Ceremonies and Celebrations

The San Francisco Bach Choir continues its multifaceted exploration of early Baroque music with a special program featuring grand ceremonial works for multiple choirs of voices and instruments. This program will include large-scale pieces by three of the 17th century’s greatest masters—Heinrich Schütz, Michael Prætorius, and Dietrich Buxtehude, as well as other works by their contemporaries. The concert, directed by David Babbitt, will feature a full contingent of vocal soloists and a special instrumental ensemble of natural trumpets, cornetts, sackbuts, strings, timpani, and organ.

In the days before the symphony orchestra had assumed its modern form, princes and prelates marked important festive occasions—weddings, coronations, etc.—with music specially written for large, polychoral ensembles. These specially-constituted ensembles encompassed a multitude of separate choirs, which might include, trumpets, trombones, reeds, strings, and of course singers. The various choirs would be arrayed around the balconies of the church or hall where the ceremony was taking place or, if outdoors, around the courtyard or plaza. The music written for these ensembles included not only ceremonial fanfares or toccatas, but grand, celebratory motets, which, because of the distribution of voices, produced spectacular “multiphonic” effects of a sort not heard again until modern times. The 17th century was the high point of this splendid art, when composers such as Prætorius, Schütz, and Buxtehude wrote celebratory works for six or more choirs encompassing more than twenty independent voices. The upcoming concert will showcase some of the finest examples of this so-called “colossal baroque” style.

A special feature of this concert will be the “early baroque” orchestra that director David Babbitt has assembled, featuring not only a battery of early baroque strings, organ, and timpani, but also a unique assembly of early brass instruments including “natural” (valveless) trumpets, “sackbuts” (early trombones), and “cornetts” (a curious brass-woodwind hybrid that was an important component of wind bands during the 16th and 17th centuries. The performers will include some of the country’s finest early brass players, led by the natural trumpet virtuoso John Theissen, and vocal baroque specialists Claire Kelm, soprano; Jennifer Lane, mezzo; Scott Whitaker and John Rouse, tenors; and Boyd Jarrell, bass.

The great polychoral music of the 16th and 17th centuries has become a Bach Choir specialty under David Babbitt’s direction. SFBC is in fact one of the only American choirs to have made a special commitment to this important but neglected repertory and has played a major role in reviving it over the past decade, staging the modern premieres of many works Mr. Babbitt has researched and edited for performance. The choir also maintains a strong commitment to music of the later Baroque and subsequent eras, and the choir’s current, 61st season will conclude in June with a performance of the complete J.S. Bach motets.