About the Boulder Bach Festival Board of Directors

The Board of Directors is passionate about its mission to spread the good news of Bach far and wide. It is a producing body that works in concert with the Music Director and the Executive Director to set the artistic course of the Festival and bring it to life with fiscal responsibility. The Board actively seeks the monetary resources needed to maintain the highest musical and artistic quality.

The board has responded to the challenges of an economic downturn with vigorous action. When it sensed that there were difficult times, both externally and internally, the board, with the assistance of a consultant, faced its challenges head-on, developed a continually renewing strategic plan, with a three-year scope, that addressed the issues it was facing both structurally and financially. We are proud to say that we are now on target in both areas.

The board works through the coordinated efforts of its committees to accomplish its mission and carry out the vision of the Music Director. The committees include:

• The Executive Committee consisting of the officers and committee chairs
• The Finance Committee to set a budget and guide financial matters
• The Program/Education Committee to support the program vision of the Music Director
• The Strategic Planning Committee to monitor an update the Strategic Plan
• The Development/Marketing Committee to coordinate fundraising and publicizing the Festival
• The Nominations Committee to recruit new board members and plan for their orientation

See Board Member bios below.

Gregg Cannady

Gregg Cannady’s experience in choral music ranges from an elementary music teacher and many years as a high school choir director to working in North Carolina as Director of Choral Activities and Applied Voice at Mount Olive College. He received his B.A. in Music Education from Colorado State University, his M.A. in Music Education from the University of Wyoming and his D.M.A. in Choral Conducting and Literature from the University of Colorado.

After writing his master’s thesis on how to perform a Bach cantata with a high school choir Gregg Cannady applied his research to performing J.S. Bach’s cantatas with high school choirs from Wyoming, Colorado and Oregon. His desire to learn more about Johann Sebastian Bach’s music lead him to the Oregon Bach Festival where he attended the conducting classes for several summers under the direction of Helmuth Rilling.

Gregg currently enjoys teaching at a new school, the STEM Magnet Lab School, developing a unique curriculum which includes guitars, keyboards, dance, technology, African drumming, and world music.

As one who has sung with and prepared youth choirs for the Boulder Bach Festival Gregg is thankful for the opportunity to work with the outstanding choral singers and all who bring Johann Sebastian Bach’s music to Colorado.

Marcia Schirmer

Marcia Schirmer has extensive experience in nonprofit executive management, strategic planning, and sustainability. She served as Executive Director of the Colorado Music Festival in the 1980s. In 1989 she formed The Schirmer Office, a consulting practice specializing in nonprofit management and development. Her clients have included the Angel Capital Education Foundation (Kansas City), Boulder Technology Incubator, Colorado Capital Alliance, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (Kansas City), Foundation for the Denver Performing Arts Complex, Historic Denver, New World Airport Commission, and the Rocky Mountain School for the Gifted and Creative. She has served as a board member for the Arts and Humanities Assembly of Boulder, Boulder Bureau of Conference Services and Cultural Affairs, Boulder Technology Incubator, Colorado Music Festival Endowment, Colorado Technology Education Foundation, Denver Chamber Orchestra, and the YWCA of Boulder County. She is currently Board and Development Chair for HospiceCare of Boulder and Broomfield Counties.

Ms. Schirmer holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in Piano Performance and was a member of the piano faculties at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the University of Colorado Boulder (adjunct). From 1970–1994 she performed as a member of the Schirmer-Mann Piano Duo and Boulder’s Columbine Chamber Players.

Rick Erickson

Richard (Rick) Erickson began his tenure as Music Director for the Boulder Bach Festival in July 2011.

In addition to his duties with the Boulder Bach Festival, Mr. Erickson serves as Cantor and Organist at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in New York City, where he also directs the renowned Bach Vespers series. In this post, he presents over 20 cantatas and other major Bach works each season with the all-professional Bach Choir and Bach Players on period instruments. Since his appointment in 1992, he has led the performance of over 100 cantatas and the major works of Bach. During the past ten seasons, Erickson has more than doubled the number of performance offerings of Bach Vespers series. The New York Times in 2008 called Holy Trinity “New York’s temple to Bach.” New York Newsday refers to Holy Trinity as “the place for bacchanalians!”

In addition to Holy Trinity, Erickson has served as musician at Incarnate Word Lutheran Church in Rochester, NY, where he founded the “Second Sundays Plus” series. He has also served as interim musician at Marble Collegiate Church in NYC. He has performed as organist, conductor, clinician, and at conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians. He served the AGO as Regional Councilor, is a founding member of ALCM, and is an Associate in Ministry in the ELCA.

He taught improvisation and church music at the Eastman School of Music for four years, where he continues to teach in the summer Organ Improv Festival. In 1994 he founded BachWorks, NYC. He has conducted “Bach events” in Houston, Seattle, Tulsa, and Minneapolis. Equally renowned as an organist, Erickson has been featured in concerts throughout the USA and Europe. He has performed two complete cycles of Bach’s organ works in New York City and in Rochester, NY and is currently in the third cycle.

A native of Superior, Wisconsin, Erickson began organ study at the age of fourteen following in his mother’s and grandmother’s footsteps. His father’s favorite comment about music is: “If you have Bach, you have enough.” He holds a Bachelor Degree in Music and German from the University of Wisconsin, Superior, where he has been honored as “Distinguished Alumnus” and cited as “one of the 100 distinguished graduates” in the school’s 100th anniversary year.

Erickson earned a Master Degree in Organ Performance and Literature and is recipient of a Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music. He studied organ with David Craighead, Lucile Hammill Webb, and Russell Saunders, improvisation with Gerre Hancock, accompanying with Robert Spillman, and conducting with Robert DeCormier and David Effron.

He served as co-editor for the choral edition of Bach for All Seasons, and has recorded for Augsburg Fortress, Naxos and JAV, among others. He is featured in a new Buxtehude recording scheduled for release by Deux-Elles in 2011. His choral arrangements are published by Augsburg Fortress and Kjos Publishers, and he appeared in the acclaimed film 13 Conversations About One Thing. In 2006 he arranged and directed music for the play The Orphan Singer (off-Broadway play/opera about Vivaldi), produced by Making Books Sing and published by Boosey and Hawkes.

Staff

Boulder Bach Festival is operated by an energetic and multi-talented group of Festival contracted professionals, interns, and volunteers.

Executive Director: Marcia Schirmer
Music Director: Rick Erickson
Chorus Master: Gregg Cannady
Chorus Manager: Dan Seger
Chorus Rehearsal Keyboardist: Susan Olenwine
Program Annotator: Larry Worster
Program Editor: Heidi Lynch
Production Manager: Glenn Ross
House Manager: Sharon Dalebout
Box Office Manager: Joanna Hoffmann
Accountant: Jennifer Greenwood
Intern: Ryan Hardman
Marketing Consultant: Holly Hickman, Up Tempo Marketing, LLC
Publicity and Media Relations: Janet Braccio, Bella Voce Communications

Dan Seger

Dan Seger is a retired teacher from the Boulder Valley School District, who has had a lifelong love of music and passion for the works of J. S. Bach. He has sung in the Boulder Bach Festival Chorus for over 15 years and has been chorus manager for the past five. He served a term on the board of directors several years ago and returned to it in 2006. Outside of BBF, he sings in the Concert and Chamber Choirs of the Boulder Chorale, as well as in The Renaissance Project, an a capella choir of about 20 members specializing in pre-Baroque choral music. He performed on voice and recorder for more than twenty years with the Boulder Renaissance Consort, one of the pioneering early music performance groups in Boulder, and was on stage with the Rocky Mountain Revels for several seasons. In 2008 he was honored by an invitation to sing in the chorus of the Montana Early Music Festival in Helena and Missoula when they performed J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion, just a week before BBF performed the same work. Dan is also the current president of Early Music Colorado, an organization dedicated to the promotion, development, and support of informed performances of music and dance written before the Nineteenth Century.

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Dan Seger

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Dick Van Pelt

Dick started his musical life listening to a fog horn on the shore of Lake Superior, then advancing to playing the piccolo in the Stanford band. A Chicago performance of the Brahms German Requiem inspired him to take a two month German course at the Goethe Institute, followed by engineering work at IBM in Germany and the US. Later his wife inspired him to join her in choral singing, leading to thirty years of singing with the Boulder Bach Festival chorus. He has also had shorter stints with some of Boulder’s many other choral groups. His hobbies now are sailing, canoeing and vegetable gardening, and does some flying to keep up with a scattered family.

Al Lundell

Albert Lundell is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Professor Lundell sings in the Boulder Bach Festival Chorus, and has sung with the Boulder Chorale and the Colorado Music festival Chorus. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Boulder Bach Festival since 1995 and secretary of the Board since 1997.

Thurston Manning

Thurston E. (Ted) Manning was graduated from The Colorado College and earned a doctorate in physics from Yale. He taught on the faculty of Oberlin College, and came to the University of Colorado as Vice President and Dean of the Faculties. Subsequently he served as President of the University of Bridgeport, Executive Director of the Commission on Higher Education of the North Central Association and President of the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation. He has been a Director of DeVry, Inc., and is currently a Director of Rasmussen, Inc., a privately-held company providing career-oriented degree programs in fourteen midwestern cities and, through a subsidiary, services to colleges and universities offering on-line degree programs. Locally, in addition to his service as Board member and Treasurer of the Boulder Bach Festival he serves on the Boards of Frasier Meadows Retirement Community and Special Transit, among others.

Penny Anderson

Penny Anderson is the Energy Program assistant and IT coordinator for Western Resource Advocates, an environmental law and policy center. Before joining the organization in 1998, she spent ten years with the Texas State Historical Association as an editor and network administrator. Penny has been a member of the Boulder Bach Festival Chorus since 1996 and has also sung with the Colorado Music Festival Chorus and the Ars Nova Singers. She is a regular performer with Chamber Ensemble con Grazia and an active member and board member of the Colorado Celtic Harp Society. She has a B.A. in music (voice and organ) and humanities from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, and also did graduate work in linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin.

Frederick M Denny

Frederick Mathewson Denny is Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies and History of Religions in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. A Vermont native, he is an alumnus of the College of William and Mary and Andover Newton Theological School. He holds advanced degrees from the University of Chicago and has previously served on the faculties at Yale University and the University of Virginia. He has conducted extensive field research and published scholarly articles on Qur’an chanting in Egypt and Indonesia. He has served on the BBF Board of Directors for eleven years and has also been a longtime member of the BBF chorus. Denny is also a member of the Colorado Recorder Orchestra, plays trombone in the Niwot Free Grange Semi-Marching Band, and sings in the choir of the Boulder Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Lafayette, where he also serves on the “Sundays at Four” musical concerts committee.

Joseph de Raismes

A.B. Magna cum laude, with Honors in Political Science (1967), Yale College, New Haven, CT
J.D. (1970), Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA

(1) Associate, Holland & Hart, Esqs., Denver, 1970-73
(2) Regional Counsel, Mountain States Regional Office (national staff), American Civil Liberties Union, 1973-75
(3) First Assistant Attorney General, Human Resources Section, State of Colorado, 1975-1979
(4) City Attorney, City of Boulder, 1979 - 2003
(5) Special Counsel, Caplan and Earnest LLC, Boulder, 2005 - 2009
(6) General Counsel, Mental Health America (formerly the National Mental Health Association), Alexandria, VA, beginning in 2006
(7) Board Member, University of Colorado Artist Series, beginning in 2007
(8) Sing with Boulder Bach Festival, beginning in 1997
(9) Sing with Yale Russian Chorus, beginning in 1964
(10) Previously sang with Musica Aeterna, Boulder, 1993-2002

Molly Hardman

Edward McCue

Following horn performance and architectural engineering degrees from the University of Colorado, as well as sojourns at German universities in Regensburg (musicology) and Göttingen (room acoustics), McCue has developed an international consultancy in the design and construction of conservatories for music, theatre and dance. New to the board of the Boulder Bach Festival, he has devoted years of study to Joseph Haydn’s performance environments and is currently working with the International Opera Foundation Eszterháza and PERSPECTIV – Association of Historic Theatres in Europe to reconstruct Haydn’s opera house in western Hungary and establish there an academy for eighteenth century acting and stagecraft. Other interests include the restoration and editing of audio recordings, organic gardening, fine food and wine.

Jim Topping

A long-time resident of Boulder, Jim Topping has been active in community affairs having served on City Council, the Boulder Planning Board and the City’s Housing Authority. Jim has sung with the Boulder Bach Festival for most of its thirty year history and has also sung with the Boulder Chorale and the Colorado Chorale. Using his financial management skills, Jim has served as Budget Officer for the University of Colorado President’s Office and has also served on the boards of many community non-profits including several years as Treasurer of the Colorado Music Festival. Since joining the Board of the Boulder Bach Festival in 2009, Jim has served on the Strategic Planning and Finance Committees and recently co-chaired the successful search for the Festival’s new Music Director.

Larry Worster

Larry Worster is a Professor of Music History at Metropolitan State College of Denver. He served the college for two years as Director of Student Services Technology and Assessment from 2006-2008. He taught previously at the University of Colorado, Regis College, and Denver University. He performed for ten years (1984-94) in the Irish folk ensemble Colcannon. Dr. Worster has been active in the leadership of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the College Music Society, the Society for American Music, and the Board of Directors of the Boulder Bach Festival. He is the author of Cecil Effinger: A Colorado Composer published in 1997 by Scarecrow Press. His ChartCreator software is published as shareware at www.chartcreator.com. Six customized sets of ChartPlayer software for the support of general studies music textbooks have been published by McGraw-Hill. His current project working as a co-author with Jean Ferris on her textbook Music: The Art of Listening, published by McGraw-Hill. In his spare time, he teaches golf.

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Eileen O’Neill

Board of Directors

The Boulder Bach Festival is a dynamic organization that constantly reexamines its philosophies and reaffirms its commitment to its goals. The hard-working Board of Directors puts its many talents and interests to best use in working with a number of permanent and occasional ad hoc committees. Not only does this system allow for greater efficiency, it encourages maximum involvement in all aspects of the Festival and a greater awareness of growing and changing needs. The Program Committee, composed of board members familiar with music programming, plans programs two years in advance. Careful fiscal planning is the responsibility of the five-member Budget Committee, working closely with the Program and Fund Raising Committees and the Executive Director.

BBF Board of Directors , 2008-2009

President - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Vice President - Dick Van Pelt
Secretary - Al Lundell
Treasurer - Thurston Manning

Penny Anderson
Frederick M Denny
David Elm
Joseph de Raismes
Molly Hardman
Eileen O’Neill
Balfour Patterson
Julie Stuenkel
Larry Worster

Staff

Boulder Bach Festival History

In the summer of 1981 a group of Boulder music lovers decided they would celebrate the life and music of Johann Sebastian Bach by presenting three concerts during the weekend of his March birth date. Since that first season, the Festival has expanded to take Bach’s music to a variety of venues in Boulder and surrounding communities. Other events now scheduled around the calendar include one or more chamber concerts in the fall and two special children’s concerts – Kids for Bach and Bach for Kids – in collaboration with the Boulder Public Library in the spring. Organ concerts are scheduled in area churches. Periodic Young Artist Competitions feature teen-age performers and offer cash prizes to promising young artists.

In the last two years, the Boulder Bach Festival has added outreach concerts at various non-profit help organizations, a children’s museum, and at senior centers and residence facilities. The introduction of the Festival Chamber Singers in 2009-10, drawn by audition from the main Festival Chorus, increased the flexibility of the Festival to perform Bach’s smaller works and made possible more outreach performances. From the hopeful beginning of the March 1982 debut, the festival has grown into the highly acclaimed festival of today through the talents and determination of its founders, the consistent support of its audience, the vision and leadership of its Board of Directors, and the help of countless volunteers. In this past season the Festival brought Bach’s great B minor Mass to over a thousand audience members in the Boulder–Denver region. And now, as the Festival enters is fourth decade, the future looks bright. New music director Rick Erickson brings a wealth of stimulating new ideas and a self-renewing strategic plan assures that his vision becomes reality.

Historical Sequence of Major Works

1982 Magnificat, BWV 243
1983 Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248
1984 St. John Passion, BWV 245
1985 St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244
1986 Easter Oratorio, BWV 249
1987 B Minor Mass, BWV 232
1988 Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248
1989 Magnificat, BWV 243
1990 St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244
1991 B Minor Mass, BWV 232
1992 St. John Passion, BWV 245
1993 Easter Oratorio, BWV 249
1994 Magnificat, BWV 243
1995 St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244
1996 Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248
1997 B Minor Mass, BWV 232
1998 Ascension Oratorio, BWV 11; Magnificat, BWV 243
1999 St. John Passion, BWV 245
2000 St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244
2001 St. Mark Passion, BWV 247
2002 B Minor Mass, BWV 232
2003 St. Matthew Passion
2004 Christmas Oratorio, Parts I,II,III, BWV 248; Magnificat, BWV 243
2005 B Minor Mass, BWV 232
2006 St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244
2007 St. Matthew Passion, BWV 243, and Easter Oratorio, BWV 249
2008 St John Passion, BWV 245
2009 Missa in F major, “Lutheran Mass,” BWV 233 and Missa in A major, “Lutheran Mass,” BWV 234
2010 Motet no. 2: “Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf” and Motet no. 3: “Jesu Meine Freude”
2011 Mass in B Minor, BWV 232

2007 Program Notes

by Larry Worster

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

At the time of Johann Sebastian Bach’s birth in Eisenach, the region of Thuringia in central Germany was a part of the Holy Roman Empire, a loose federation of cities and small states that encompassed Germany, Austria, Switzerland, northern Italy, and parts of Poland and Czechoslovakia. Within this region, musicians found employment in many functions: Stadtpfeifers performed music for civic functions; organists provided accompaniment for church services, tested new organs, and often improvised preludes and other incidental music as necessary; Kapellmeisters oversaw the chapels in the princely courts, selecting and training performers and composing such music as the court demanded for both entertainment and worship; and Kantors undertook responsibility for the musical education and often all other musical activities in a city.

Bach’s family included musicians employed in nearly all of these capacities. His older brother Johann Christoph, a church organist, gave Sebastian his first keyboard lessons after he took responsibility for the child following their father’s death in 1695. Sebastian spent the years 1700-02 in the north of Germany at the Michaelis School of Lüneburg, where he first learned the arts of musical composition and organ playing. After returning to the south, he received his first steady employment as an organist at the St. Blasius Church at Mühlhausen, during which time he composed his earliest cantatas.

From 1708-17, Bach was employed as a chamber musician, concertmaster, and organist at the court of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, who encouraged him to write organ music and cantatas. When the duke refused to consider Bach for the position of Kapellmeister in 1717, the composer secured a similar post in the service of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen. The young prince was a skilled player of the violin, the bass viol, and harpsichord and employed eighteen instrumentalists at his court. The situation was advantageous for the composition of secular entertainment. During the six years that he spent at Köthen, Bach produced large amounts of orchestral, chamber, and harpsichord music, including the Brandenburg Concerti, keyboard inventions, concerto transcriptions, suites, and the first volume of the Well-Tempered Clavier (pub. 1722).

Bach was one of many musicians who applied in 1723 for the post of Kantor at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, which included responsibility for both civic music and all of the music for the city’s four largest churches. When Georg Philipp Telemann, the best-known German musician at that time, declined the position, Bach was hired to the job he would hold until his death. Later, he accepted the post of director of the collegium musicum, an amateur society founded by Telemann in 1702 that presented public concerts of secular music. During his twenty-three years of service to the city of Leipzig, he wrote hundreds of cantatas, at least five Passions, several Masses, three oratorios, and a large amount of instrumental music, including most of his published didactic keyboard music.

After Bach’s death in 1750, his manuscripts, most of which were unpublished, passed into the hands of his sons and widow. Changes in musical taste toward the end of his life left his work unappreciated. As Johann Adolph Scheibe noted in 1737, “This man would be the admiration of whole nations if he . . . did not take away the natural element in his pieces by giving them a turgid and confused style, if he did not darken their beauty with an excess of art.” Composers in Europe, if they knew of him at all, knew only his half dozen or so published keyboard works.

But Baron von Swieten introduced Viennese circles to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier in the second half of the eighteenth century, and both Mozart and Beethoven studied his fugal style. Felix Mendelssohn’s performance of the St. Matthew Passion at the Berlin Singakademie in 1829 was the first of many nineteenth-century revivals of Bach’s choral works. Most nineteenth-century performances of Bach’s choral works emphasized large performing groups; Mendelssohn’s choir for the St. Matthew Passion was around 160, at least five times the total number of singers available to Bach at the Thomaskirche. The formation of the Bach-Gesellschaft (Bach Society) in 1850 eventually led to the publication of the first complete edition of Bach’s works and the first critical biography by Philipp Spitta. Since the 1950s, an increasing number of performing organizations, among them the Boulder Bach Festival, have concentrated on producing historically informed performances using period instruments when possible, appropriately sized forces, and conducted as Bach would have, either from the harpsichord or the violin.

Friday, January 19, 2007, 7:30 p.m.
First United Methodist Church
1421 Spruce Street, Boulder

The Concerto

Bach’s concerti may be grouped by his place of employment. He first began studying the concerto during his service to Duke of Weimar (1708-17) by transcribing concertos of other composers into works for solo harpsichord or organ. The transformed works were most likely performed for courtly entertainment. Among the pieces arranged were at least three concertos from Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico (1711) as well as works by young Duke Johann Ernst and other minor German composers. Although these works are not original, through the process of transcription Bach learned the features of the Italian concerto and the concertato style that dominated his later works. During his service at Köthen, he began writing original concerti, and many of these are concerti grossi, featuring a small group of soloists, known as the concertino, rather than a single instrument.

The third period of Bach’s development began in 1729 when he became director of the collegium musicum of Leipzig, a position he held nearly continuously until 1741. This organization comprised students, town musicians, amateurs, and culturally-minded citizens who gathered once a week to hold concerts in the popular coffee houses and gardens of Leipzig. No programs of the collegium have ever been found, but during this time Bach transcribed many of his Köthen concerti, as well as works by other composers, into concerti for one to four harpsichords.

Understandably, Bach’s concerti show influences from Vivaldi’s works, the most obvious being their three-movement form. Additionally, outer movements are structured as a concertato dialogue between the ripieno (the whole orchestra) and the soloist(s). Ritornello form, in which a ritornello theme opens and closes each movement as well as setting off the soloist’s episodes, is usually present in these movements. Since the soloist’s episodes may not be thematically related, the ritornello serves as a unifying force. While the virtuosic skills of the soloists are always aptly displayed in the first movement, and expressly highlighted in the third movement, the middle movements often contain expressive cantabile melodies.

The harpsichord concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach are of great significance in the history of European art music; however, their importance does not lie in their musical content as much as in Bach’s choice of the harpsichord as a solo instrument. For Bach, the compositions were but a small part of the many works that he produced to fulfill the demands of his employment. As passed on to the next generation of composers through the hands of his sons Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian, the concept of the keyboard concerto initiated a new genre of composition that became a favorite of the composers of the Viennese Classical School.

Sacred Vocal Works

Sacred German dramatic music of the 1700s, as epitomized by the works of Bach, is one of many forms of music influenced by the musical innovations that occurred in northern Italy nearly a century earlier. Bach’s sacred works are characterized by a common set of elements: movements dominated by a single musical idea or Affekt; a mixture of Biblical text and newly authored poetry; and the selection of instruments appropriate to either the text or the occasion for which the work was composed. Bach’s passions, although stylistically similar to his cantatas, are larger works that tell the story of Christ’s crucifixion. A brief historical introduction will provide the perspective necessary to fully appreciate these works.

From the late 1500s, groups of Italian scholars of classical Greek culture began to decry the predominant renaissance forms of a cappella polyphonic music: the mass, motet, chanson, and madrigal. In their place, they proposed a new type of vocal setting called monody, in which a solo vocal part would be supported by unobtrusive accompaniment. In such music, they argued, the melody would be freed to recapture expressive power described by Plato and Aristotle. With the advent of the dramatic monodic style came the birth of recitative and aria that enabled the creation of opera, oratorio, and cantata. Early cantatas were largely secular and, as seen in the more than 600 cantatas of Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725), often comprised little more than two recitatives followed by arias.

A second Italian innovation that affected the development of the cantata was the principle of concertato, or concerted music, in which contrasting solo, choral, and instrumental sections are placed side by side in a single movement. The use of concertato effects is extremely striking in the compositions of Andrea Gabrieli and his nephew Giovanni, organists at the Church of St. Mark in Venice from 1566 to 1612. The unusual physical design of St. Mark’s, featuring multiple choir lofts, was especially conducive to sectional contrasts in dynamics, instrumentation, and spatial separation. Although this principle is a familiar feature of the concerto in which an instrument or small group of instruments is contrasted with the tutti or whole orchestra, early Baroque music labeled “concerto” was usually church music for voices and instruments. This style of music was common in Germanic lands, and most of Bach’s predecessors wrote sacred concertos. Bach’s sacred dramatic music differs from its Italian relatives by the incorporation of numerous choruses and the variety of texts: sections of the Bible, Psalms, expressive poetic texts, and the texts of chorales (Lutheran hymns). The personal nature of the inserted texts brings the worshippers into the drama, projecting both the individual’s meditations as arias and the congregation’s reactions as chorales.

While cantatas were a regular feature of the Lutheran Sunday service, oratorios and passions were composed for the special days of Good Friday, Christmas, and Ascension Day. The passions, because they tell the story of Christ’s death, are Bach’s largest creations in this style. Although he created two passions using the gospel of John, and one each using the texts of Matthew, Luke, and Mark, only one St. John Passion and the St. Matthew Passion have survived in their entirety. Although sacred works in Latin form a smaller part of the composer’s output, they are some of his most significant works and include the Magnificat and B minor Mass, as well as his four Latin motets.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

At the time of Johann Sebastian Bach’s birth in Eisenach, the region of Thuringia in central Germany was a part of the Holy Roman Empire, a loose federation of cities and small states that encompassed Germany, Austria, Switzerland, northern Italy, and parts of Poland and Czechoslovakia. Within this region, musicians found employment in many functions: Stadtpfeifers performed music for civic functions; organists provided accompaniment for church services, improvising preludes and other incidental music as necessary and testing new organs; Kapellmeisters oversaw the chapels in the princely courts, selecting and training performers and composing such music as the court demanded for both entertainment and worship; and Kantors undertook responsibility for the musical education and often all other musical activities in a city.

Bach was one of many musicians who applied in 1723 for the post of Kantor at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, which included responsibility for both civic music and all of the music for the city’s four largest churches. When Georg Philipp Telemann, the best-known German musician at that time, declined the position, Bach was hired to the job he would hold until his death. Later, he accepted the post of director of the collegium musicum, an amateur society founded by Telemann in 1702 that presented public concerts of secular music. During his twenty-three years of service to the city of Leipzig, he wrote hundreds of cantatas, at least five passions, several masses, three oratorios, and a large amount of instrumental music, including most of his published didactic keyboard music.

After Bach’s death in 1750, his manuscripts, most of which were unpublished, passed into the hands of his sons and widow. Changes in musical taste toward the end of his life left his work unappreciated. As Johann Adolph Scheibe noted in 1737, “This man would be the admiration of whole nations if he…did not take away the natural element in his pieces by giving them a turgid and confused style, if he did not darken their beauty with an excess of art.” Composers in Europe, if they knew of him at all, knew only his half dozen or so published keyboard works.

It was Baron von Swieten who introduced Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier to Viennese music circles in the second half of the eighteenth century, and both Mozart and Beethoven studied his fugal style. Felix Mendelssohn’s performance of the St. Matthew Passion at the Berlin Singakademie in 1829 was the first of many nineteenth-century revivals of Bach’s choral works. Most nineteenth-century performances of Bach’s choral works emphasized large performing groups; Mendelssohn’s choir for the St. Matthew Passion was around 160, at least five times the total number of singers available to Bach at the Thomaskirche. The formation of the Bach-Gesellschaft (Bach Society) in 1850 eventually led to the publication of the first complete edition of Bach’s works and the first critical biography by Philipp Spitta in 1889. Since the 1950s, an increasing number of performing organizations, among them the Boulder Bach Festival, have concentrated on producing historically informed performances using period instruments when possible, appropriately sized forces, and conducted as Bach would have, either from the harpsichord or the violin.
—Larry Worster, Professor of Musicology, Metropolitan State College of Denver

About the Festival

The mission of the Boulder Bach Festival is to celebrate the music of Johann Sebastian Bach by providing high quality performances and educational opportunities that will not only satisfy those who already love Bach’s music, but will also introduce Bach’s music to others.

It is the vision of the Boulder Bach Festival board of directors that the BBF be the premier festival in the Rocky Mountain Region dedicated to the propagation of the legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach.

The Boulder Bach Festival offers a concentrated series of concerts, symposia, and educational events each spring, focused on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, arguably the greatest composer of Western music, augmented by a number of outreach concerts and other events for youth, seniors and various community groups throughout the year. The Festival features prominent artists from the region as well as nationally recognized Bach virtuosos. The high quality of the performances has built the outstanding reputation of the Festival and placed it among the top festivals of its kind in the state and nation.

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“BBF…sets the standard for artistic excellence and superb taste in the community.”
~Boulder Daily Camera

“Sophisticated. Magnificent.”
~The Denver Post

“A triumph of recent months has been the choice of New Yorker Rick Erickson as BBF music director.”
~Boulder Daily Camera

“Boulder Bach Festival enters its fourth decade this year and is clearly a rising star in its own right.”
~examiner.com

“It might be called the New Bach Festival, for the program ... radiates a feeling of renewal and rejuvenation.”
~Boulder Daily Camera

“If you are not familiar with the Boulder Bach Festival, you really need to make a point of discovering them through their performances…they are consistently excellent.”
~Opus Colorado