis' Principal Cellist, Ken Kulosa! Bach Talk host Ron Klemm and Music Director and Conductor A. Dennis Sparger sit down with Ken as he shares his unexpected journey from aspiring doctor to cellist. Get a behind-the-scenes look at his experiences navigating the complexities of Bach’s music, the challenges of playing the viola da gamba and the passion that drives him.

Transcription

(00:00) Ron Klemm
This is Bach Talk.

That's the Courante from the 3rd Suite for Cello Alone by Johann Sebastian Bach. It's being played by Kenneth Kulosa, an active pedagogue as well as performer. Ken can be found in many realms these days. He teaches cello both privately and at Washington University here in St. Louis. In fact, the Missouri chapter of the American String Teachers Association named Ken Kulosa their Artist Teacher of the Year in 2003.

But it wasn't a foregone conclusion that Ken would even be a musician. In fact, there was a time when he seriously considered becoming a doctor. Until 

(00:53) Ken Kulosa
I was thinking about it really seriously and I thought, there's no way I can study eight hours a day, you know, for medicine. And, and then I thought, well, there's no way I can practice eight hours a day.

And I'm like, I have a real problem. But then I did come to the realization that I'm not going to play cello for fun because I always know I could have played it better. And so I said, I'll quit cello, except I really like classical music. I would rather always be on stage. 

(01:23) Ron Klemm
Mm-Hmm. 

(01:24) Ken Kulosa
Honestly, it's just a thrill that there's, there's nothing that you can compare it to, I think.

(01:43) Ron Klemm
Hello, I'm Ron Klemm. Welcome to Bach Talk. Today, a conversation with an important member of The Bach Society Orchestra, principal cellist, Kenneth Kulosa. A native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Ken moved to St. Louis in 1997 at the invitation of the St. Louis Symphony. A graduate of the New England Conservatory and the University of Houston, Kenneth studied with Lawrence Lesser and Hans Jürgen Jensen, later became Mr. Jensen's assistant at Northwestern University near Chicago. Bach Society Music Director and Conductor Dennis Sparger joined our conversation, which began with A fair question, I think. How did it begin, this love affair with the cello? Well, rather oddly, as it turns out. 

(02:33) Ken Kulosa
My mom had, I don't know if it was somebody that called on the phone or whatever, but there was going to be somebody to come into the house and give an introductory accordion lesson.

(02:44) A. Dennis Sparger
No kidding.

(02:46) Ken Kulosa
And then. 

(02:46) Ron Klemm
How old were you at this time? 

(02:47) Ken Kulosa
I don't know. I was pretty young. I bet you I was probably seven maybe or something. 

(02:53) A. Dennis Sparger
Yeah, that sounds about right for starting. 

(02:56) Ken Kulosa
And, and, and then my mom told me that it was canceled. And I cried. I just remembered being so upset over that. 

(03:04) Ron Klemm
So you cried because you couldn't hear the accordion?

(03:08) Ken Kulosa
I don't know. 

(03:08) Ron Klemm
Even though some people cry because they have to hear the accordion. 

(03:12) Ken Kulosa
Yeah, it was just, the prospect of it seemed, it just seemed very exciting. 

(03:18) Ron Klemm
Tell me about your home and about your upbringing. Was there music in the home from the beginning? 

(03:23) Ken Kulosa
Not so much. My dad was basically tone-deaf. My mom, uh, she sang in church.

(03:30) Ken Kulosa
There's music in my family. Uh, my, I had a great aunt that could play anything on the piano by ear. Apparently, the story is that she would never practice, she'd just come into lessons and play, everything would be great. One time she came in, the music was upside down, she was playing, the teacher got very upset.

Yeah, but she could, she could do the, in church where she played, she, she played all the hymns, and, and the pastor liked to go up, modulate up a half step every time, every stanza, right? 

(03:58) A. Dennis Sparger
Every verse.

(03:59) Ken Kulosa
Every verse. So, and she'd just do the same old thing, just in another key. And, and, you know.

(04:04) A. Dennis Sparger
That's just amazing.

(04:05) Ken Kulosa
Just huge talent. Yeah. 

(04:06) Ron Klemm
So when did you pick up some sort of music, piano or violin or the cello? Oh, you shudder when I said piano. 

(04:15) Ken Kulosa
No, no, no, no, no. I started, more about the violin. My sister started on violin two years before. We started in public schools.

(04:22) Ron Klemm
Where?

(04:22) Ken Kulosa
In New Mexico in Albuquerque, and they had an amazing string program.

(04:28) A. Dennis Sparger
Oh, how important it is for public schools to have fine music programs. 

(04:33) Ken Kulosa
Yeah, yeah. And that was all due to one man being responsible for, for building that whole program all through the city and phenomenal. Then a great youth orchestra program. 

(04:44) A. Dennis Sparger
Sure, and then did you move into violin to begin with? 

(04:47) Ken Kulosa
No. 

(04:48) A. Dennis Sparger
No? 

(04:49) Ken Kulosa
After hearing my, the violin for two years, you know, I just knew I didn't want to play that.

(04:53) Ron Klemm
Because?

(04:53) A. Dennis Sparger
The first two years are pretty rough.

(04:55) Ken Kulosa
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You listen to any beginner playing the violin, you know, and, and, you know, that high E string just shrinking and, and it's just not, wasn't me. But when I heard the cello, I liked it. I was intrigued by it. I think that people kind of gravitate toward different registers of, according to, I think, their own metabolism or, or, you know.

(05:19) A. Dennis Sparger
There's something in there that makes that connection.

(05:21) Ken Kulosa
Their personalities, right? And, and how much does a personality pick an instrument and how much does an instrument shape a personality? And I think, There's very, they go hand in hand quite a bit. 

(05:32) Ron Klemm
Interesting. 

(05:33) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. 

(05:34) Ron Klemm
So you were attracted to the cello. 

(05:37) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. 

(05:38) Ron Klemm
But did you start playing a full-size cello? 

(05:41) Ken Kulosa
I think I started on a three-quarter size.

(05:42) Ron Klemm
Okay. 

(05:42) Ken Kulosa
I didn't start too small, but yeah. 

(05:45) Ron Klemm
Okay. And, and approximately what age we talking about? 

(05:48) Ken Kulosa
Uh, nine years old. 

(05:49) Ron Klemm
Okay. And when did, were you taking lessons right from the start or what, and when did it get serious? 

(05:55) Ken Kulosa
No, I, I was just doing school orchestra until, and when I was in sixth grade, my teacher, she always had, she taught at many schools.

(06:03) Ken Kulosa
She used to have a big combo concert twice every semester. And they always, she would always have a, a student feature for solo. And she's like, if you get a teacher and take lessons, we'll put you on this thing. So that's, that's, that was my invitation to go get a teacher. 

(06:21) Ron Klemm
Did you always want to be a musician?

(06:23) Ken Kulosa
The funny thing is ever since the age of four, I was going to be a doctor. That was it. 

(06:29) Ron Klemm
A medical doctor. 

(06:31) Ken Kulosa
Yes. Um, but then when music happened, music was always, it worked out very well and I loved it. And, but I would talk about both things as if they exist, like I was two different people kind of. And not that it was ever going to come to a moment where I had to make a decision, nor did I think about I would do both, but it just, I don't know, I was just going back and forth and then I had to finally have to come to my moment.

(06:57) A. Dennis Sparger
But now your playing can heal. 

(07:00) Ken Kulosa
There you go. 

(07:01) A. Dennis Sparger
The spirits of listeners. 

(07:02) Ron Klemm
Good connection. 

(07:02) Ken Kulosa
Thank you.

(07:03) Ron Klemm
I agree with that. Or you could go back to school and become a Charlie Metz and do both, right? 

(07:10) Ken Kulosa
Right. And I've had, I've, I've had one friend of mine that, that in the middle of her doctorate in, in piano, she decided she wanted to help people and, and went to medical school.

(07:20) A. Dennis Sparger
In another way. Yes. So by the time you were well into high school, you were taking this quite seriously, taking private lessons and playing in the school orchestra. And, and something must've triggered your thoughts to saying, I'm going to university and studying this really seriously. 

(07:36) Ken Kulosa
The funny thing is, so it was, I don't know, June, I might've been with the transition junior to senior year, but I, I, I was thinking about it really seriously and I thought, there's no way I can study eight hours a day, you know, for medicine and I could learn fast so I didn't like studying. And I said, there's no way I can do that eight hours a day. And then, and then I thought, well, there's no way I can practice eight hours a day. And I'm like, I have a real problem. But then I did come to the realization that I'm not going to play cello for fun. Because I'll always know I could have played it better and so I said I'll quit cello.

(08:17) Ron Klemm
Really?

(08:18) Ken Kulosa
Yeah.

(08:18) Ron Klemm
And when did you when did that thought cross?

(08:20) Ken Kulosa
Oh this, this all was this was one conversation I had with myself and then I said that's fine. And I was like except I really like classical music and I really I shouldn't say these things, but I don't like going to concerts. I like playing concerts. And I thought, well, this is a real problem because if I can't play concerts and I want to just go, then I'm always going to wish I was playing.

(08:44) Ken Kulosa
So that means I can't go to concerts. And then all of a sudden it did realize, I mean, I realized that that meant a lot more to me than I'm not going to go to the doctor and feel, oh, I wish I was doing that. You know? So, I mean, I realized that it really meant a lot more to me. 

(08:59) Ron Klemm
It is a different experience, isn't it? Uh, when you are in passive mode and you are receiving the gifts of others, you have to have a mindset that is open to receiving those. On the other hand, when you are giving, it's, it's a different frame of mind, isn't it? 

(09:18) Ken Kulosa
Very much. I would rather always be on stage, honestly. It's just a thrill that there's, there's nothing that you can compare it to, I think.

(09:27) A. Dennis Sparger
Well, so you eventually went on to a college to study. 

(09:30) Ken Kulosa
Yep. I ended up going locally to the university. 

(09:34) Ron Klemm
In Albuquerque?

(09:35) Ken Kulosa
Yeah, there was phenomenal cellists, but it just didn't really work out very well. Although I really, I learned how to practice. I once, I knew that that's what I wanted to do. Yeah. I had to, I had to do a lot of exploration on my own and it was really good for me.

But then in the middle, I, one summer I went to a summer program, Congress of Strings, and I met a new teacher that just everything exploded and it was amazing and the last two days before I had to leave, I just, I came in for a short lesson and I just started bawling because I, I, I didn't want to leave.

And 10 days later I was in Houston and, uh, going to school at the University of Houston. It was a great experience, a small department, but really full of amazing teachers and hardworking students and, uh, we had a great time and accomplished so much there. 

(10:30) Ron Klemm
And how long were you in Houston? 

(10:31) Ken Kulosa
Three years. 

(10:32) Ron Klemm
And then?

(10:33) Ken Kulosa
And then I went to New England Conservatory. I decided I needed my stamp of approval from a big school. I studied with Larry Lesser, who is at that time, he was the president of the conservatory. That was great. It was great. It was very, it was very different because we were of, you know, from who I'd studied with, with Hans, Hans Jensen.

He was a Leonard Rose student. Larry Lesser was Piatigorsky's assistant. I did not realize that they're exactly the opposite. And he did a lot of adjusting and, and it was very frustrating. But at the same time, and I, I kind of rejected a lot of the stuff that he said until I started teaching and then I realized that makes sense. That makes sense. That makes sense. 

(11:17) A. Dennis Sparger
Isn't that amazing? 

(11:18) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. 

(11:18) A. Dennis Sparger
Yeah. 

(11:19) Ken Kulosa
So it's a hybrid. I'm a hybrid.

(11:20) A. Dennis Sparger
But sometimes it takes us a long time to learn what we could have learned long ago. 

(11:25) Ken Kulosa
But when, when I was there, my teacher from Houston, he became a professor at Northwestern and then he invited me to come kind of be his assistant and get my head back together and kind of sort everything out. 

(11:37) Ron Klemm
I haven't heard heard the word St. Louis yet. 

(11:40) Ken Kulosa
Well, yeah I lived in Chicago, finished there and freelanced and played in orchestras up there and did a lot of stuff up there and then eventually was auditioning for jobs and then finally I got a position with the symphony here. So that's what brought me here. 

(11:56) Ron Klemm
Well, we are thrilled to have you and we love to see you on stage.

(11:59) Ken Kulosa
Thank you.

(12:01) Ron Klemm
With The Bach Society of Saint Louis. That's our principal cellist Ken Colosa with music director Dennis Sparger. I'm Ron Klemm and this is Bach Talk. 

(12:09) Ron Klemm
Ken Kulosa came to St. Louis from the Chicago area, where he played with the Chicago Symphony, the Grant Park Symphony, and at the same time held the posts of principal cellist for both the South Bend and Northwest Indiana symphonies. He talked about his various roles here in the Gateway City, including performing with the St. Louis Symphony under then music director Hans Vonk. 

(13:05) Ken Kulosa
So in, I spent, what, eight years in Chicago, and, and I had started teaching a lot, and, and when I got here, I'd been doing a lot of musical outreach with South Bend Symphony, and, and teaching, and things like that, and, The principal thing that I came to play with the symphony was, um, to be a kind of an outreach specialist.

So, I did a lot of that for, what, three years. And then, then I played another five years full-time. 

(13:33) Ron Klemm
What's an outreach specialist? 

(13:35) Ken Kulosa
Well, what did they call it? Um, resident musician. 

(13:38) Ron Klemm
Oh yeah? Yeah. Meaning? 

(13:41) Ken Kulosa
Outreach specialists. 

(13:43) Ron Klemm
You're so helpful, Kenneth. Whenever I need an explanation, I'm going to Ken. 

(13:48) Ken Kulosa
Right. Yeah, no, they, I spent a lot of time going out to the schools. Sure. And this is when the community partnerships program had just been started. Yes. Yes. And so lots of school visits, lots of community, you know, things. And, and it included actually also teaching at the Community Music School because the Symphony used to own that.

(14:11) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes. 

(14:12) Ken Kulosa
And so started with that as well. So. 

(14:15) Ron Klemm
And you were comfortable with, with students of what, all ages? 

(14:19) Ken Kulosa
It doesn't matter. Yeah. I mean, I have a 75-year-old student now. So anywhere from, from five years old to, five to 75. 

(14:28) Ron Klemm
So it's never too late. 

(14:29) Ken Kulosa
It's never too late. 

(14:30) A. Dennis Sparger
So you must have really enjoyed playing with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. 

(14:33) Ken Kulosa
Oh yeah, it was great. 

(14:34) A. Dennis Sparger
On that wonderful stage. 

(14:35) Ken Kulosa
It was great. And I, I loved those, you know, those first years of Vonk because it felt like, chamber music, really large-scale chamber music. It was really exciting. I had been, the, the only time I've ever heard the Berlin Philharmonic live, they came to Boston and that was the most amazing experience I've ever witnessed as an orchestral, you know, experience.

Because they're all up there. watching each other and, and not even paying attention to the connector. But, no, but they're 

(15:09) Ron Klemm
Dennis is sitting right here. 

(15:12) Ken Kulosa
No, it was Ozawa was conducting and that's, that's not there. 

(15:15) Ron Klemm
Nevermind. 

(15:16) Ken Kulosa
It's not their man. So, um, but, um, but they're all playing and they're all watching and making sure their bows are matching in this.

And the sound that came out of that orchestra was like nothing I've ever heard. Yes. Yes. And I was so intrigued by the fact that, okay, this, this orchestra tunes like way sharp, you know, now they're full 46 and,

(15:37) Ron Klemm
And you could hear this. You have perfect pitch or close to it. 

(15:41) Ken Kulosa
No, but I mean, 

(15:42) Ron Klemm
You could tell? 

(15:42) Ken Kulosa
I have relative pitch, but no, actually I couldn't tell. That's the thing. They were the darkest-sounding orchestra I've ever heard in my life. 

(15:47) Ron Klemm
Really? 

(15:48) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. And hearing them in symphony hall where I've, you know, I had been to many, many, you know, and just hear this sound, this dark, You know, European, I mean, Karajan had shaped that sound for what, 40, whatever years. But with Vanka, it felt a little of that too.

(16:05) Ron Klemm
Yeah, I can see that. 

(16:07) Ken Kulosa
Super exciting. 

(16:08) Ron Klemm
At some point, you joined the Bach Society of St. Louis and other organizations. Tell us about that. 

(16:15) Ken Kulosa
I had started playing, I played some concerts at Innsbruck with Maryse Carlin. Doing some trio sonatas or something. I think it was. And I, I had been doing trio sonatas since college, playing continuo, not always enjoying it, but never knowing really what I was doing, but learning.

(16:36) Ken Kulosa
And, um, I played with Maryse and she's like, well, you know, I have a group. And she says, she says, if you get a Baroque cello, you can play with us. So simple. 

(16:48) A. Dennis Sparger
Yeah. So simple. 

(16:49) Ken Kulosa
And, um, So I said, okay, I started looking and there's, there's virtually nowhere to buy Baroque instruments, especially at that time in this country, there's very little limited opportunity.

(17:00) Ken Kulosa
So I'm, I'm looking on, on eBay. I bought a cello on eBay. 

(17:05) Ron Klemm
You bought a cello on eBay. 

(17:08) Ken Kulosa
And I bought two, actually the first one I didn't like, and I sent it back to Germany, it cost me an extra thousand dollars doing just that and this other cello, it was a wreck. But it, and it was old. It's probably a 17th-century cello.

(17:23) Ron Klemm
Really? 

(17:24) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. But it, it was full of worm damage and all kinds of things. And it looked like it had been through every European conflict on the back of a soldier. I mean, but it had the most beautiful sound, but it was just a modern cello. I mean, it was set up as a modern instrument. Then I had it, as we say, Baroqued, we had it modified to a Baroque instrument.

(17:44) Ken Kulosa
I used that for many, many years. Yeah. 

(17:46) Ron Klemm
Yeah. Now you said Baroque. Yeah, not broked. 

(17:49) Ken Kulosa
No. 

(17:50) Ron Klemm
Okay. 

(17:50) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. Yeah. I mean just certain modifications have to be done to it. And, um, and so that was my instrument for many years. And I learned a lot with working with Maryse and, and, and we have some other people that, that import to the group, incredible kind of learning experience into, into that whole world.

(18:14) Ken Kulosa
Baroque music is so different than, you know, what you grew up with, you know, um, from the old-fashioned fifties kind of, 

(18:24) A. Dennis Sparger
Heavy.

(18:25) Ken Kulosa
Heavy Baroque, where Bach is Bach. 

(18:28) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes, yeah. 

(18:29) Ken Kulosa
You know, he's very serious. 

(18:31) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes. 

(18:32) Ron Klemm
Well, it is serious, but we won't know. I want to talk more about that just around the next turn. That's Bach Society Principal Cellist Ken Kulosa.

(18:39) Ron Klemm
With Music Director Dennis Sparger, I'm Ron Klemm. This is Bach Talk.

(18:56) Ron Klemm
Talk about coming to, uh, The Bach Society and about, uh, beginning to play with this venerable organization. 

(19:04) Ken Kulosa
I think it probably started with the Christmas concerts. 

(19:08) A. Dennis Sparger
Probably so. 

(19:08) Ken Kulosa
Probably when I first started playing. 

(19:10) A. Dennis Sparger
Because we have a larger string section for Christmas concerts. 

(19:13) Ken Kulosa
Right. Yes. And I don't know, that happened for several years, I imagine, as far as I recall.

(19:19) Ken Kulosa
And, uh, when Beth Macdonald retired, I wrote you a letter, uh, saying, of course, I've been, this is my favorite thing to do, honestly, is playing continuo, is absolutely my favorite thing to do. And Bach, especially, they have the best bass lines in the world. 

(19:38) A. Dennis Sparger
Yeah, absolutely. And what a joy it's been, you know, having you sitting in that position and especially, you know, through all the passions that, that really put you to task.

(19:51) Ken Kulosa
Those are the true marathons. 

(19:52) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes. Yeah. 

(19:53) Ron Klemm
Yeah. Let's talk about continuo playing. First of all, people don't, you know, a general person doesn't know what we're talking about. When I say the word continuo, What does that mean to you? Well, how do you define that?

(20:07) Ken Kulosa
Basso continuo in the, in the full term? I it's, it's really, and it's, it's interesting. I did cheat a little bit. I looked up, I don't want to be out of place with what I'm saying. Cause I, I have my opinions about what things are. And then I look up the definitions and, and, and, and I realize, oh, I'm right. So that's good. And, and it said the basso continuo is the nucleus of the ensemble in Baroque music, and I think it really is.

It's the fundamental of the group. The continuo is, of course, the bass line. And augmented with the keyboard instruments doing the chordal work, and you have the fundamental bass line, you have the harmony, and.

(20:48) A. Dennis Sparger
And it maintains a lot of the rhythm as well. 

(20:51) Ken Kulosa
Well, yeah, and the rhythm and the continuo, obviously, we continually play. So, and, you know, we lay down the law for, for the whole ensemble, responsible for really establishing the, the character of the music for the rest of the ensemble. You know, if you play just kind of sloggy and, and just, the whole orchestra is going to drag you down. 

(21:16) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes. It really has to lift.

(21:18) Ken Kulosa
Uplift the spirit. 

(21:20) A. Dennis Sparger
Moving forward. Yes. Yeah. 

(21:22) Ken Kulosa
So I feel like there's a lot of responsibility to making the group come alive. 

(21:26) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes. Uh, while we're on this subject, um, you know, the Bach Society Orchestra still uses a modern day instruments and we play a standard pitch of, you know, 440, 441. Uh, but yet we try to move in the direction of, of historically informed performance. What is it you do as a cellist to help advocate that type of sound? 

(21:51) Ken Kulosa
Yeah, I, well, of course I play so much on gut strings and Baroque bow and, and it's been an interesting time in over these years because it's really changed how I approach the bow in general. Baroque, Baroque music's all about expression through the bow.

(22:12) Ron Klemm
Yes, yeah. 

(22:13) Ken Kulosa
Modern music is more about expression through the left hand. 

(22:17) Ron Klemm
Aha. 

(22:18) Ken Kulosa
And I remember this one time I, You know, heard somebody playing it. It just sounds like the bow is an organ. It's just, it's just this wall of sound. 

(22:25) A. Dennis Sparger
Continuous sound. Yes. 

(22:26) Ken Kulosa
And whereas all the shaping in music in, in Baroque music comes from the bow. 

(22:32) A. Dennis Sparger
I think the word shaping is very important here, that the notes are shaped, the phrases are shaped, yes.

(22:38) Ken Kulosa
And so it's really changed how I use my bow in a modern sense as well. But, um, yeah, I try to implement all of those, all those shapes and stuff with, with, I, I do use a Baroque bow when we, play. 

(22:51) Ron Klemm
Now, structurally, for those, for novices like me, uh, what is the difference between a Baroque bow and a modern bow?

(23:01) Ken Kulosa
The modern bow that's been around for 200 years.

(23:03) Ron Klemm
Yeah, well, yeah, right, right, right. 

(23:05) A. Dennis Sparger
We're still calling that modern. 

(23:06) Ken Kulosa
Um, the Baroque bow is, it's very, um, if you ever look at one, The stick is straight. Under tension it actually bows outward. 

(23:18) Ron Klemm
Away from the instrument. 

(23:19) Ken Kulosa
Away from the hair, yeah. 

(23:20) A. Dennis Sparger
Like the bow you'd see for a bow and arrow.

(23:22) Ken Kulosa
Right. And the head's very slender. And, um, so it doesn't have a lot of power at the tip. There's a lot of fade in the bow as you go out in the bow. Whereas the modern bow is, it's convex, concave, convex. It's the one that goes in. 

(23:38) Ron Klemm

Right. Okay. 

(23:39) Ken Kulosa
And, um, with heat they treat that camber in the bow and the head's much taller.

(23:46) Ken Kulosa
And so what a modern bow is, is just a giant spring. It has a lot of power at the tip. It, the ability to play off the string and, and, and, uh, more effectively. 

(23:57) A. Dennis Sparger
And you can get a more even sound all the way across, you know, sustaining a note, whereas with the Baroque bow, you tend to have like a little swell in the sound and then a decay or crescendo diminuendo. And again, that's part of shaping every note. 

(24:11) Ken Kulosa
And it's interesting. You could almost think, I just had a visual image when you were doing that, I was thinking about the, the outward curve of the bow. That's exactly the sound profile. And you know, in the modern, in the modern bow, it's like that. And so you can really get a lot of power at that tip.

(24:26) A. Dennis Sparger
Of course, this is something I teach my singers, is that like with a quarter note, a half note, a whole note, build in, you know, part of it a crescendo, part of it a diminuendo, rather than singing sostenuto. 

(24:36) Ken Kulosa
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, nothing is a wall of sound in Baroque Music. 

(24:41) A. Dennis Sparger
And when you do that, I mean the wrong way, you get the kind of recordings we were hearing in the 50s and 60s where it's just thick and it tends to be overly dark and quite often those tempos were slow and you thought, gee, this is the most boring stuff in the world.

(24:57) A. Dennis Sparger
And then we hear the Bach that started coming up in the mid-60s with some of the German groups and then English groups, and we're finding, wow, this music is alive. It's bright. It's just, you know, terrific. It's a new Bach. 

(25:11) Ken Kulosa
Well, and making that transition from, from thinking of old Bach. Yeah. And then thinking about, and Baroque music is all about dance.

(25:20) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes. 

(25:21) Ken Kulosa
It's all the, so many of the, all the musical forms are based on dance forms. And, and so there's a lightness and there's, there's, there's a lilting quality to the music. And that's why when you play on gut strings and stuff, it lightens it up. It actually gets faster and it lends itself to playing like that more.

(25:40) A. Dennis Sparger
You know, some universities should require, you know, all music students to take at least one semester of 18th-century dance to learn how to do all of these steps and get the feel of them and to bring that quality into the music. 

(25:54) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it changes everything. I, the funny thing is when I, when I was playing Baroque cello at one point, I kept refusing to play Bach suites. Because I, I don't know, I didn't feel like I deserved to do it, yet. 

(26:10) Ron Klemm
Now, let's, what you're referring to are, are these, this set of, Suites for cello.

(26:18) Ken Kulosa
Correct. 

(26:18) Ron Klemm
Right? 

(26:18) Ken Kulosa
Yes. 

(26:19) Ron Klemm
Solo cello. No, nothing else. Mm hmm. And, and you steered away from that because? 

(26:24) Ken Kulosa
I was afraid. 

(26:25) Ron Klemm Okay.
Well, probably a normal reaction.

(26:29) Ken Kulosa
Because, I mean, it, the techniques of playing on, on a Baroque instrument are very different from modern. You cannot force things to happen. Steal strings and stuff. You just, you know, You can lay into it, you get a response. I always say with gut strings, you have to ask them very politely if they will vibrate for you.

(26:49) Ken Kulosa
And then once they say, well, of course I will. And then you can do anything with it, but you cannot play. And it, it takes a year or two to really feel comfortable with, with doing that. And, and I was really afraid and I scheduled a Baroque cello recital and I thought I'm going to do a Bach suite. I started practicing. I was like. Oh my god, this is so much easier. 

(27:10) Ron Klemm
How? 

(27:10) A. Dennis Sparger
You were ready for them then. 

(27:12) Ken Kulosa
Well, the writing lends itself to that kind of an instrument. And, um, the strokes all made sense all of a sudden. 

(27:19) A. Dennis Sparger
Wow. 

(27:20) Ken Kulosa
Everything. 

(27:20) A. Dennis Sparger
Now before we run out of time. Yeah. Some of your finest work has been done, not on the cello, but on the viola da gamba.

(27:28) Ron Klemm
Yes. 

(27:29) A. Dennis Sparger
And you especially hear this work in the St. Matthew Passion that's just so extraordinary. What's the transition like for you? You know, you add another string or two, uh, you don't have an end pin to anchor it into the floor. 

(27:44) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. It's terrifying. 

(27:45) A. Dennis Sparger
And I would imagine it's a different bow for that instrument.

(27:48) Ken Kulosa
Bow grip is completely, it's an underhand. And you, you, you, you make. You adjust the volume of your playing not with your hand and your arm, but by pulling on the hair with your finger. 

(28:01) Ron Klemm
Really? 

(28:01) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. 

(28:02) Ron Klemm
Wow. 

(28:03) Ken Kulosa
So it's all very different and you can get so lost in all these extra strings. Even my five string piccolo cello, one extra string.

(28:12) Ken Kulosa
It's, it's, you get down into the lower strings and you get lost. So in a moment, you know, you can really kind of get a little confused, but seven, that's, that's a whole different world 

(28:21) A. Dennis Sparger
Seven strings, oh my godness. 

(28:21) Ron Klemm
On a gamba?

(28:24) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. 

(28:25) A. Dennis Sparger
And quite often the notes are moving along rather briskly. 

(28:28) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. Yeah. And it's just different because instead of the strings being tuned in fifths, it's in fourths and it's tuned like a guitar.

Except a step lower, but it's tuned in the same intervals as a guitar. And so the fingering is all different and if you start to panic, you know, you revert back to what you know. And then, then, then it really gets scary. 

(28:47) A. Dennis Sparger
You have to be really cool to play the viola da gamba, not get rattled at all. 

(28:53) Ken Kulosa
Right. And when we played the St. John Passion last year, well, I was wearing a suit. And I was like, the suit pants are really scary because they're slippery. And that gamba, especially the finish on it, is very slick. And in the middle of playing that, it did fall out of my legs. 

(29:13) A. Dennis Sparger
So you need to wear shorts. 

(29:14) Ken Kulosa
Well, I actually wear, I wear black jeans most of the time when I play.

(29:18) Ron Klemm
To give it a little more friction. 

(29:20) Ken Kulosa
Yeah, to play, when I play Baroque cello or something like that. But, yeah. 

(29:24) A. Dennis Sparger
We never knew that. 

(29:25) Ron Klemm
Well, it's a secret revealed on Bach Talk. 

(29:30) Ken Kulosa
Yeah, it's a little terrifying in moments like that. But, fortunately my finger was down, it didn't fall down, so. 

(29:36) A. Dennis Sparger
Well, we do have our secrets.

(29:37) Ken Kulosa
Yes. 

(29:39) Ron Klemm
Not anymore. 

(29:40) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes. You've probably played for a couple hundred different conductors. Can you, can, or more. I know. Can you tell if a conductor has a string background and knows how to talk to you as a string player? 

(30:17) Ron Klemm
He's asking for a friend, by the way. 

(30:21) Ken Kulosa
Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think certainly. Some are better at it than others. I mean, I think most of them are, are experienced enough.

(30:29) Ken Kulosa
They've been around enough. They can, they can speak about it well enough. And, um, when they start trying to give you technical advice, that sometimes. 

(30:38) A. Dennis Sparger
Maybe too much. 

(30:39) Ken Kulosa
A little too much sometimes. But, you know, they all like to use the bow. 

(30:44) A. Dennis Sparger
Yes. Yes. 

(30:45) Ken Kulosa
But, I mean, it's not, I mean, honestly, you know, a conductor, what they do with their hands and moving a bow isn't really that much different if they're expressive.

(30:54) A. Dennis Sparger
Yeah. Now I played cello for only four years at university orchestra, but I find that I, I use the movement of the bow in working with my singers frequently and, and really wish that they all had studied, you know, a stringed instrument for a while to understand what these things mean. 

(31:12) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. One of my friends in, in, uh, When I lived in Chicago was a pianist.She had a lot of students and she would send her students to me to study cello so that they could learn about phrasing and about pulling through music, you know, and using a bow. Yeah. I think it's very effective. 

(31:29) Ron Klemm
I wish I had a camera on you so people could see how you're moving your bow hand as you talk.

(31:36) Ken Kulosa
Can't help it. 

(31:36) Ron Klemm
You know what we love to do with people who we know can take it is do a couple of quick hits. 

(31:45) Ken Kulosa
Uh oh. 

(31:46) Ron Klemm
What piece can you not wait until you do it again? 

(31:51) Ken Kulosa
There's a lot of Mahler I'd like to play again. Heldenleben is one of my favorite pieces to play. Rachmaninoff, Chopin Sonatas, um, yeah.

(32:00) Ron Klemm
Well, let's go the other direction. What piece, if you never had to play it again, you'd be just fine with that? 

(32:07) Ken Kulosa
Oh boy. Uh, Beethoven 3rd. 

(32:11) Ron Klemm
Really? 

(32:11) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. 

(32:12) Ron Klemm
Interesting. 

(32:13) Ken Kulosa
It's too long. We did it on tour a lot. The Symphony, Vonk liked that piece and we played it a lot on tour. 

(32:20) Ron Klemm
Recorded it too, I think. 

(32:21) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. It's just too long.

(32:24) Ron Klemm
Present company excluded. If you could collaborate with one person, who would it be? 

(32:33) Ken Kulosa
Martha Argerich. 

(32:34) Ron Klemm
Martha Argerich? 

(32:36) Ken Kulosa
She's the goddess of piano. 

(32:38) Ron Klemm
Interesting. You must be happy doing what you're doing. 

(32:41) Ken Kulosa
I am happy doing what I'm doing. I'd like to play more while I can. I'd like to do that. I spend a lot of time teaching, you know, and doing stuff.

But I do feel, um A little bit jealous of, of a lot of my friends in Europe where they, they actually have a little bit more opportunity to, to, to pursue projects and recording and, and, and things like that on, it's a little bit easier for them. So maybe that's what it would be.

(33:08) Ron Klemm
If you could do anything else besides play the cello, what would it be?

(33:13) Ken Kulosa
I would be a luthier. I would make instruments. 

(33:15) Ron Klemm
You would make instruments. 

(33:18) Ken Kulosa
Yeah. 

(33:19) Ron Klemm
Because? 

(33:20) Ken Kulosa
I love woodworking. 

(33:22) Ron Klemm
Ah. 

(33:22) Ken Kulosa
I think there's, there's just this amazing solitude in, in making instruments. That it's, it's a very romantic kind of thing in my mind. So. 

(33:32) Ron Klemm
Well, I'm going to put woodworking tools and bench and stuff on your Christmas list.

(33:37) Ken Kulosa
Oh, thank you. 

(33:38) Ron Klemm
Okay. So that, uh, that's covered. Thank you for spending time with us. 

(33:42) Ken Kulosa
Oh, thank you. 

(33:43) Ron Klemm
What a thrill. 

(33:43) Ken Kulosa
It's been a pleasure. 

(33:44) Ron Klemm
To get to know you a little bit. 

(33:45) Ken Kulosa
Thank you. 

(33:45) Ron Klemm
That's Bach Society Principal Cellist, Ken Kulosa, with Music Director Dennis Sparger. I'm Ron Klemm and this is Bach Talk. 

(34:01) Ron Klemm
You're hearing a portion of the Allemande from the third cello suite by Johann Sebastian Bach. Ken Kulosa recorded the suite for a documentary film on the incredible life of artist and professor of design at Washington University, Leslie Laskey. We also heard Ken earlier on the viola da gamba from a performance of Bach's St. John Passion in March 2024 by The Bach Society of Saint Louis, Dennis Sparger conducting. All of our music today was captured by the Bach Society's Grammy award-winning recording engineer Paul Henrich. Paul has some fascinating stories of his own to tell, and one of our listeners suggested that we talk to Paul and share them on a future episode of Bach Talk, so we'll plan on that.

If you have suggestions for topics, comments, or questions about Bach Talk for our team or any of our guests, we'd love to hear them. Just fill out the quick and easy comment form on our website at bachsociety.org/bach-talk. Or, shoot us an email directly, bachtalk@bachsociety.org. If you enjoy what you're hearing on this or any of our previous episodes, will you kindly do us a favor?

Take a moment right now to rate and review our podcast on your favorite platform. Wherever you listen, your feedback helps us to tell our story. To reach more listeners and to keep the conversation going. Many thanks to Bach Society music director and conductor Dennis Sparger for his help today. The associate producer of Bach Talk is the amazing, multi-talented Scott MacDonald.

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Bach talk is a registered trademark of The Bach Society of Saint Louis. I'm Ron Klemm.