Performing Sunday service in the Marienkirche - Choir Tour Day 10

If church had been like this when I was a child, maybe I would still be attending.  I wish we could take the Marienkirche home with us.

We had to get up very early in order to be ready to sing for the 10am service.  I hope we didn’t wake anyone up in the hotel as we warmed up our voices in our hotel rooms at 7-8 in the morning!  We sang five pieces, interspersed in the rest of the service.  The rest of the time we listened to the German sermon and followed along with the German hymns.

Singing in that space was pretty special.  From the choir's position we didn't get the full effect of the incredible way the sound travelled and moved around the church, but I heard some recordings of it afterwards and I've never experienced anything quite like that.  Our very last piece was a rousing spiritual that surprised and moved everyone and even gave one family goosebumps.  As we processed down the aisle after the priest, a woman was so moved that she came up and hugged and kissed all of the choir members (which I will admit was a little strange, but to each his own...) 

It’s pretty amazing to be able to create that kind of experience for someone else... to know that all the hard work, minute attention to detail, and emotion we put it into the music in our preparations actually reaches out and changes people.

Years ago, our conductor, while trying to impress upon us the importance of what we do, said a few words that always stayed with me: “We help people work things out.” In other words, excellent music changes people in some way.  It helps them process some kind of emotions, whether it be grief, joy, or anything in between.   It’s powerful to witness that happen, and also profoundly humbling. 

I’ve also been on the receiving end of it when I’ve been to concerts as an audience member.  Sometimes I will think “That was really quite beautiful”, but not been changed in any way.  Then there are the concerts I’ve gone to where I’ve wept at certain exquisite passages, or processed some difficult emotion, or been lifted to such great heights of joy for hours afterwards.  To know that we have the potential for that kind of power when we sing for others... it feels like a great responsibility.  Because that power doesn’t come from any one of us; it doesn’t come from the conductor or even the notes on the page.  It is something else, some delicate and perfect balance of each and every person working together as one.

This is why I love choral singing more than solo singing – the latter is a fun challenge and different kind of experience that I like to have every once in a while, but my soul was made for choral singing.  For that experience of oneness.  Those moments where my voice blends with my section,  all the other sections, the intent of the composer, the movements of the conductor, the space we are performing in, and with the hearts and minds of everyone in the audience, as if we were all the same person, the same wind through the trees, the same the same ocean wave crashing on the shore, in perfect unison, perfect harmony.  I live for that.

While we can strive for perfection every time, not every performance is perfect.  But there were enough perfect moments today to move the people that were there and that is not something to take lightly or for granted.

Clock in the church that was recreated
after the ancient one was destroyed in WWII

Some ceiling detail

Goodbye Bach, Hello Buxtehude... - Choir Tour Day 9

The morning after our Bachfest performance, it was time to say goodbye to Leipzig and get on a 6 hour bus ride to Lübeck, but first I had to go and say goodbye to the Thomaskirche.  I still hadn’t fully processed everything from the night before and felt I needed to go back into that space one more time before we left.  There was a rehearsal going on, so I sat and listened to the organ above me, closed my eyes and imagined I was back in Bach’s time.  I thought about what we had done there the night before and it seemed almost like a perfect dream.  I remembered bits and pieces of it and replayed them in my head, feeling more of the experience now that I could relax and just think about it.

After about ten or so minutes, I had to say goodbye and make my way to where the tour bus was waiting. Dankeshön I thought in my head as I slowly walked out, directing it towards the grave at the front.  And I probably imagined this, but I felt as if I heard a voice in my head whisper Bitteshön...

***

Whether or not going on tour makes you hear voices, one thing it can be for sure is exhausting.

After dropping our luggage off in the hotel, we immediately walked over to the Marienkirche, where the composer Buxtehude worked as organist from 1668 until the end of his life in 1707.  

In 1705, when he was only 20 years old, Bach actually walked over 400 kilometres from Arnstadt to Lübeck in order to meet Buxtehude, hear his music and learn from him:

“We don't know, exactly, what it was the made Bach want to undertake the trip. Buxtehude did have a considerable reputation, at least among musicians, and Bach, a young man of twenty, was in his first job as a church organist.  (...) Bach may have felt very constrained by the limited resources in town, as well as being motivated by the urge that every ambitious young musician feels to make contact with other musicians, to learn from them, and thus improve their own art. One thing should be stressed--had Bach been content to simply stay at home and do the job for which he had been hired, and not gone forth to confront and learn from the best that German art had to offer at the time, he wouldn't have been Bach.” 
Quoted from: http://www.pianonoise.com/Composer.Buxtehude.htm

That thirst and desire to seek out new learning experiences, to travel, to go where your heart leads you no matter what the effort, is something I think a lot of people can relate to.  I have done similar, though perhaps not quite so extreme, things in my life.  My commute to Ottawa from Toronto almost every weekend to sing in this choir is something a lot of people don’t understand.  I also do a lot of other things that people don't really understand in the name of passion.  I just jump in and find some way to make it work as I go.  So yeah, walking 400 km to go learn from a famous musician... I kind of get that. 

This artwork depicts what I assume
is Buxtehude at the organ and a shy (?)
Bach standing behind him and listening

Bach took a month’s leave from his position at his first job in order to undertake this pilgrimage.  However, while he was there, he discovered that Buxtehude put on a series of concerts known as “Abendmusik” on the Sundays during Advent... which he obviously wanted to attend.  As the above quoted website goes on to explain,

“Bach was now faced with a tough choice. If he stuck around for the concerts, he would be overstaying his leave, and the church authorities would not be very happy. On the other hand, to miss such concerts! (...) Bach decided to stay. He was not about to wait another year for this seminal influence on his art, something of great importance to him (...) That doesn't, however, make his behavior anything less than rude.

When he returned home, the church authorities let him know it. A fascinating transcript survives of the "minutes" of a meeting to which Bach was called to explain himself. By this time it was well into February. Bach had not only remained through Christmas, he found reasons to stay for another month and a half, causing him to return nearly four months late.”

I guess you would call him rebellious. 

We, however, did not walk to Lübeck.   As we approached Buxtehude’s church, we were not prepared for the sheer enormity of it.  I have never seen a church as immense as this.  And I’ve certainly seen large buildings, but none with as much... presence, as this one.  It just occupies so much... space.  We marvelled at it from the outside for a while...

...and then we went inside.

Pictures don’t do this place justice.  The high, high ceilings were a sight to take in.  We all kept wandering around, staring upwards.

Inside the church looking towards the front

The acoustic was incredible once we started singing.  It took at least ten seconds for the sound to decay.  The sound of our voices would rise up into those high ceilings, float around in different places, and come back to you from somewhere else.  The richness of sound was amazing.  Who knew that Buxtehude’s church was like this?  Even though the church was largely destroyed during WWII and rebuilt, they stayed close to the original height and shape of the ceilings so the acoustic must have been very similar back in his time.  It gave me a whole new perspective on his music, and it was pretty special to sing a piece by him in that space.

I feel so lucky that I get to have these experiences, both on this tour and the other one I was on two years ago.  It gives me a whole new depth and intimacy with this music and these composers. They don’t just seem like names on a page and a series of facts... they were real people, and I have now walked in the same places they have, and sung their music in the exact same spaces they were conceived and meant to be sung.

Very large organ.

Marienkirche seen from a viewing tower at another church

Bachfest Leipzig 2014 - Choir Tour Day 8

Sometimes, powerful experiences are only really processed after the fact.  Our performance in the Bachfest Leipzig was one of those.

A reporter for the Ottawa Citizen called our journey here to Leipzig to perform in this festival “a pilgrimage”, and that’s really what it was.  As our conductor put it to us mere hours before the performance, there’s nothing bigger, for this kind of music.  Being here and performing in this festival is it.  I think we all felt that in our own way, and each had our own way of processing it and preparing for it.

For me, I had to spend the entire day alone, centering and grounding myself.  I could not let emotion or excitement or fear get in the way of singing absolutely perfectly.  I took the time to prepare by walking around Leipzig in the morning for a bit, not venturing very far from the Thomaskirche and always making my way back to it to “check in” and sit in the space for a little while before moving on again.  I also went to visit the Nikolaikirche again, one of the other churches where Bach was responsible for the music.  There was someone rehearsing the organ when I went in there and they were quite good, so I sat for a little while in the space and imagined what it might have been like for Bach to play the organ long ago.

Inside detail of Nikolaikirche

Nikolaikirche

I wanted to leave some flowers on his grave, but I couldn’t really find anything appropriate in any of the stores.  I eventually made my way into a park and saw patches of tiny wild daisies, so I decided to pick some and tie them together with grass, making my own tiny little bouquet to bring back.  I sat a little while longer in the space.  It was a meditative kind of morning.  After this final visit I felt grounded and focused enough.  I went back to my hotel room and sat with my music for a while, going over parts here and there, immersing myself in the beautiful music we were about to perform and repeating certain details over and over and over again... imprinting the perfect phrasing in my kinesthetic memory so that in performance, it would come out without thinking.

Our final dress rehearsal, this time with the Leipziger Barock-Consort was two hours long and ended an hour before the performance itself.  We went over every detail; emotions and stress was high, and our conductor may have channelled Bach a little bit in her final talk to us.  I think we got the message though.

I felt centered and calm and ready for it.

It was exciting to climb the spiral staircase up to the choir dressing room and get ready up there.  You could feel the energy in the room, and I especially loved it when the choir, from all corners of the room and in various states of dress or undress, spontaneously started singing one of our pieces, just for the fun of it.  I love these people.

***

The experience of actually singing there defies words.  Processing up the church was a beautifully solemn moment.  The whole church full of at least 1000 people stood in silence as we slowly walked in two lines up to our place at the front, right in front of Bach’s grave.

As soon as we assembled to sing the first chant, my heart started beating so fast.  I was ready, though, and erased all thoughts from my head, locked my eyes on our conductor, and away we went.

There were so many incredible moments.  So much joy, poetry, text, perfection, and complete oneness with the music.  There was no space in my head for any other thoughts.  So many moments of oneness with my soprano section, so many delicate interplays with other sections... at the end of the Bach piece, for a very brief moment, I felt his presence there, just listening.  When we sang the chorale with the entire church full of voices, there were brief seconds I allowed myself to be lost in that wash of sound and feel what it must have been like back then.  But all these moments where I let myself feel anything other than the music were so brief, and that is why it is taking a long time to process the experience.  When you’re so focused on something like that, when every fibre of your being and every muscle in your body is focused on precisely executing something of that importance and skill and requires the full attention of your entire spirit, you can’t really feel all the emotions until after you’re done.

Our listing in the Bachfest booklet (18.00 h)

Our conductor has done an excellent job of describing more of the performance, much better than I have.  I invite you all to check out our choir’s blog page and read her thoughts here:  Ottawa Bach Choir blog

Also, you can read an objective review of our concert and tour by following this link to the Ottawa Citizen’s article about us: Ottawa's Bach pilgrims perform to highest standards

***

When we came outside, a large part of the audience was waiting there and they all started clapping for us.  This was quite a surprise and we didn’t quite know how to react!  It felt a little bit like being a rockstar.  It was so lovely to be so appreciated and validated for performing this kind of music... you just don’t get quite this same kind of reception over in North America.

 We got all kinds of lovely compliments too – a native German speaker who was sitting at the very back of the church told us that he could hear every single word of our diction.  Someone else commented that they were very surprised that we came out of the church speaking English, as our pronunciation of it while singing was so excellent.  Someone else who saw our concert admired how our vowel sounds matched so perfectly.  It is exciting to know that all of the things we worked on to the point of exhaustion actually came across and moved people.

And of course, no life-changing choir performance is complete without a rowdy after party, where we celebrated the way only choral singers can.  Musicians immerse themselves in ALL the pleasures in life, not just music, and that includes good food and drink... 

We took over the hotel lobby of the Leipzig Marriot Hotel, as there was no space for us in the actual restaurant (or any other restaurant in Leipzig for that matter), pushing together couches and coffee tables until we’d assembled seating space for the twenty or so of us.  Celebrating after a performance is important for helping to process all the emotions and remind each other of the special moments, and we stayed there eating and drinking well into the night.  A Dutch group that was also in the lobby came over to find out who we were, and after learning we were a choral group that had just performed at the Thomaskirche in the Bachfest, they requested we sing something.  Not missing a moment, our conductor chose one of the difficult fugue passages from the Bach piece we had just done and off we went, singing entirely from memory.  It is always a thrill to sing in bars or other places like that on the fly.  A round of applause from all parts of the hotel lobby followed suite, and of course we continued on with more, singing two more pieces, this time some quick moving spirituals, always a hit over here.

I feel honoured to be a part of this choir and to work with such incredible musicians.  

 

Singing in Leipzig - Choir Tour Day 7

All I want to do here is immerse myself in music.   

There are banners everywhere advertising the Bachfest Leipzig.  It’s pretty surreal to be in this town, walking the same streets that Bach must have walked long ago.  There was a busker in front of the Thomaskirche and he was singing Schumann arias and it was normal.  When would you ever see that in North America? Classical music is everywhere here. 

Last night I had dinner at the Auerbachs Keller, a famous underground restaurant where Goethe spent a lot of time.  It dates back to at least 1438.  I don't even quite know how to process being in a place that has existed for that long.  I also had the most incredible warm apple strudel with ice cream and whipped cream at the Bachstüb'l across from the Thomaskirche late last night.  

Quite possibly the best applestrudel in the world...
and made even more special by being served in the immediate vicinity of Bach's church

The only place I’ve really wanted to go or visit is the Thomaskirche.  It’s a very strange pull, kind of subtle and always there.  I don’t really feel comfortable when I am not close to it or can’t see it.  I just keep being drawn back, no matter where I wander.  

It’s kind of the way I feel about the ocean... anyone that has been with me near the ocean knows that I am not happy unless I can see it or am in it.  It’s the same kind of pull that I feel here.  Our concert is tomorrow and I feel the immensity of what we are about to do.  My first time in the church yesterday, I felt so overwhelmed by being in Bach’s presence and in that important musical space that I did not feel anywhere close to “good enough” to be performing here.  

It took me a very long time to trust myself as a singer, and while I have come to a place where I have learned to trust myself (especially this year as a new singer in this professional choir where I have had to jump into learning very difficult music in very short periods of time), my initial reaction was to feel overwhelmed by the importance of this. 

I knew I needed to get over that, and quickly, so I spent a lot of time today alternating between going into the church and going back to my room to practice my music.  I wanted to get familiar with the church, get comfortable enough with it so that it wouldn’t overwhelm me so much. It was nice to just spend time sitting in the church, hearing other musicians rehearse for their own performances in the Bachfest.  It was also a very beautiful experience to just be in my hotel room alone, open the windows to let in the fresh air, and just rehearse, go over particular phrases over and over again to get just the right vowel sound, just the right dynamics, just the right breath control, and feel myself somehow joined with a long history of singers and musicians that have practiced to perfection in this city of Leipzig.

Sign on the Thomaskirche door listing us as rehearsing in the space that day

Us around Bach's grave during dress rehearsal

We had a dress rehearsal today in the church as well.  That was an incredible experience, to hear the sound we could make in that space.  Tourists and other people (including a very well-known choral conductor from Toronto) wandered in and out and sat for a while listening to our rehearsal.  We rehearsed right at the front, in front of Bach’s tomb.  How many musicians can say they’ve had this experience?   

We were all "in the zone".  It was a very focused rehearsal, and just so lovely to have the chance to rehearse in that space.  It was special. 

The end of the evening brought the most beautiful rainbow over the old town hall – an omen of good things to come.  Only one more day until we sing in the Bachfest.

Rainbow over the old town hall