In this Sonatas & Soundscapes interview that aired Thursday, December 11th, SCPR’s Bradley Fuller speaks with Dr. David Rhyne and Jessica Sharp of SC Bach to learn more about the organization’s upcoming performance of its namesake’s Christmas Oratorio—the forces needed, the uniqueness of the event, and what this masterwork of baroque music is all about.
TRANSCRIPT:
FULLER: David, Jessica, welcome to you both!
SHARP: Thanks for having us!
RHYNE: Thanks for being here.
FULLER: You describe SC Bach on your website as the state's only musical ensemble devoted to the performance of the music of JS Bach and his contemporaries. Now, as far as I can tell, it's the only ensemble in the state devoted to any one composer, period. Why do you think Bach gets this distinction?
RHYNE: I think that composers that came after Bach relied so much on Bach and he was so much of an influence to later music that everything, in one way or another, goes back to Bach. And the output is so vast, and the variety of music is also so vast that it's so easy to present concert after concert after concert with his music. You never get tired of it. I don't anyway.
SHARP: I don't, either.
RHYNE: I don’t ever get tired of it. But you can just go forever with the output.
FULLER: What are the origins of SC Bach in particular?
RHYNE: It started in 2014. We started meeting to organize a baroque-based arts organization. And in 2015 we started producing concerts. And we knew that we wanted to base it on the music of Bach. As we started out, we started presenting concerts of only Bach’s music. Since then, we’ve branched out a bit to cover related composers, composers of the same era—of the Baroque era, which is really the 1700s.
So we started in 2015. This is our 11th season and Jessica can tell you more about the festival that we started last year. We're looking forward to a second Baroque Music Festival this coming May.
FULLER: I look forward to hearing more about that in a few moments, but first, I'm curious how you both got involved with SC Bach. Jessica we’ll start with you.
SHARP: Absolutely. So I started singing with the South Carolina Bach Choir in 2016 or 2017. I had just had my daughter, so the time is a little fuzzy, but I joined as a singer first with the choir and just grew to love the organization. And when another board member was rolling off, she asked if I would be interested in joining the board in her place, and I said “absolutely.”
So I joined the board, I think, in 2017 or 2018, was involved with the board ever since then, and last year I was president of the board and really kind of ran the organization. And they asked me to step in as the first executive director for this season.
RHYNE: She was actually doing the job of an executive director for no money, so we were happy we were in a position this year to bring her on as a staff member.
FULLER: Wearing many hats, as Bach himself did in his own career.
SHARP: Always.
RHYNE: Right, right.
FULLER: David, I understand that you've actually done quite a bit of scholarship and research into Bach—the man and his music.
RHYNE: I guess I have. I started my college career as a musician—as an organist—so you can't be an organist without playing the music Bach. After that, I as I started to become more and more interested in choral music, that was an easy transition to stay with Bach as well. And I have been fortunate to attend some pretty major festivals.
There is one in Oregon every year—the Oregon Bach Festival. I was able to attend that. And then I've been to the festival in Leipzig, Germany twice. So great opportunities, great ways to experience how other organizations who have been around longer than we have present programs, present festivals, manage and create concerts.
FULLER: SC Bach is soon presenting its namesake’s Christmas Oratorio at Furman University in full over two performances. What necessitates this split into two separate events?
DAVID: The Christmas Oratorio is in six parts, for a total of about three hours of music, which necessitates more than one performance for most audience members. Probably me included. It's often split into even more than two concerts, just because the logistics are so complicated.
The musicians required for each of the six parts are very different, so bringing all the musicians together at one time to create this over a course of a weekend—which is what we're doing—not only is it very complex, it's very unusual. And as far as we know, this is the first time this has been done in South Carolina—as far as we know.
FULLER: What kind of performing forces are needed for this Christmas Oratorio?
RHYNE: A full set of strings—violins, violas, cellos, bass—which is very typical, with their corresponding keyboard instruments: harpsichord and organ. It also calls for, among the six parts—the six cantatas—three trumpets, timpani, up to four oboes, two French horns, two flutes, and chorus. So it's quite a group of musicians that have to be put together for this performance.
FULLER: For all his achievements and extensive composing, you know, Bach never wrote an opera—a staged theatrical production. But oratorios do have some similarities, of course: vocal soloists, chorus, instrumentalists (as you were just mentioning there), plenty of musical drama, at least, and of course a story or a narrative. So what's the narrative here of the Christmas Oratorio? A brief overview, start to finish?
DAVID: Sure, yeah. It is a story. And the six parts of the oratorio tell the whole Christmas story, starting with the birth of Christ, the announcing from the angels to the shepherds to go in and see this thing that has happened, the actual shepherds going to the manger, finishing with two parts at the end with the wise men coming to visit the manger scene as well.
So you really get the whole Christmas story told over these two days of performances. And, like you said, it's dramatic in the sense that there's an evangelist that actually tells the story. And the chorus and soloists somewhat complement and talk about how that makes them feel. It gives them the emotional content of the story, whereas the Evangelist just tells it just as if he were reading it out of the Bible.
FULLER: I can imagine you have many performers from the Greenville area coming. Do you have any from a little farther afield?
RHYNE: Most of the orchestra come from farther afield. We have musicians that come from the Washington, D.C. area, Charlotte, Durham area. We have a couple from Indiana that will come in. Just recently, a few people from San Francisco that we typically bring in have moved to the North Carolina area. So this is becoming somewhat of a hotbed for early music.
And the instrumentalists that we use all play period instruments, which is also another unique feature of our performances as well.
FULLER: Kind of a sound world that Bach himself might have heard?
RHYNE: We hope so. We hope we can get as close as we can to what actually Bach heard when he performed this himself.
SHARP: And for those who may not be familiar, the difference—the biggest difference—that you might hear is that it's pitched a little lower at baroque pitch, which is A415 if we're talking about hertz, and current pitch that we use is A440. So it's about a half step lower, and the instruments are slightly different.
The bows are different for the stringed instruments. They bow a little bit differently, so if people are familiar with contemporary instruments, they might be able to see the difference and hopefully they'll be able to hear the differences as well with a performance like this using period instruments.
RHYNE: Right, and some of the instruments are very unique to this time period, whether the natural horns, or oboe da caccia, which are very interesting and rarely heard instruments as well. So, in addition to the instruments being set up differently, there are some actual interesting and different instruments that aren't typical.
FULLER: I can imagine your sights are set on this Christmas Oratorio at the moment, but SC Bach’s season continues in spring with a return of the South Carolina Baroque music festival which you launched just last year last year?
SHARP: We did. Last year was our inaugural year and it was such a fabulous success that we've decided to do it again. It's over a weekend—this year will be May 15th to the 17th in Greenville. All of the events are based in or very close to downtown Greenville to make getting between them very easy. And of course the culminating performance is Handel's Messiah.
FULLER: And beyond these events, you engage in community outreach and a competition as well?
SHARP: That's right. This is the second year of our Young Artist Competition where we invite young artists from across the country to submit an audition or a tape, and the judges will go through and judge the recordings. And then we'll have a performance with the top six finalists in February, and from there a winner will be chosen. And they get a concert weekend of our next season to be featured as our Young Artist Competition winner.
FULLER: It’s clear that everyone participating in SC Bach as a performer is passionate about the German Baroque composer and his music. What do you hope audiences take away from your offerings, whether the Christmas Oratorio or the festival coming in May?
SHARP: I hope that they are inspired by the beautiful music and that they feel transported—maybe to another plane. That's how I feel when I hear Bach. I just feel this beautiful connection to the composer and to the other musicians and just this awe that comes with such ethereal, beautiful music.
RHYNE: I can't disagree with that. Bach has a way of taking text and creating music out of it that I'm not sure other composers can equal. Jessica's right—it's very inspiring how he sets texts, sometimes has deeper meaning and he actually can come up with meanings of the text that you wouldn't expect.
For instance, one example in the Christmas Oratorio: he uses what’s sometimes called the Passion Chorale as part of the music. And whether or not Bach was actually trying to look ahead and say well this is the birth of Christ, but we've got to remember what happens in the Passion Week. So he does lots of things like that, that you have to stop and think a little bit about the about the music.
FULLER: Jessica, David thank you both so much for sharing about SC Bach today and all best for this performance of the Christmas Oratorio.
SHARP: Thank you so much.
RHYNE: Thank you.
More information about SC Bach’s upcoming performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in full over two concerts at Furman University on December 20th and 21st can be found at scbach.org
