The Gathering Note

By: Philippa Kiraly

Bach can sound good in any configuration— jazzed up, swung, or straight, on steel band, recorders, electronics, with singers being instruments, or instruments taking the role of singers—but at its most sublime, Bach’s choral music is sung in a reverberant, sacred space.

Thus, Seattle Pro Musica’s performance in St. James Cathedral Saturday night of three Bach motets and music of other composers inspired by him, was deeply satisfying. It helps, of course, when the choir in question sings perfectly in tune, as Pro Musica does. The motets, Jesu, meine Freude for single choir; and Komm, Jesu, komm and Fuerchte dich nicht, each for double choir, were all sung at the east end of the cathedral.

Notably, the group sang with little vibrato, so that all lines in the polyphony could be heard individually. If one chose to follow just the altos for a while, it was easy to do so. With the tone so clean, the harmony sounded pure.

Karen P. Thomas, the choir’s conductor of 21 years, chose tempi and dynamics which allowed the music to breathe and brought out the emotions portrayed by the words. The joyfulness and sense of security in Jesu meine Freude; the tender serenity and feeling of coming home in Komm, Jesu, Komm, and the light heart in Feurchte dich nicht all shone through clearly. The light accompaniment of portative organ (Joseph Adam), theorbo (Gus Denhard) and Baroque cello (Nathan Whittaker) enhanced matters further.

For two contemporary works, small groups of singers moved to stand in a circle around the altar in the center of the Cathedral. Above this is the great dome, and the 16 women’s voices in John Muehleisen’s Da pacem rose up, the sound strikingly more immediate to the ear than when the singers stood at the east end. Here, it bloomed with more warmth and depth, and the high, clear voice of solo soprano Ginger Ellingson soared.

Commissioned by Pro Musica, this beautiful work is dedicated to “those who yearn for peace and those who have died to preserve it.” Da pacem is based on a Gregorian chant and the chorale from Jesu, meine Freude. Muehleisen interweaves the two, so that dissonance and consonance come together and dissolve into each other creating an atmosphere of peace and calm conviction.

His work was followed by Norwegian Knut Nystedt’s 1987 Immortal Bach, five minutes of subtle sound alteration like the curtains of the Aurora Borealis. If that sounds impossible, imagine those curtains wafting across the sky, the colors changing imperceptibly and continually. Nystedt’s score is one line long, a brief evocation of Bach’s Komm, suesser Tod. Thereafter, all four vocal lines divide into five sections and each sings the line at different speeds, with dynamics growing in intensity, then dying away to a quiet end.This requires enormous breath control and attention to keep the sound completely smooth, which Pro Musica achieved admirably.

Bach could hardly object. He was given to mathematical formulae in his music also. Nystedt’s method was equally unobtrusive, and successful in its result.

The concert also contained three sacred songs by Peter Cornelius, Drei Psalmlieder nach J.S. Bach, based on instrumental music by Bach; Mendelssohn’s chorale Mitt wir im Leben sind, in which he deliberately used a Bach-inflenced style of composition for a text which Bach had also set; and Brahms’ motet Schaffe in mir, Gott, which demonstrates that composer’s debt to Bach, not by copying, but by building on Bach’s structure. Adam performed Bach’s An Wasserfluessen Babylon and Mendelssohn’s Prelude in G major while the choir changed locations.