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All that remains of my Bach story, before diving into some reflections about the B Minor Mass itself, is the years between graduate school and now. Although my formal education was over, I did have one final experience with a “Bach master” that was formative, indeed.

For two summers in the early 1990s, I traced the same steps that so many of my choral conducting colleagues have trod over three decades, in order to study conducting with the great German Bach conductor Helmuth Rilling.

Many see Rilling as the inheritor of the long tradition of the German Cantor, a tradition of which Bach himself was part. This includes the men who succeeded Bach as Cantor at Thomaskirche, conductors like Straube and Ramin; but it also includes others, like Karl Richter and Helmuth Rilling, who didn’t follow Bach at Thomaskirche, but were nonetheless steeped in the tradition of Lutheran church music.

For many years, Rilling represented the non-“authentic” forces—those musicians who insisted that Bach’s music should be performed for our time, not as a museum-like re-creation of Bach’s sound. That battle, which was waged for years, has ended with a qualified win for the “authentic” forces. These days, nearly all influential Bach recordings are made by early instrument ensembles, and when modern instrument ensembles perform Bach, they almost universally adopt a number of interpretive techniques from the “authenticity” movement. Recent reviews of Rilling’s performances, in fact, have remarked that even he has changed his sound ideal to suit this trend.

Helmuth Rilling conducting the \”Et resurrexit\” from the B Minor Mass

Regardless of that battleground, the reason that so many choral conductors have unqualified respect for Rilling is that his knowledge of Bach’s choral music is encyclopedic, and his mastery of the detail and sweep of the repertoire is unparalleled. He has recorded all the cantatas and major works, and I have seen him conduct many of Bach’s major works—all from memory! He is an electric presence on the podium, and he is complete control of every aspect of the performance.

From Rilling, I learned that we need to take risks as performers in trying to understand the theological meaning behind Bach’s musical vocabulary. His pre-concert lectures were incredibly illuminating, and I have used his inspiration in trying to divine the deeper significance behind the Bach scores that I explore. The best part is that it feels with Rilling that it doesn’t matter if you’re right. What matters is that you’re engaging with the music on the level that was most important to Bach: it was music that celebrated and explored his personal—and his community’s—religious beliefs.

In that sense, it doesn’t matter at all whether we as performers share Bach’s beliefs or not. But much like understanding the symbolism behind the items arranged in a Dutch mannerist still life, we will still find Bach’s music beautiful, but we won’t truly understand it unless we engage with those musico-theological gestures.

Perhaps the most important aspect of my Bach journey that is germane to the coming months of these postings deals with the way in which I spent the last decade. I moved to Sydney, Australia in 1996, where I taught at a very academic high school with an outstanding music program. Through the support of a very musical headmaster, I formed the Sydneian Bach Choir and Orchestra. With that ensemble, we performed all of the major Bach choral works, and in 2005, we launched BACH 2010, a project to perform all of Bach’s choral cantatas—the 142 cantatas that involve choir for more than just a concluding chorale.

I still can’t believe the incredible good fortune I experienced with the Bach Choir for a decade. I stayed long enough to conduct 75 of the cantatas (the choir has now completed 100!), and those years were truly the culmination of everything that I have ever learned about Bach performance practice.

Sydneian Bach Choir & Orchestra in live performance of BWV62, 1st movt

In terms of the B Minor Mass, I can’t imagine a better education than learning all of those cantatas. Not only are so many movements in the Mass based on cantata movements (we performed all of those movements in my years with the choir), but the opportunity to perform so much of Bach’s repertoire gave me a sense of the breadth of his musical vocabulary. Of course it’s true that Bach is endlessly inventive; but at the same time, there is a large set of recurring musical figures that I encountered over the years. By having come across so many of these figures linked inextricably with the German text, I hope I’ll be able to illuminate some of the same musical gestures present in a slighty veiled form in the Mass.

Finally, although it hangs over my head a bit these days, I should acknowledge my return to a more academic study of Bach’s music at the moment, in the form of my PhD dissertation! Not surprisingly, I’m writing about the B Minor Mass itself. My thesis is on the American performance history of the Mass (which was first premiered in 1900 by the Bethlehem Bach Choir) and how performances and recordings of this work provide a prism through which to chart the arc of the “authenticity” movement. No doubt in the months to come, I will make references to my research and even quote swaths of my magnum opus.

Not only because I’m in the throes of academic writing, but also because it is the final debt that I owe in my Bach development, I will also mention many books, articles and recordings in the coming months. There are so many wonderful pieces of writing about the B Minor Mass, and there are so many scholars and performers who have informed my own thoughts about this work. As we go along, I’ll provide links to those authors and their works.

So, like Bach himself, it turns out that I’m only ever the product of my own educational background—the background that will inform everything that I share with you in this blog.

Now—on to the B Minor Mass…