Praises to God

Bach's Mass in B Minor can be a work of grandeur, just as it can be a miscellany of movements gathered from various of his cantatas with the original words replaced by those of the Latin Mass. Either, and even more possibilities, can readily be justified, or at least rationalized. The sprawling work opened the 71st season of the Carmel Bach Festival Saturday night at Carmel's Sunset Center with Music Director Bruno Weil conducting the orchestra, a Festival Chorale of 28 voices, and a solo vocal quartet. Unlike the composer's famous St. Matthew and St. John passions, the Mass in B Minor doesn't readily lend itself to much personal expression by the four vocal soloists, but in this case more of that did blossom during the second half (starting with the Credo) when mezzo-soprano Sally Anne Russell, tenor Thomas Cooley, and bass Sanford Sylvan each found room in which to color, shade, and phrase expressively. Singularly, in the Gloria of the first half, Russell staked out that claim in the alto aria "Qui sedes ad dextram Patris," but her colleagues, including soprano Kendra Colton, were held in check by Weil's briskly strict tempi.

Apart from the big choral display pieces, the work's potential drama was downplayed. Yet to examine the words — and the words are all-important in Bach — a listener soon finds that the bulk of them sing praises to God and his other manifestations, inherently not the stuff that makes for good theater. That said, the snappy and youthful Chorale showed itself to be highly flexible and responsive. Moreover, chorus director Andrew Megill drew quintets of voices from their ranks as concertinos that were then answered by the larger ensemble (the ripieno) in the manner of an instrumental concerto grosso. The effect worked splendidly to throw the choral forces into deep relief, especially when it was used to start a section, as it did right at the beginning of the opening Kyrie. (Megill explained that Bach deployed his own forces this way in various works, and particularly when he began employment in a new location.) Between the big choral scenes, the arias and duets sounded more like the chamber music they are. Without a sinuous tension tying the whole performance together — no easy feat — the contrast between grand and intimate was underscored. The bass aria "Quoniam tu solus sanctus," with solo horn obbligato, just before the end of the Gloria section, gave no hint of the eruption that followed in the magnificent choral fugue "Cum Sancto Spiritu." (Baroque specialist Philip Pickett suggests that the horn signifies God coming to earth in the form of Christ and could therefore point directly to the "Cum Sancto Spiritu," which begins attacca.) By contrast, Weil slowed and quieted down to whispered mystery the end of the "Confiteor unum baptisma" before it erupted on "Et expecto resurrectionem" at the end of the Credo section. No similar mystery attended the narrative "Et carnatus est," and the ensuing "Crucifixus" was four-square and dry-eyed.

Minor Mystery

In seeking an explanation for why Bach set the "Et incarnatus est" of the Credo as a lamentation, I found only one Baroque scholar of five asked who had a credible answer. Linda Burman-Hall on the UC Santa Cruz faculty said, "It is the taking on of human flesh that allows Jesu to be available to be crucified. While Protestants like Bach do not revere Mary, we may recall that earlier Catholic artists painted some madonnas holding the infant Jesu with tears in their eyes, knowing what is coming for their innocent babe. Bach is doing the same thing. He knows Jesu must take on the flesh so it can be mortified, rendering the adjacent movements ('Et incarnatus' and 'Crucifixus') two sides to the same coin." Burman-Hall went on to restate this in musical terms. "The 'Et incarnatus' melodic subject consists of tearful semitones resolving to the descending minor triad, in sorrow about what is ordained. Each note that resolves to a triadic note hates to go there but must," she said. The Bach Festival orchestra sports a curious combination of period and modern instruments. The brass use valves and the winds are modern, including replicas of period instruments. Some of the strings are set up for Baroque performance practice, including concertmaster Elizabeth Wallfisch's violin and bow. A chitarrone was part of the continuo group, as was a small organ, in addition to the harpsichord and selected string or wind for the melodic bass line. The Sunset Center auditorium also generates a puzzling sonic picture, the renovated room being neither designed for nor spacious enough to realize ideal acoustics. A pricey electronic enhancement system was in use for this performance but couldn't conceal the evidence of inherent compromise and contradiction. What on stage must have sounded to the musicians as clean and clear arrived at my ears like so much mud, particularly down in the continuo department. To get ticket-holders into a festive mood, the festival's Youth Chorus, composed of 20 area high schoolers, sang a set of madrigals, al fresco, and were in turn followed by a brass sextet for some "tower music." The Mass in B Minor will be repeated on the next two Saturdays.