Music in Somerset HIlls’ Somerset Hills Chorus will perform in Morristown, April 25.
All choral societies great and small hold J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor in high regard. Pulling it off, however, is a different story. At two hours long, you don’t take it on casually. You go all out.
Music in the Somerset Hills has found the right occasion for the choral masterwork. The concert, April 25 at St. Mary’s Church at Delbarton in Morristown, will celebrate the choir’s 15th anniversary season. It will also be the first time they perform it. “This is a bucket list work for MISH and something I’ve always wanted to do as a capstone piece,” says Stephen Sands, artistic director and founder. He will conduct a historically informed performance with Baroque phrasing.
STEPHEN SANDS
Bach completed the work in 1749 and died a year later without ever hearing it performed. It is similar to his Art of the Fugue in that it functions as a compendium. “If there ever was a compilation piece that Bach put together, this is it,” says Sands. “It contains many different styles of his writing over the years, and he puts it all together under one roof and it moves so beautifully between each section.”
Reworking some of his earlier compositions, Bach set the music to the five traditional texts of the Latin Ordinary — the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei — placing an emphasis on the choir. “A lot of Bach’s writing like the St. John and the St. Matthew Passions rely a lot on extended solo movements and not as much for the choir, but this one is hugely choir-driven,” says Sands. Florid choral sections include the Gloria, Cum sancto spiritu and Et resurrexit.
The milestone will celebrate new and old partnerships and feature approximately 130 musicians, including MISH’s Somerset Hills Chorus; about two-thirds of Harmonium Choral Society, a 100-member community choir based in Morristown and led by Anne Matlack; Baroque vocal soloists; and The Sebastians, an early music period ensemble from New York. Matlack got a head start by excerpting the Gloria/Et in terra pax section for Harmonium’s annual holiday concert in December.
Sands and Matlack have known each other for years. Sands has sung as a guest vocalist in Harmonium concerts, but this is the first time the two choirs have partnered.
ANNE MATLACK
Sands couldn’t have found a better colleague. Matlack has a reputation for fearlessly throwing her singers into these demanding choral masterworks, and not all ensembles are up to the challenges and demands. “Anne always says, ‘Don’t wait: Do these things while you can,’ and I am in total agreement with that,” says Sands
The performance will be the first of a two-year arrangement between the choirs. Somerset Hills will present — and take on the costs and ticketing for —Bach’s Mass. In 2027, Harmonium will do the same for Monteverdi’s Vespers, another choral colossus that will also take an early music approach, and feature The Sebastians.
The Mass will use the Baroque tuning of A=415, commonly known as Baroque pitch or the Baroque standard, which is approximately a semitone lower than the modern standard of A=440. Sands, a tenor with a lifelong penchant for early music, says that music pitched to A=415 is generally more comfortable to sing. “It just sits better in the voice and feels more authentic,” he says. “And the historically correct instruments that are being used by The Sebastians obviously work very well at the Baroque pitch level, too.”
A group of about 25 musicians will play on special instruments that are authentic to the time period of the 18th century work, including wooden woodwinds and natural horns with no valves. “The stringed instruments use gut strings instead of steel strings and they have a different bow with a different point to it, which allows for more Baroque-style phrasing,” Sands says.
Since the Baroque tuning generally produces a warmer, fuller tone compared to modern, higher tuning, the period instruments can explore different tones and colors that are sometimes washed over by modern instruments. Period instruments also create a lighter and more flexible style that Sands says makes it feel like the music is dancing.
The Sebastians have been collaborating with MISH for over a decade; the first large-scale work they played together was Bach’s St. John Passion in 2015. Matlack has also partnered with them for historical performances with her choir.
Bach’s Mass is traditionally scored for five vocal soloists but sometimes parts are doubled up to expand the texture. Sands will use nine soloists and they will do some concertizing, which means they will be singing some parts that are traditionally considered the full choral movements. This changes the texture of the voices and also alleviates some of the vocal demands for the marathoning choristers, who sing about 80 percent of the two-hour work.
CHRISTOPHER JACKSON
One of the soloists will be baritone Christopher Jackson, artistic director and conductor of The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The oldest Bach choir in The United States, they gave the first complete American performance of the Mass in 1900. They perform it every May at their Bach Festival.
Although Sands has sung Bach’s Mass as both a soloist and an ensemblist for almost three decades, it will be his first time conducting it and he feels fortunate to have Jackson on hand. “I’ll be using his ears and expertise to help shape this performance,” he says.
Another way he will make the work feel more authentic to the time period is by fine-tuning the metric relationships between the movements, which means thinking about how fast they’re doing each movement, so that it matches the next one. “That’s also part of the historical context we’re bringing to it,” he says.
At the opposite end of this historically informed approach is the Romantic approach — rich, colorful and operatic. For those who prefer it that way, the Baroque approach can feel too sparse, scholarly or bogged down in reverence.
Asked if he agrees, Sands does not. “In the B Minor Mass — because we’re not dealing with an actual story of the death of Christ and we’re dealing with just the words of the Mass — I think the music itself is the thing that brings forth the emotion rather than the text,” Sands says. “And doing this in the Baroque style, in a historically informed performance, really does allow for more of that rather than just standing up there and having it all loud, all the time.”
The Somerset Hills Chorus is a non-auditioned choir that is open to singers of all backgrounds, age 14 and upwards. “When we started back in 2011, I took a look at the landscape of what existed in this part of New Jersey,” says Sands, “and there were plenty of audition choirs that did very advanced things such as Harmonium and Masterwork, but I didn’t want to re-create what was already so successful in the area.”
The choir has a strong support system for new people, especially those who have not sung in decades. Paid sectional leaders help members in need of additional support
“We have some people coming in who haven’t sung since high school,” Sands says. “So, for example, 30 years have passed since they last sang and they’re looking to reconnect to their musical side. We give them all sorts of resources like practice tracks, and recordings of the rehearsals that they can go back to. They can put in as much time as they need in order to get to the point that they can do something like the B Minor Mass.”
MISH started in 2010 at St. Bernard’s Church in Bernardsville. Steven Lawrence had retired as St. Bernard’s director of music, and Sands was asked to take over Music at St. Bernard’s, a nonprofit concert series that Lawrence had founded.
“I said, ‘Well, that’s a lovely idea, but I’d like to make that into a community venture so that we’re not beholden to a specific performance place or a particular denomination or any of that sort of thing,’ ” Sands says.
The first members were high schoolers from Bernards High School, plus community members from the St. Bernard’s Church and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Gladstone. “That is another church where my wife (soprano Kristin Sands) and I worked,” says Sands, “and a lot of the folks who are still on the Board to this day and who are members of the choir come from that congregation.”
Stephen Sands conducts the Somerset Hills Chorus.
They have expanded over the years. Concerts take place in the Somerset Hills’ surrounding communities, including Morristown, Somerville, Madison and Clinton. Wide-ranging repertoire spans centuries, from early music to modern, and they frequently partner with outside ensembles and soloists. There is also a music education program that includes scholarships and summer music camps.
They are still headquartered at St. Bernard’s. It is the same place that Sands and his wife started their professional careers and sang during their college years; both attended Westminster Choir College in Princeton.
Sharing music to unite people will always be the cornerstone of their mission (see their tagline: “Shared Voices. Shared Purpose. Shared Humanity”) and there is little wonder why Sands chose Bach’s Mass for the big milestone. The work is well known for its subtext of unity and humanity.
“You look around at the landscape of the world right now and you see the division that exists between everybody and everything, and we feel that music is the thing that can actually bring people together,” Sands says. “And that’s something that I feel like I can do to help the world right now. That’s a huge focus and I can think of no better way to get a community of people together and create something meaningful than doing a piece like this.”
Music in the Somerset Hills will present Bach’s Mass in B Minor at St. Mary’s Church at Delbarton, April 25 at 3 p.m.; visit musicsh.org.
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